Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites and the company’s main customer, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, yesterday unveiled WhiteKnightTwo, also known as “Eve.” Eve is the planned “mothership” that will SpaceShipTwo to altitude before the later fires its own engine to take tourists to the edge of space.
Eve, named for Branson’s mother, is the first hardware to be shown to the public. It will be the workhorse of what Virgin Galactic expects to be the first large-scale space tourism business. The twin-fuselaged aircraft is believed to be the largest all-composite airplane in existence. It’s 50,000-foot ceiling and heavy lift capability will give it abilities beyond the simple launch of the space-going SpaceShipTwo. They expect the Eve to be able to fly four SpaceShipTwo launch-flights per day.
[The image on this page, courtesy of Scaled Composites, shows Eve (with the split tow-bar between the fuselages) with Branson and Rutan walking alongside the craft.]
Introducing the plane to the public, Rutan said “WhiteKnightTwo represents the apogee of the application of carbon composites to aerospace and all of us at Scaled are tremendously excited at the capabilities of the Mothership for SpaceShipTwo. I believe the vehicle will be developed and sold for a variety of launch applications beyond the initial requirements of our launchc customer, Virgin Galactic. We have set up a new business jointly with Virgin, The Spaceship Company (TSC), to develop these vehicles and we very much ohpe that its efficiency will herald a wake-up call to the aerospace industry and the necessity of using new materials and technologies in the future.”
Branson responded “As usual, Burt and the Scaled team have created a beauty and this is a very proud day for us all. The rollout of WhiteKnight Two takes the Virgin Galactic vision to the next level and continues to provide tangible evidence that this most ambitious of projects is not only for real but is making tremendous progress towards our goal fo safe commercial operation.” He was responding to critiques that, when the partnership was first announced four years ago, he had predicted an initial launch date for SpaceShipTwo of 2007. Now, 2010 looks more plausible.
Branson continued “Virgin Galactic is central to our ambition at Virgin to become the world’s leading group in the operation of energy and environmentally efficient transportation, in the air, on the ground, and in space. We arrived here this morning an an aircraft operated by Virgin America, who run the most fuel efficient commercial fleet int he US, to roll out what by most definitions, is the most energy efficient aircraft in history. We are naming it Eve after my mother, Eve Branson, but also because it represents a first and a new beginning, the chance for our ever growing group of future astronauts and other scientists and payload specialists to see our world in a completely new light. I for one can’t wait!”
Virgin Galactic has already taken deposits from hundreds of customers for what are expected to be $100,000-200,000 seats on suborbital flights that will provide about five minutes of weightlessness. Eve and the yet-to-be-revealed SpaceShipTwo are the follow-on program to the original WhiteKnight and SpaceShipOne, which won the $10 million X-Prize for sending a commerical manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.