Suborbital Flights Coming to a Caribbean Island Near You

In their press release dated October 5^th, 2010 Space Experience Curacao (SXC) and XCOR Aerospace, Inc. announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for the wet lease of the Lynx suborbital spacecraft. What exactly is a wet lease? A wet lease is a leasing arrangement whereby one airline (the lessor) provides the aircraft, the complete crew, all maintenance, and necessary insurance (ACMI) to another airline (the lessee), which pays by hours operated. So providing they can get the necessary U.S. Governmental approvals to station the Lynx on the island of Curacao, SXC plans to begin space tourism flight from Space Port Curacao by January 2014.

In a statement as to why XCOR was chosen, SXC Co-founder and Managing Partner Ben Droste said "SXC has chosen the Lynx due to its innovative but straightforward and robust design, as well as its enormous commercial potential and competitive viability. The combination of the Lynx experience with the beautiful and highly suitable location of the Caribbean Island of Curacao is a winning experience in our book. Spaceflight participants will not only have the incredible experience of flying in XCOR's Lynx spacecraft beyond Earth's atmosphere, they will have the added benefit of taking off from and returning to one of the world's best vacation destinations."

It may be time to start saving up for a real adventurous vacation.

XCOR Aerospace is a California corporation based in Mojave, CA. The company is in the business of developing and producing safe, reliable and reusable rocket powered vehicles, propulsion systems, advanced non-flammable composites and other enabling technologies. This is the company that OSFest 3's Science Guest of Honor; Art Bozlee is a part of and offering us looks into what they have been doing at the last two conventions.

Space Experience Curacao (SXC) was founded in 2008 to lead the world changing trend in providing commercial space launch facilities and suborbital flight services from the Caribbean island of Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, and soon to be an independent governing entity as part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. SXC intends to offer suborbital space tourism flights and scientific research missions out of Space Port Curacao.