Has Been Under Construction Since Well Before October Accident

The Spaceship Company (TSC), which is building the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft for Virgin Galactic, made a decision to build a "serial number 2" of the spacecraft early in 2012. The company recently "introduced" the second spaceliner to the public through a YouTube video posted January 15.

In the video, Jonathan Richie, Program Manager for SpaceShipTwo, says that in the last year, the pieces of the new spacecraft have been coming together into a recognizable form.

TSC production manager Brian Holbrook says on the video that the team started small, about 10 people, producing individual parts of the spacecraft at about one per month. "Now, we've ramped up to about 40 piece-parts per day," he says. "Every day we make visual progress." The crew has increased to two daily shifts and a weekend shift "running 24/7," with two "oven runs" per day to manufacture the composite parts.

Richie says that the spacecraft now looks like something recognizable. "We have all the major pieces together," he said, "and we're at a point where we're closing some of the structure, putting the top skin on the wings, and the bottom skins ... and they're all put together and they're just waiting on the top to be closing down. It's kind of like closing a box when you're satisfied with everything."

Richie said there is still a lot of work to be done. Among the next steps are to put the new SpaceShipTwo on its own wheels and paint the spacecraft. Later, systems will be powered up and checked, the feather will be tested in the hangar.

It is, however, still too early to know when the new spacecraft will be ready to fly for the first time.

(Image from TSC video)

FMI: Video http://youtu.be/qsL6NCUWtdA