Space Tourism Industry Gains New Competitor

mattnyc99 writes "There's a new entry in the race for the first space tourism jet: XCOR Aerospace, a California-based rocket builder. The company says its clean-burning, two-seat Lynx spacecraft will lift off by 2010. After we only saw a mockup of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo a couple months back, you'd think this was serious competition in the 'New Space' race, but these photos show that Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites is well on its way with construction."

Two Notes

[eldavojohn]

As far as I know Virgin and Scaled Composites are the same endeavor, they are both signed to a two year deal to build SpaceShipTwo.

Also, it should be noted that there was a an accident involving two deaths last year [slashdot.org] at Scaled Composites and prior to that their buyout by Northrup Grumman [slashdot.org].

Honestly, I kind of expected that endeavor to fail as a result of those two news stories, I'm pleased to find out they are continuing on their contract although I question further contracts with Virgin.

cover some ground

[Thelasko]

As I understand it, these companies both plan on sending people straight up and returning them to the same place they took off from. This is wonderful, but impractical for anything but a joy ride. How about creating something that lands you at some other place on the earth's surface? I don't even care if it can only travel from East to West.