Xcor Aerospace Files for Bankruptcy

Xcor Aerospace has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and will liquidate its assets after failing to line up new investors. According to media reports, the Midland, Texas aerospace company, which has a facility in Mojave in the Antelope Valley, listed more than 100 creditors – individuals, companies and government organizations – in its bankruptcy petition filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of California. Aerospace industry publication SpaceNews reported that Xcor listed estimated assets of between $1 million and $10 million, with estimated liabilities of between $10 million and $50 million. Chief Executive Michael Blum wrote in a Nov. 9 email to investors and shareholders obtained by SpaceNews that time had run out for the company to find new financing. “Today it is my sad duty to inform you that Xcor has failed,” he wrote. “Our effort to find a financial future for Xcor has not succeeded.” Xcor had been working on the Lynx, a two-seat spacecraft designed to take a paying passenger into sub-orbital space. But the project, announced in 2008, never made it to the prototype stage and last year the company stopped working on the spacecraft, which resulted in half the employees being laid off. Xcor had also been working on an engine for United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp., until the contract for that work ended this summer when ULA decided to no longer finance it. Xcor then laid off its remaining employees.