WhiteKnightTwo, the launch vehicle for the SpaceShipTwo Virgin Galactic sub-orbital commercial spaceship, made its public debut at Oshkosh this year.
It is still early in the test process - the Tuesday demonstration flight was only the 17th flight made by the aircraft. Sir Richard Branson was in the back for that flight, giving interviews to the media afterwards. Thursday’s planned flight was cancelled whilst it was holding for take-off, due to the weather (with several storms in the area), so it next displayed on the Friday, with a departure for home on the Saturday.
A really interesting aeroplane, it has a span of 140 feet (about the same as a B-29!) and is stressed to 7G. The commentator mentioned that one of the hardest things was designing the engine pylons to support the weight of the engines under a 7G load. The wing has a one-piece carbon composite spar – quite a feat of engineering to manufacture a composite structure 140 feet long.
My shots were taken on a mixture of days. I’ve included quite a few (I hope nobody minds) as it is such an unusual-looking machine from every angle!
