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XCOR
XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherlands. XCOR was formed in 1999 by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team, and ceased operations in 2017. By 2015, XCOR was headed by CEO John "Jay" Gibson, who remained CEO until June 2017. XCOR Aerospace was the parent operation, concerned with engineering and building spaceships and had two main subdivisions within it; XCOR Space Expeditions provided marketing and sales, and XCOR Science had been set up to conduct scientific and educational payload flights. By May 2016, XCOR was laying off staff and in 2017, XCOR closed their doors for good and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. History The company was founded in Mojave, California in 1999 by Jeff Greason, Dan DeLong, Aleta Jackson and Doug Jones who had p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
XCOR Science
XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherlands. XCOR was formed in 1999 by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team, and ceased operations in 2017. By 2015, XCOR was headed by CEO John "Jay" Gibson, who remained CEO until June 2017. XCOR Aerospace was the parent operation, concerned with engineering and building spaceships and had two main subdivisions within it; XCOR Space Expeditions provided marketing and sales, and XCOR Science had been set up to conduct scientific and educational payload flights. By May 2016, XCOR was laying off staff and in 2017, XCOR closed their doors for good and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. History The company was founded in Mojave, California in 1999 by Jeff Greason, Dan DeLong, Aleta Jackson and Doug Jones who h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xerus (spaceplane)
The XCOR Lynx was a proposed suborbital horizontal-takeoff, horizontal-landing (HTHL), rocket-powered spaceplane that was under development by the California-based company XCOR Aerospace to compete in the emerging suborbital spaceflight market. The Lynx was intended to carry one pilot, a ticketed passenger, and/or a payload above altitude. The concept has been under development since 2003 when a two-person suborbital spaceplane was announced under the name Xerus. In January 2016, XCOR changed plans for the first flight of the Lynx spaceplane. It was initially planned for the second quarter of 2016 from the Midland spaceport in Texas, but, in early 2016, it was pushed to an "undisclosed and tentative" date at the Mojave spaceport. In May 2016, XCOR announced development of the Lynx had been halted with layoffs of approximately one-third of the staff; the company intended to concentrate on development of their liquid hydrogen rocket under contract with United Launch Allianc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
EZ-Rocket
The XCOR EZ-Rocket was a test platform for the XCOR XR-4A3 rocket propulsion system. The airplane was a modified Rutan Long-EZ, with the propeller replaced by first one, then later a pair of pressure-fed regeneratively cooled liquid-fueled rocket engines and an underslung fuel tank. The engines were restartable in flight, and were contained within Kevlar armor shielding. The EZ-Rocket was registered as an experimental aircraft. Development and history The first flight took place on July 21, 2001, flown by test pilot Dick Rutan. On a typical flight, the EZ-Rocket took off on rockets, gained altitude for a minute or so, then switched off the rockets and glided to a dead stick landing. The vehicle actually flew better during dead stick landings than a standard Long-EZ due to lack of drag from a stationary pusher propeller — the vehicle's aerodynamics were cleaner in spite of its belly tank. It was also lighter due to the lack of a piston engine (the rocket propulsion s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeff Greason
Jeff Greason is a co-founder and the Chief Technologist of Electric Sky, a company developing the ability to wirelessly transmit power to moving vehicles. He also serves as chairman of the board of the Tau Zero Foundation. Career Greason has been active in the development of the regulatory environment for the commercial space flight industry. He has worked with the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) since 1998, has served on the advisory group to AST, COMSTAC as a member of the working group on reusable launch vehicles (RLV) since 2000, and as an invited full member of COMSTAC since 2005. He was one of the leaders of the development of the Commercial Space Launch Amendment Act of 2004. He co-founded the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (formerly Personal Spaceflight Federation). Previously, he was the team lead at Rotary Rocket for engine development, and earlier worked at Intel. Greason was named a member of the Review of United States Human Space Fli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mojave Air And Space Port
The Mojave Air and Space Port at Rutan Field is in Mojave, California, United States, at an elevation of . It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a spaceport by the Federal Aviation Administration on June 17, 2004. The facility covers 2,998 acres (1,213 ha) and has three runways. History In 1935, Kern County opened the Mojave Airport east of Mojave, California to serve the gold and silver mining industry in the area. The airport had two dirt runways, one oiled, but no fueling or servicing facilities. In 1941, the Civil Aeronautics Board began improvements to the airport for national defense purposes that included two asphalt runways and a taxiway. Kern County agreed the airport could be taken over by the military in the event of war. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States Marine Corps took over the airport and expanded it into Marine Corps A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Tourism
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. Tourists are motivated by the possibility of viewing Earth from space, feeling weightlessness, experiencing extremely high speed and something unusual, and contributing to science. Space tourism started in April 2001, when American businessman and engineer Dennis Tito became the first ever space tourist to travel to space aboard a Soyuz-TM32 spacecraft. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight space flights aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, brokered by American company Space Adventures in conjunction with Roscosmos and RSC Energia. Iranian-American businesswoman Anousheh Ansari became the first ever female space tourist in September 2006. The publicized price was in the range of US$20–25 million per trip. Some space tourists have signed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midland International Air And Space Port
Midland International Air and Space Port (formerly Midland International Airport) is in the city limits of Midland, Texas, United States, about midway between Downtown Midland and Downtown Odessa, owned and operated by the City of Midland. In September 2014, it was licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to serve commercial spaceflight. Overview The airport has four airlines, three serving hubs with regional jets and one flying mainline jets. Southwest Airlines is the largest carrier at the airport. In 2012, 497,193 passengers were enplaned. History Origins The airport started as Sloan Field, a small airport started in 1927 by Samuel Addison Sloan. Sloan leased 220 acres of flat grassland from Clarence Scharbauer, a rancher. Sam Sloan died in a plane crash in 1929, and his brother, William Harvey Sloan, continued the operation. In 1939, Harvey Sloan sold the field to the City of Midland for $14,500. As war clouds gathered over Europe in the late 1930s, Midland busine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Private Spaceflight
Private spaceflight is any spaceflight development that is not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA. During the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pioneered space technology in collaboration with affiliated design bureaus in the USSR and private companies in the US. They entirely funded both the development of new spaceflight technologies and the operational costs of spaceflight. Following a similar model of space technology development, the European Space Agency was formed in 1975. Arianespace, born out of ESA's independent spaceflight efforts, became the world's first commercial launch service provider in the early 1980s. Subsequently, large defense contractors began to develop and operate space launch systems, which were derived from government rockets. In the United States, the FAA has created a new certification called Commercial Astronaut, a new occupation. In the 2000s, en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rocket-powered Aircraft
A rocket-powered aircraft or rocket plane is an aircraft that uses a rocket engine for propulsion, sometimes in addition to airbreathing jet engines. Rocket planes can achieve much higher speeds than similarly sized jet aircraft, but typically for at most a few minutes of powered operation, followed by a gliding flight. Unhindered by the need for oxygen from the atmosphere, they are suitable for very high-altitude flight. They are also capable of delivering much higher acceleration and shorter takeoffs. Many rocket aircraft may be drop launched from transport planes, as take-off from ground may leave them with insufficient time to reach high altitudes. Rockets have been used simply to assist the main propulsion in the form of jet assisted take off (JATO) also known as rocket-assisted takeoff ( RATO or RATOG). Not all rocket planes are of the conventional takeoff like "normal" aircraft. Some types have been air-launched from another plane, while other types have taken off v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sub-orbital Spaceflight
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the primary (astronomy), gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will not become an artificial satellite nor will it reach escape velocity. For example, the path of an object launched from Earth that reaches the Kármán line (about – above sea level), and then falls back to Earth, is considered a sub-orbital spaceflight. Some sub-orbital flights have been undertaken to test spacecraft and launch vehicles later intended for orbital spaceflight. Other vehicles are specifically designed only for sub-orbital flight; examples include crewed vehicles, such as the North American X-15, X-15 and SpaceShipTwo, and uncrewed ones, such as intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBMs and sounding rockets. Flights which attain sufficient velocity to go into low Earth orbit, and then de-orbit before com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suborbital
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched. Hence, it will not complete one orbital revolution, will not become an artificial satellite nor will it reach escape velocity. For example, the path of an object launched from Earth that reaches the Kármán line (about – above sea level), and then falls back to Earth, is considered a sub-orbital spaceflight. Some sub-orbital flights have been undertaken to test spacecraft and launch vehicles later intended for orbital spaceflight. Other vehicles are specifically designed only for sub-orbital flight; examples include crewed vehicles, such as the X-15 and SpaceShipTwo, and uncrewed ones, such as ICBMs and sounding rockets. Flights which attain sufficient velocity to go into low Earth orbit, and then de-orbit before completing their first full orbit, are not considered sub-orbital. Examples o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
