XCOR Aerospace

XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company, based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California and later also in Midland, Texas, with a presence in the Netherlands. It was formed in 1999 by Jeff Greason, Dan DeLong, Aleta Jackson and Doug Jones, who had worked on the engine team at Rotary Rocket. In 2001 it built and flew the EZ-Rocket, the first privately built rocket-powered airplane, and it later announced the Lynx suborbital rocketplane, for which it had presold 175 flights by 2012. XCOR took investment from a Chinese venture firm in 2015, then laid off staff in 2016 as it halted Lynx and focused on liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen engine technology for United Launch Alliance. It ceased operations in 2017 and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in November of that year.