XCOR Signs Agreements with DLR, ESA-ESTEC

Credit: XCOR

Here are a couple of short XCOR press releases related to agreements signed by CEO Jay Gibson in Europe back in May. One is an agreement with the German space agency DLR relating to medical screening protocols for Lynx passengers. The second involves a multi-party letter of intent Gibson signed with ESA-ESTEC and two other organizations to jointly develop a new space mission concept.

XCOR didn’t publicize the trip at the time, and the information only recently appeared on the company’s revamped website.

COLOGNE, Germany — XCOR’s CEO Jay Gibson signed an agreement with Professor Rupert Gerzer, General Director of the prestigious DLR Institute for Aerospace Medicine in Cologne, Germany on May 20.

The agreement provides for a medical screening protocol for XCOR’s future astronauts. The protocol establishes a standard internationally valid procedure for flight participants in the XCOR Lynx space vehicle. It is based on the experience of humans in space so far as collected by the above institute as it is also responsible for the medical screening of ESA’s professional astronauts.

It is clear that XCOR’s flight participants don’t have to adhere to the very severe criteria as these ESA professionals, but nevertheless they will encounter similar conditions of weightlessness and accelerations while wearing pressure suits.

This protocol is based on a decentralized system of being checked by your own general practioner followed by a qualified medical examiner (AME) of your choice but all within the same standard. The final step will be the decision made by the DLR on admitting the candidate for the envisaged XCOR Lynx space flight.

NOORDWIJK, The Netherlands — XCOR Space Expeditions, ESA-ESTEC, The Royal Dutch Air Force, and The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the Delft University of Technology have all sign a letter of intent during the Dutch Aviation Group’s annual spring gathering. The parties are preparing a project that aims to develop, research, test, and demonstrate a new space mission concept.

XCOR’s Lynx spacecraft  is a new, revolutionary type of spacecraft that can access space in a safe, quick and cost-efficient way, multiple times a day. The Lynx takes away the traditional launch bottleneck and enables all parties involved to test new technologies such as bringing up instruments and nano-satellites into lower orbit.

The useful knowledge acquired from this project will contribute to research, aerospace development and education. This new space travel development is proven to be strikingly more cost and time efficient than traditional aerospace missions and launches.