Still a long way to catch up with SS1
SpaceShipOne hit 112,014m (367,500ft) or over 5x higher, so keep at it, guys!
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reusable space vehicle completed its third supersonic test flight on Friday, successfully reaching its highest altitude yet. The craft was first lifted to a height of about 46,000 feet (14,021m) by Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft. Once aloft, its rocket motor was fired for 20 …
The UK has had a long history of glorious firsts with no following commercial success.
Kudos and congratulations to the SS1 team but the SS1 is now out of the race and Branson seems to be well on the way to commercial success. Kudos and congratulations to him (and his team) also.
Shame it's actually a US company that developed this, but with a British companies money...
Usually its the other way around, US money investing in British technologies, or the US partnering with promise of technology sharing and then shafting the British...
It might be nice to be able to pop up to space and fall back again, but I fail to see the long term advantages of this craft. Without attaining orbital velocities it will never be more than a really expensive roller-coaster ride.
It seems unlikely that the propulsion system being used could reach orbital velocities, and I am fairly sure the design would not survive re-entry at those speeds either.
There is no long-term advantage to this craft. The well known and stated goal is to be a really expensive roller-coaster ride. People will pay $250,000 per trip on the roller-coaster. They will experience weightlessness at 100km altitude for 1 hour and then come back to earth. This project has no more point than that.
There *could* be some as-yet unknown useful application of this technology, but for now, that's it, they've developed a roller-coaster costing 100's of millions and then they want to recoup that. They have a sister project called Launcher One but that's almost completely unrelated to this, and is intended to launch satellites into orbit.
They've sold about 750 tickets at 1/4 million each and will probably meet their target of 1000 tickets, so that's a guaranteed return of 250 million on this project (that is, if some of the trips don't blow up and people pull out). New Mexico authorities are investing $200 million in building a "space-port" with a 3km runway, in the hope that the world will flock to New Mexico and it will become the space travel center of the world.
Well no. The Shuttle could do Florida to Spain in 45 minutes because it was pushing for orbital velocity and would have been potentially useful for incredibly-rapid-response transfers if money was no object. SS2 has just hit Mach 1.4, which is far short of where the top end of British/European commercial passenger aircraft were in the 1960s (Concorde, cruising speed of mach 2.02 on jet engines @60,000 feet) and way behind the SR-71 which did mach 3.5 at 85000 feet, again on jets.
So Branson is further from space and slower than the early cold war era air force and slower- but slightly closer to space- than those noted space pioneers British Airways.
Also slower than the English Electric Lightning, still an amazing aircraft, and one of the few supercruise aircraft ever designed...
I say lets get Skylon built here in the UK, and then the UK can strut its stuff internationally a bit more....
completely agree, the UK government won't start up its own launch capability, well at least not at the government level, although I can see some private companies buying and running Skylons.
But still having developed the first successful SSTO HTOL craft in the UK would be a pretty good endorsement of the UK as a place for investment!
I just hope the ESA go ahead with Skylon themselves, it makes perfect sense to keep Big Dumb Rockets, for interplanetary robotic launches and use Skylon for LEO and precious fleshy cargo (i.e. Humans).
"More likely the UK will license the IP, rather than try to build its own space program from scratch, I think. Unless, of course, there's a joint play with Australia (who have the land and the money)."
Reaction Engines Ltd is a private company.
"The UK" by which I think you mean the British Government neither own the IP nor provide more than 25% of the funding.
They will therefor do nothing with the IP as they do not own it.
REL plans to sell Skylons. If you want one it's yours if you have a)About one billlllion dollars to spend and b)Not on the UN "bad boys" list.
"Well, no". You are 100% wrong and should maybe do some research. You are just reading this article and have no idea about the history here. SS1 got to 100km and this is what they intend to do with SS2. Mach 1.4 is the test that this article is on, but it is just one test for this project. The goal (as already achieved by SS1) is a clearly mapped out schedule for them, but they are testing as they go. The SS2 is intended to go to 100km and take passengers. They might not keep people up there for 1 hour, probably will be more like a few minutes, but basically everything you said "Well, no" to, you are wrong on. No, Branson is not further from space and slower than early cold war era (i.e. see SS1) and this is one test in a well planned out engineering project. Pretty shocked that you'd post something when you are so clueless on this. Please learn to use the internet for finding out information; are you American by any chance?
Yeah, it's just a big buzz-trip. If it makes a profit, it will provide the basis for further expansion of the technology.
There are plans for Virgin to go orbital, they have an adaptation called Launcher One for small orbital payloads which essentially launches a rocket from the top of their White Knight Two spaceplane.
It's certainly an exciting time to be a space nerd, like me!
Surely the most obvious, if it proves to be a success commercially, is to look at the next version that is capable of sub-orbital long distance. Even if it is only US coast-to-coast, or Europe to New York, I can envisage a sizeable market for such a product. Say such a journey was priced at $10k, how many would use it?
In many ways this is a proof of concept for the idea of sub-orbital flight, but done via a private company not a Government organisation. Just as HS2 will mean senior decision makers could get from Birmingham to London much more easily (or more accurately the other way as business needs to move away from the SE) so much swifter connections for the magic few across the US or to Europe may well have long term effects on the growth of the economy.
Nobody knows the future, but life was transformed when someone started to build railways just less than 200 years ago. Look what that did.
Branson is a businessman, I suspect he has no long term goals just medium term business plans.
I wish him (and his team) great success in this particular business venture, not for any scientific progress reasons but just for the aesthetic pleasure of watching a fun idea being expertly and profitably executed.
Ostensibly it's a rollercoaster.
It's also mostly a technology demonstrator - Scaled and Virgin have always been clear that they have an SS1 / SS2 / SS3 plan in mind, with each model proving stuff for the next step up. Sky-launched re-entering rocket rollercoaster is preamble for something with beefier engines and actual LEO capacity.
I think you missed the point of the feathered tail design. That is the whole reason for this craft. By feathering the tail it avoids high re-entry speeds and the associated heat. I think Branson has messed up Rutan's idea though, by making it into a joyride machine for his rich and famous buddies. Burt Rutan is a genius and he was hoping for applications that were more serious.
Still as they say, money talks bullshit walks.
I'm amazed this has taken so long. I drove to Mojave Spaceport for the launch of the X2 flight, october 2004. nearly 10 years ago. at the time it seemed like they were just a couple years from scaling it up.
btw, the X2 flight reached nearly 112000km (69000 miles). afaik that was the last and highest flight of SpaceShipOne.
"btw, the X2 flight reached nearly 112000km (69000 miles)."
That figure is VERY wrong - by 1000 fold. presumably from translating m -> km & then converting to miles.
From Wikipedia :
"The spacecraft coasted to apogee at an altitude of 367,442 feet (111.996 km), well in excess of the X PRIZE target altitude. It also broke the record altitude of 354,200 feet (107.96 km) for a rocket plane, set by the X-15 in 1963.
After apogee, SpaceShipOne reentered the atmosphere in its feathered configuration, and then changed to gliding configuration at 07:57. SpaceShipOne then glided back to the spaceport, deployed landing gear at 4,200 feet (1.28 km), and landed safely at 08:13. White Knight then landed at 08:19."
USCF Standard (taking a little license in the humor department, mind you....)
The US ChAir Force mission includes orbital vehicle destruction and monitoring domination, among myriad other things Virgin Galactic is not even remotely interested in sniffing. Well, unless VG aircraft will carry hostile weapons or other payloads in secret for the USCF.
Anyway, I imagine the stocks/investment value of Depends will increase 10-fold when this aircraft takes on its first paying customers unless Virgin has passenger preflight training flights or complimentary thrill rides at airports basing the Virgin Galactic Spaceship take-off sites.
There must be some research that can be done in 5 minutes of zero g. The alternatives I can think of are 30 second bursts on the vomit comet, or full blown orbital flight. One may be too short, while the other may be too expensive. I expect this would hit the sweet spot for something, I just can't think what.
Just remembered drop towers, but they give really short times at zero g, comparatively cheap though.
"There must be some research that can be done in 5 minutes of zero g. "
Actually quite a lot of research is done on sub orbital vehicles.
They are called "sounding" rockets. They can 5-20 minutes of near zero g but with a takeoff pulling possibly 18gs.
Quite a lot of researchers would pay for SS2 flights if they could have one of the crew twiddle some of the knobs as well.
... the old-fashioned aerodynamics coming back into style.
Back around WW2, model aeroplane builders were just about able to make their rubber powered planes and gliders perform long, high flights - flights high enough to get them caught by thermals. And if that happened, the plane would be carried away, high in the air, like a kite, and probably never seen again.
To address this problem, modelers developed ways of collapsing the lift and getting the model to fall slowly to the ground in a stable configuration after a set period of time. There were several techniques - one common one was to arrange for the tailplane to tilt up 60deg or so, putting the aircraft into a deep stall. Here is an illustration from a modeling magazine in 1948:
You can see that the system is called a 'De-Thermaliser', and is precisely the same as the Virgin Design.
Sure you won't achieve orbit, but it is probably the closest thing to being in space for normal(by normal i mean rich) people in their lifetime.
I would love to go on this flight personally, no way am I paying 250k for it though. I could just about manage it if I sold my house, then I wouldnt have anywhere to live.
At the time they announced all this, they did mumble under their noses something about only the initial flights costing so much, with the ticket price hopefully getting significantly reduced as they pick up speed. Sadly, none of that makes any difference to me - I fly exclusively low-costs, that should clue you in...
If it this was intended to be unmanned it would already be through it's testing and in service by now although a bit useless. But it has to be man-rated and that means lots and lots and lots of testing under supervision of Govt. inspectors. Not just small increments but many repeatable and demonstrabley "safe" tests.
Unlike with SpaceX though, the Virgin plan doesn't have anything productive they can do as part of the testing since sending a tourist trip up without tourists doesn't really work since they can't even send a wheel'o'cheese to the ISS.
Sadly, i am only allowed one upvote, else your post would be the highest upvote grossing comment ever.
Only yesterday, i wanted to confirm a flight upgrade as THEY hadn't taken the £ i had paid for said upgrade some 72hours earlier so wanted to confirm. I set out to walk to my local shops, say half a mile at a sedentry pace. I dialled as i left the house, went to the shop, queued, set of back home, got 1/3rd of the way, had the music change to a "ring ring" then still had time to walk back home, go upstairs, vent my spleen at 'er indoors about how bloody long i've been waiting etc to finally get a human. Fucking farce of a CS dept.....
perhaps it's too early on Monday morning, but there is nothing 'natural' about a spaceship in orbit. It's man-made, and we chucked it up there. If left to natural things, it would fall to earth and burn up.
Even the moon's orbit is not stable, given a very long time to spin, and it's much more natural than a space craft