XCOR AND SPACE ADVENTURES ANNOUNCE
NEW SUB-ORBITAL SPACECRAFT

Mojave, CA and Arlington, VA , July 22, 2002 – XCOR Aerospace and Space Adventures, Ltd., announced today a marketing agreement that enables Space Adventures to offer flights to 62 miles (100 km) altitude aboard XCOR’s Xerus (pronunciation: zEr’us) sub-orbital vehicle, designed specifically for space tourist flights.

“Our experience building and flying the EZ-Rocket airplane has shown that we can fly rocket-powered vehicles multiple times per day with a small ground crew,” said XCOR CEO Jeff Greason. “By developing rocket engines that have essentially gas-and-go operation, we can operate at a fraction of the cost of competitive vehicles.”

The Xerus vehicle project has begun preliminary design including development of XCOR’s next-generation rocket engine and propulsion system using non-toxic propellants. The Xerus will be capable of flying one pilot and one Space Adventures paying passenger on a one-hour sub-orbital space flight. At the peak of its parabolic trajectory, passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness and see the Earth from space.

“XCOR’s recent successes with the EZ-Rocket has demonstrated their determination to push the envelope,” said Space Adventures President and CEO Eric Anderson. “We look forward to offering our clients the opportunity to fly aboard the Xerus.” …

http://www.xcor.com/spaceadv-press-content.html

In any event, what’s wrong with subcontracting? Boeing does it all the time. Does it make them just a “shell company”?

… … Before there was XCOR, there was Rotary Rocket Company, which hired Jeff Greason and Dan DeLong to do propulsion. Jeff married his wife Carrine before moving to the Mojave Desert to join Rotary Rocket. The Space Review caught up with her in Los Angeles at Dennis Tito’s house and asked her some questions there and via email.

While the likelihood of Rotary’s success was hit-or-miss, it offered an on-the-job aerospace education. [That was certainly nicer option than Jeff going] back to college, paying tuition instead of drawing a salary. The choice to join Rotary turned out to be a winner, even though the company folded two years after Jeff joined. He and his pink-slipped development team dusted themselves off and set up shop as XCOR Aerospace.
…

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/365/1

You would lose.

All of Rotary’s propulsion work was engineered, developed and tested in house. This is, in fact, the origin of XCOR.

Scaled Composites built the Rotary Rocket fuselage. That made the engineering easier for Rotary Rocket.

The guys at SC probably laughed their asses off, getting paid to build such a caroonishly goofy obvious loser.

I will bet that RR also subcontracted out most of its other engineering and manufacturing work, and that RR was in fact a false store front and shell company posing as a aerospace start-up firm. Oh yeah, enigneering was the easy part at Rotary Rocket.

And that’s my last on that….. sorry Jeff!