XCOR and the Lynx rocket

[Craftyatom]

Let's buy a Lynx!!!!

The real question is, whose front yard do we put it in?

If Chris's, how do we get it across the ocean?

[mheney]

Let's buy a Lynx!!!!

The real question is, whose front yard do we put it in?

If Chris's, how do we get it across the ocean?

I suspect that there would be iTAR issues getting it to Chris.   I'd see if Jeff Greason wanted it ...

[Zond]

Anyone know Lyn Freeman? He appears to have bought XCOR for $1M.

https://twitter.com/wikkit/status/976969836344459264

[Archibald]

http://www.flyingadventures.com/images/Aviator-Profiles/Lyn-Freeman.pdf

[Gliderflyer]

Interesting; I wonder if he is going to focus on the rocketplane side, or the engine side. An up-rated 4A3 seems like a good fit for his Build A Rocket kit: http://www.buildaplane.com/what-is-build-a-rocket/

[Rocket Science]

Interesting; I wonder if he is going to focus on the rocketplane side, or the engine side. An up-rated 4A3 seems like a good fit for his Build A Rocket kit: http://www.buildaplane.com/what-is-build-a-rocket/

Great, why not both? Maybe I'll get to build my own ME-163 Komet that doesn't explode upon landing...

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Bankrupt Spaceflight Company's Assets to Help Young Minds Soar
By Douglas Messier, Space.com Contributor | April 20, 2018 12:46pm ET

MOJAVE, Calif. – Before it went bankrupt last year, XCOR Aerospace had ambitious plans to fly tourists to space with the company's fully reusable Lynx suborbital vehicle. But now, the company's assets will be used for a more down-to-Earth purpose: giving high school and college students hands-on experience with rockets and space technology.

A nonprofit organization called Build A Plane purchased XCOR's assets at auction for just under $1.1 million, according to court records.

https://www.space.com/40352-xcor-aerospace-lynx-space-plan-stem-education.html

[Gliderflyer]

I don't know if anyone would find this interesting, but here is one of the few (maybe only?) public videos of the 5H25 hydrogen engine firing. It showed up briefly on the XCOR youtube channel before being taken down, but it was copied and uploaded by someone else before it was pulled.

[john smith 19]

I don't know if anyone would find this interesting, but here is one of the few (maybe only?) public videos of the 5H25 hydrogen engine firing. It showed up briefly on the XCOR youtube channel before being taken down, but it was copied and uploaded by someone else before it was pulled.

Very clean burn. Expected more heat shimmer.
Is that Doug Jones on the audio?

[Gliderflyer]

Very clean burn. Expected more heat shimmer.
Is that Doug Jones on the audio?

No, I don't think he was out there for this firing.

[john smith 19]

Very clean burn. Expected more heat shimmer.
Is that Doug Jones on the audio?

No, I don't think he was out there for this firing.

Thanks.

You're point about the possibilities of conformal LOX tanks being viable (on another thread) if the ullage pressure was low enough was very interesting. I don't think I've seen it suggested elsewhere. REL are planning a flight test vehicle for their air breathing SABRE engine that looks like a D-21 drone. The D21 used wing tanks but I can't figure out how they will do this with LH2.

[Gliderflyer]

You're point about the possibilities of conformal LOX tanks being viable (on another thread) if the ullage pressure was low enough was very interesting. I don't think I've seen it suggested elsewhere. REL are planning a flight test vehicle for their air breathing SABRE engine that looks like a D-21 drone. The D21 used wing tanks but I can't figure out how they will do this with LH2.

I was referring specifically to the kerosene tanks on Lynx and the X-Racer (as those are the only examples I know if in the rocket world), although I don't see why you couldn't make it work with LOX or LH2.

[catdlr]

Bump..

Lost in space: They paid $100,000 to ride on Xcor's space plane. Now they want their money back

Los Angeles Times Business Article

The first sign of trouble was the ever-extended launch date.

One customer of space tourism firm Xcor Aerospace Inc. thought his flight would come in 2011. Nael Hamameh expected 2015 to be the year he would finally achieve his childhood dream of going to space, having paid Xcor $100,000 for a ticket.

But 2015 came and went. After hearing no word of progress, Hamameh asked for a refund. Xcor told him it would try to find someone else to buy his ticket by the end of 2017, but at the least, he would receive $35,000. Then, it all came crashing down in November 2017, when Xcor filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The story of Xcor and its ticket holders — 282 of them, as of the most recent count — is a cautionary tale for the space tourism age.

[woods170]

Bump..

Lost in space: They paid $100,000 to ride on Xcor's space plane. Now they want their money back

Los Angeles Times Business Article

The first sign of trouble was the ever-extended launch date.

One customer of space tourism firm Xcor Aerospace Inc. thought his flight would come in 2011. Nael Hamameh expected 2015 to be the year he would finally achieve his childhood dream of going to space, having paid Xcor $100,000 for a ticket.

But 2015 came and went. After hearing no word of progress, Hamameh asked for a refund. Xcor told him it would try to find someone else to buy his ticket by the end of 2017, but at the least, he would receive $35,000. Then, it all came crashing down in November 2017, when Xcor filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The story of Xcor and its ticket holders — 282 of them, as of the most recent count — is a cautionary tale for the space tourism age.

This is exactly why Blue didn't begin to sell tickets until its system was actually flying.

[russianhalo117]

Bump..

Lost in space: They paid $100,000 to ride on Xcor's space plane. Now they want their money back

Los Angeles Times Business Article

The first sign of trouble was the ever-extended launch date.

One customer of space tourism firm Xcor Aerospace Inc. thought his flight would come in 2011. Nael Hamameh expected 2015 to be the year he would finally achieve his childhood dream of going to space, having paid Xcor $100,000 for a ticket.

But 2015 came and went. After hearing no word of progress, Hamameh asked for a refund. Xcor told him it would try to find someone else to buy his ticket by the end of 2017, but at the least, he would receive $35,000. Then, it all came crashing down in November 2017, when Xcor filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The story of Xcor and its ticket holders — 282 of them, as of the most recent count — is a cautionary tale for the space tourism age.

This is exactly why Blue didn't begin to sell tickets until its system was actually flying.

When Blue came into the mix of ULA projects that is when the XCOR ULA engine project slowed down to a crawl and began hurting XCOR.

[Lars-J]

This is exactly why Blue didn't begin to sell tickets until its system was actually flying.

When Blue came into the mix of ULA projects that is when the XCOR ULA engine project slowed down to a crawl and began hurting XCOR.

Perhaps true but irrelevant. XCOR simply bit off more than they could chew. And it was a bad idea for them to sell tickets (directly or indirectly) to raise funds.
(Despite some on this forum - if I recall correctly - claiming at the time they did not sell tickets)

[Robotbeat]

This is exactly why Blue didn't begin to sell tickets until its system was actually flying.

When Blue came into the mix of ULA projects that is when the XCOR ULA engine project slowed down to a crawl and began hurting XCOR.

Perhaps true but irrelevant. XCOR simply bit off more than they could chew. And it was a bad idea for them to sell tickets (directly or indirectly) to raise funds.
(Despite some on this forum - if I recall correctly - claiming at the time they did not sell tickets)

Not irrelevant. The reason Blue was able to forgo selling tickets is also the reason they were able to swoop in and take the ULA business: they were hyper-capitalized. Bezos' billions crowded out XCOR's business and probably scared away investors from XCOR, as well.

The crappy thing is that Blue is barely even doing anything with it. They're very slow in transitioning from development to operations considering money is not a constraint. XCOR was FAR scrappier (read: capital-efficient and agile). Blue slow-rolling everything in spite of having basically unlimited funding (at a certain scale) may mean the company's existence overall may actually be hurting more than helping NewSpace.

(I've seen this argument being made about SpaceX, and I didn't believe it because SpaceX has been on a tear and has been delivering operationally for a few years, now... But Blue is still slow-rolling and primarily doing dev work at the small, suborbital scale that SHOULD be the natural harbor for smaller companies but instead they're probably scaring away investment in these smaller suborbital efforts.)

[Lars-J]

Perhaps true but irrelevant. XCOR simply bit off more than they could chew. And it was a bad idea for them to sell tickets (directly or indirectly) to raise funds.
(Despite some on this forum - if I recall correctly - claiming at the time they did not sell tickets)

Not irrelevant. The reason Blue was able to forgo selling tickets is also the reason they were able to swoop in and take the ULA business: they were hyper-capitalized. Bezos' billions crowded out XCOR's business and probably scared away investors from XCOR, as well.

The crappy thing is that Blue is barely even doing anything with it. They're very slow in transitioning from development to operations considering money is not a constraint. XCOR was FAR scrappier (read: capital-efficient and agile). Blue slow-rolling everything in spite of having basically unlimited funding (at a certain scale) may mean the company's existence overall may actually be hurting more than helping NewSpace.

This all reads as a list of excuses for XCOR. So they had a well funded competitor? So what. Most businesses deal with that. Some survive, many do not. That's life. And they had a pretty clear run for their first few years without any competitive Blue Origin pressure. They were seen as the top competitor to Virgin Galactic for quite some time.

As "scrappy" as XCOR allegedly was, they did not make much visible progress in their last years. Lynx was going nowhere fast. And we are not privy to the details that made XCOR lose the ULA contract.

But the legend of the infallible XCOR that was only brought down due unfair external events lives on.

EDIT: And how exactly did Blue Origin make XCOR lose a ULA contract? Blue Origin wasn't selected for any ULA upper stage work either. Shouldn't you blame AJR?

[ChrisWilson68]

From the article, a quote from someone who paid $100,000 for a ticket in 2008:

There was never any doubt in our minds … any inkling that there was a problem within the company.

I'm sorry, but that is simply foolish.

There were always plenty of signs that buying a ticket from Xcor was highly risky.  If people know the risks and make the bet anyway, fine, that's their choice.  But to have someone pay $100,000 for something this risky and then say "never any doubt in our minds" -- well, that's someone who didn't do even the simplest of due diligence.

It's sad because the article goes through the stories of several ticket buyers for whom that $100,000 was a lot of money.

I have to think that if Xcor or its agents were accepting $100,000 from someone and that person doesn't understand that there's a high risk that they will lose their money and never fly, then that rises to the level of fraud by the person who sold the ticket.

[Eric Hedman]

From the article, a quote from someone who paid $100,000 for a ticket in 2008:

There was never any doubt in our minds … any inkling that there was a problem within the company.

I'm sorry, but that is simply foolish.

There were always plenty of signs that buying a ticket from Xcor was highly risky.  If people know the risks and make the bet anyway, fine, that's their choice.  But to have someone pay $100,000 for something this risky and then say "never any doubt in our minds" -- well, that's someone who didn't do even the simplest of due diligence.

It's sad because the article goes through the stories of several ticket buyers for whom that $100,000 was a lot of money.

I have to think that if Xcor or its agents were accepting $100,000 from someone and that person doesn't understand that there's a high risk that they will lose their money and never fly, then that rises to the level of fraud by the person who sold the ticket.

If $100,000 was a lot of money to someone, then they simply should not have bought a ticket.  The same can be said for someone who goes to Las Vegas and gambles away their life savings, don't do it if you can't afford to lose it.  It's just like venture capital deals, if you can't afford to do it, don't do it.  If flying into space was that important, but also that financially stressful; wait until the company is actually flying passengers before buying a ticket.  You can't always protect people from their own bad decisions.  I know I've made some and I accept the results and the responsibility for them.