XCOR Assets Sold To Build A Plane

Build A Plane, the nonprofit that offers kids a chance to restore an airplane using donated aircraft, now is expanding into rocketry, and with help from a major unnamed donor, recently bought up the assets of XCOR, the bankrupt company that had been working to build the Lynx spaceplane, for $1.1 million. "Our donor heard about this XCOR sale," Build A Plane President Lyn Freeman told AVweb this week. "We were the top bidder, and now we own all these assets—rocket motors, test equipment, machining equipment, two rocket-powered airplanes, the Lynx prototype and lots more—at their two sites in California and Texas." Freeman is now sorting through all the materials to see what will best support Build A Plane's two newest projects — Build A Rocket, and a plan to build a school to train students for aerospace careers.

The Build A Rocket program already is well underway, Freeman said. "We've developed 50 rocket kits, and we are going to give them away to 50 schools this fall," Freeman said. Teams will compete to qualify for the free kits, which can be assembled into 18-foot-high rockets capable of reaching 30,000 feet. "It takes a team of high school or college kids just a couple of days to assemble these … and they are pretty sophisticated," he said. "We are also working with several colleges to build the first student-built rocket to reach space, 60 miles high, next year sometime." Freeman said Build A Plane also is working on a project with Sage-Cheshire Aerospace to open a high school in southern California that will provide technology-focused, hands-on aerospace education.