XCOR and Southwest Research Institute have a major announcement today:
In a first for the reusable suborbital launch vehicle industry, XCOR Aerospace announced today that the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), a commercial entity, has purchased six suborbital flights to carry SwRI experiments as pathfinder missions for other SwRI suborbital clients. This is the first such contract SwRI has issued, and XCOR is proud to be chosen for this opportunity.
I hope it’s the first of many such deals, for XCOR and other providers.
Cool! Looking forward to more like this.
Keep it up! No pun intended
There’s another suborbital market related announcement due Monday, which i will take note of in an issue of “The Lurio Report” I hope to get out before then. But you’d have to be a paid subscriber to Report to hear about that.
There are probably others that I don’t know of coming up during the Suborbital Researchers Conference next week.
I like the idea the XCOR guys have with the Lynx, as far as its basic configuration, shape, and engines go. I think it is a smarter design than SS2/WK2 from the standpoint of economic operation. However, it seems strange to me that they designed it to stop short of the 100km altitude mark. Would scaling the airframe really have added that great of cost and complexity?
I don’t think I’d pay big money to not get to 100km.
There is no change in airframe required to get to a hundred kilometers. The Mark II version will do so.
The basic difference btwn the Mark 1 and Mark 2 is that the latter will use higher-temperature tolerant composites for entry that require a formal curing process in an oven. Meantime, Mark 1 allows you another increment to work out any problems that may turn up with basic systems operating together, at lower up-front cost.
There are probably others that I don’t know of coming up during the Suborbital Researchers Conference next week.
You mean like the NASA press release on Monday? 🙂