From: Vincent Cate (vince@offshore.ai)
Subject: Burt Rutan - White Knight 
View: Complete Thread (15 articles)  
Original Format 
Newsgroups: sci.space.tech
Date: 2003-03-10 14:10:29 PST 
 

Popular Mechanics, April 2003, page 35 has:

"Rutan Readies Space Plane

"This out-of-this-world aircraft, photographed at Mojave Airport in
California, really may be headed off the planet.  It is registered to
Burt Rutan whose company, Scaled Composites, is based at the airport. 
Scaled won't say why it built the unusual-looking twin jet, dubbed
White Knight.  However, sources tell Popular Mechanics it is the
flying launch platform for a civilian space plane.  Rutan is among the
designers in the X-Prize competition to build the world's first
"tourist class" space plane."

-------

It has good ground clearance in the middle for the size, so it might
be able to hold a rocket.  Also, it looks really skinny like there is
not much room for fuel.  If all you want to do is climb to a high
altitude and launch a rocket you might only need like 20 minutes of
fuel.  On xprize.org it looks like Rutan was/is using his Proteus, but
the "sources" might be right.

Anyone know anything more about this?  Like how big is it? My Google
search did not turn up anything.

   -- Vince