XCOR investor Lee Valentine points out features of the Lynx. (Credit: Douglas Messier)
by Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor
XCOR’s advanced rocket engines will allow for daily flights into suborbital and then orbital space during this decade, investor Lee Valentine said on Saturday.
Valentine gave a fascinating talk during the Mojave Air and Space Port’s monthly Plane Crazy Saturday open house in which he laid out in detail how the company plans to make human access to space routine, cheap and safe.
“XCOR has got an engine, the prototype for the Lynx engine, that has got more than 550 flight equivalents on it,” Valentine said. “We have not identified any wear mechanism, and the senior engineering team thinks that that engine is going to be good for many thousands of flights. Indeed, with all of the engines that XCOR has ever built, we have never worn one out or identified the wear mechanism.”