XCOR: Making Private Spaceflight Real



Interview with XCOR Engineer Mark Street by D Minus Zero

 D Minus Zero Blog:  - August 16, 2010

When you were a kid, what did you imagine spaceflights would look like in the future?

Did you imagine space missions in a big rocket, or your own personal spaceship? For me, I always was fond of the idea of building my own personal spaceship, and traveling from planet to planet. It may be far off into the future, but then again, it may be closer than we all thought. Companies like XCOR remind me of that dream, and they are making those dreams a reality, one step at a time. I will briefly cover who and what XCOR is, and dive a little deeper with Mark Street, an Engineer with the company who I had the privilege to interview via e-mail.

What is XCOR?

Founded in 1999 in Mojave, CA, XCOR is a rocket engine, and sub-orbital space vehicle designer that is looking to send regular people up to space. They are currently designing a vehicle called the Lynx, which is a 1 pilot, 1 passenger vehicle which can take people from the ground to 200,000 ft (roughly 38 miles up) where you can experience the blackness of space, the beautiful curvature of the earth, and the feeling of weightlessness only a few have ever truly experienced. XCOR is working with Rocket Ship Tours, who will provide the sale of the tickets aboard the Lynx to any and all who want to ride. This is not your typical space rocket, it is more like a plane with a rocket strapped to its back (actually, that is exactly what it is…). Flight tests of this vehicle will start around 2011. After it has proven to be safe, and reliable, flights with people will most likely take place 9-18 months afterward at $95K (As the commercial sector grows, and proves it’s reliability and ability to carry people safely, I think there is a good chance this price could come down drastically).

I hate to belabor a point here (no I don’t…), but consider what this company is doing. This private company can design and fly a vehicle which can take you into the weightless environment of space! Considering this accomplishment, you would imagine this must be a huge company right? Actually, they have under 50 employees in the company working on this project. Since their founding, they have actually developed 11 different rocket engines, and 3 different rocket vehicles! It is amazing to think that such a small company, can accomplish such big things. The people at XCOR have a passion to visit space themselves, and they realized the only way to do that was to help make it cheap for everyone else. I greatly admire that they took the future of private spaceflight into their own hands. They realized space belongs to everyone, and there should be a way for everyone to visit it. I had the privilege to interview Mark Street of XCOR, who gave me more info about his work, the Lynx vehicle, and his thoughts on private space travel.

How long have you been working for XCOR?

I started work as an engineer at XCOR five years ago.  Because the company is small (under 50 employees), there is little compartmentalization and we tend to wear many hats and work on a range of projects.  I typically focus on aerodynamic, structural, and fluid system engineering.

What do you think separates XCOR from the other sub-orbital companies out there?

XCOR’s strengths in the suborbital market are our propulsion technology and our rocket operations experience.  We’ve been building efficient, reliable rocket engines for 10 years and we have flown two rocket-powered airplanes a total of 66 times.  That operational experience has helped us to design the suborbital Lynx for very high reliability at a minimum per-flight cost.  While we think our approach has great advantages, we’re looking forward to the day when many companies using a variety of architectures and vehicles are providing suborbital flights.

Besides the fun rides, what scientific fields do you think would benefit the most from doing research aboard the lynx?

In the last few years, more and more of the space science community caught on to the potential of regular, inexpensive suborbital flights as a research tool.  There is now a substantial pool of interested researchers who are looking for a chance to fly their experiments on short flights out of the atmosphere.  We’re designing the Lynx to serve as much of that market as we can, including atmospheric sampling, zero gravity research, and astronomy missions. A detailed description of the Lynx payload capability is online at http://www.xcor.com/.

The best thing Lynx offers these scientists is the chance to fly frequently, on-demand, at a low price.  Rather than waiting months for a sounding rocket to become available, researchers will be able to fly their payloads on Lynx multiple times per week (or even per day).  And in some cases, the scientists will be able to fly with their experiments, allowing them to monitor and control their tests during the flight.

Beyond the Lynx, any hope for orbital, or lunar missions?

XCOR sees suborbital flight as a stepping stone on the way to orbit, and our chief engineers are charting a technology path in that direction.  There’s a lot we can learn by flying tothe edge of space and back, but ultimately, most people in the field want to build vehicles that will take them to orbit and beyond.  We certainly do!

**Side note…Wahoo! Ok back to Mark…**

What do you think is important for people to recognize about commercial/private space travel, and what do you think is significantly important about what you and XCOR are hoping to accomplish that regular people can appreciate?

Commercial space is space for everyone.  There are no gatekeepers - anyone in good health will be able to ride on the Lynx.  At first, the cost of a ticket will be high, but with multiple competing companies the price will gradually fall until you and I will be able to afford a flight into space.   If the first commercial space companies can prove that there is profit to be made in space, we hope to open the floodgates for both investors and customers in space.  Once markets are established and profits are flowing, those funds will be used to research new technologies and develop new vehicles that will further decrease the cost of access to space. We have a long road ahead of us, but commercial space has the potential to gradually expand our capabilities from suborbital space into orbital operations and eventually beyond into deep space. Ultimately, tapping into the vast material wealth and energy resources beyond Earth’s orbit could provide profound benefits not just to the people living and working on the space frontier, but also to those who stay behind on Earth.