The media reps at XCOR Aerospace and the Rocket Racing League (RRL) have just filled me on on their plans for demo flights and presentations at the EAA AirVenture Convention at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

XCOR's engineers have been hard at work perfecting the Rocket Racing League's first X-Racer, a rocket-powered racing airplane, and now they're ready for demonstration flights at Oshkosh. Here's the schedule:

Flight 1: Tuesday, July 29, 2:30 p.m., following a 2:10 p.m. press conference

Fight 2: Friday, August 1, 2:30 p.m.

Flight 3: Saturday, August 2, 2:30 p.m.

All flights will be flown by Rick Searfoss, a former Space Shuttle commander now serving as XCOR and the RRL's chief test pilot. "And in addition," the RRL rep tells me, "the Rocket Racing League exhibit/booth on Aero Shell Square will feature the RRL simulators, games, and other great stuff for all ages."

XCOR chief engineer Dan DeLong and company president Jeff Greason will also give three separate presentations on the company's future as a commercial spaceship developer. I'm sure their spaceship-in-development, the Lynx, will feature prominently. Here's the schedule for those events:

Presentation 1: Monday, July 28, 2:30 p.m.

Presentation 2: Saturday, August 2, 1:00 p.m.

Presentation 3: Sunday, August 3, 11:30 a.m.

Labels: Oshkosh, Rocket Racing League, Spaceflight, XCOR

Yep, it's a suborbital spaceship. Check out my story on the unveiling of XCOR's new Lynx spacecraft, along with embedded video, on popsci.com.

Labels: Lynx, Popular Science, Spaceflight, XCOR

The folks at XCOR Aerospace tell me that the company is planning a press event on March 26 in Los Angeles. These guys are not prone to frivolous or gratuitous PR, so I'm most definitely intrigued.

Come to think of it, I don't think XCOR has ever held a press conference in the time I've been following them, since 2004. The engineers, technicians, and managers at XCOR prefer to keep their heads down, do their work, and let their deeds speak for themselves.

They've already built and flown a rocket powered airplane, a 7,500-pound-thrust methane rocket engine for NASA (through prime contractor ATK), novel piston fuel pumps designed to replace million-dollar turbo pumps in high-powered rocket engines at a tiny fraction of the cost, and built countless rocket engines to show again and again that liquid fueled rocket engines can be safe, reliable, and affordable enough to become part of our everyday lives.

But the company was founded to get people into space, and the founders have never lost sight of that prize, wrangling contracts from the Department of Defense, NASA, and private companies to build components of their planned suborbital spaceship as well as fund components of the ship for which they don't have customers.

A mysterious project has been underway on the XCOR shop floor behind a black curtain for some time now, and the company has been incredibly successful lately, with contracts and money rolling in faster than ever before. In fact, XCOR made Inc. magazine's list of 500 fastest growing companies in America last year.

Are we about to witness a new private spaceship unveiled?

I'm going to blog the XCOR press event for the Popular Science website at www.popsci.com. Look for a link from here on March 26.

Labels: Lynx, Popular Science, Spaceflight, XCOR