Work On The Spacecraft Has Been Suspended

XCOR has suspended work on the Lynx spacecraft and idled many of its employees working on suborbital spaceplane.

The website parabolicarc.com reports that the company is apparently refocusing its primary efforts on development of an upper stage engine for ULA. While much of the spacecraft had been assembled, only one wing has been fabricated, and the company did not have the necessary capital to manufacture the second wing.

The company had been spending a lot of money maintaining facilities in both Mojave, CA and Midland, TX, according to the report, and had not announced a new fundraising round in quite a while.

While the spacecraft has been suspended, the company says that work will continue on the Lynx engine in conjunction with the development of the engine for ULA. But without the Lynx as a test platform, that may prove to be problematic.

XCOR eventually hoped to develop an orbital spacecraft based on the Lynx suborbital design. The company reorganized last year, which led to the departure of three of the company's founders. Jeff Greason, Dan DeLong and Aleta Jackson left XCOR in November and founded a new company focused on rapid prototyping of technology.

(Images from file)

FMI: www.xcor.com