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More SpaceShipTwo Details
Anonymous Coward from Manitoba writes "BBC news is reporting more details about Burt Rutan's proposed SpaceShipTwo. Apparently the new flyer will include five to eight passenger seats and have the 'same diameter crew cabin as a Gulfstream V business jet'. It will fly much higher than SpaceShip One - up to '135-140 km' that will permit an additional 90 seconds of microgravity. This will be important, since 'we want this roller coaster-type bar that you fold out of the way and you can float around'. They are also planning to 'have the option of landing in a different place from where they took off'. I can't wait until we can ride SpaceShipThree across the Atlantic in 20 minutes!"
... my husband could take a hint from spaceship two.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
All they need now is to reach orbit and offer some serious microgravity.
It seems like they are making the thing bigger, but at the same time, suddenly they can go higher... it must mean there will be more than one engine or a much longer burning engine. It seems like if they put the same engine on the same ship they have now, they could go even higher... like for instance to the space station... I still wonder if they could ever pack enough fuel to go into orbit then have enough to deorbit so they don't have to use the heat-shield method of returning.
Will they be able to hear you scream???
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
This is the kind of "kick in the butt" that NASA has been needed. Bravo to the SpaceShip team for the continuing development of their fleet.
I'm still waiting for it to grow and to become capable of reaching 500 km in altitude. If it can reach the altitude with a small payload launching capability, then a on-the-cheap space experiment becomes possible in future. I think that could change the way we think about space research.
Until they get somewhere in the neighboorhood of SpaceShipTwentyEight, its still gonna be too expensive for me!
Electrons are free; it is moving them that becomes expensive.
I think they need to find a better way of launching those things into space. Because the amount of fuel they require now is unbelievable and I don't believe the oil price will drop within 10 years.
"This experience is going to have very few restrictions on what you can do because these payloads are doing it for fun and every person has a different idea of what fun is.
Floating in space (Ansari X-Prize)
The X-prize vision is about to be realised
"Does that mean that some guy and his girl might want to take the whole ship? OK!"
Is that a euphemism for zero gravity sex? It'll be one of the few times when being quick is actually good! Also, with presumably multi-year waiting lists, it'll take performance anxiety to new high.
I think that this is going to be the biggest push for sub orbital flights.
Can you imagine SS3 taking people from Mojave to Japan in 2-3 hours? Or what about the US govt/DoD using it to deliver specalized troops anywhere in the world withing 4-5 hours. Hostage situation in Africa? SeAL's on the ground from the US to the target in 3 hours. Earthquake in Iran? Specalized rescue teams on site in hours and not days. It makes sense to send people around the globe just like you send ICBM's.
Imagine a first class airline service for people to needed to get from NY to London quickly (or just didnt want to sit on a long airline flight.) Sure, the flight would cost more, but its the same economics as first class compared to coach. If people are willing to pay more for faster speeds then eventually someone will find a way to make it financially viable.
My sig can beat up your sig.
What alternatives exist to combusting various gasses and solid fuels? Do explosives like TNT pack more potential energy if it could just be exploited usefully? Some sort of series of shaped, small, explosions every tenth or every second? With some sort of backplate to protect the ship?
So they are gonna pay how many tens of thousands of $$$ for exactly how many SECONDS of something close to weightlessness???
A half hour flight I could see...
This??? A classic example of early adopters getting royally screwed?
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Eh, I wouldn't exactly call it homebuilt.
Can you imagine how much more that baby behind you is going to cry when it starts floating around?
"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes." -Mahatma Gandhi
I can't wait until we can ride SpaceShipThree across the Atlantic in 20 minutes!
...and imagine still wasting one hour travelling to the air/spaceport, three ours in check-in and security lanes, half an hour on the other end to get your luggage back, and yet one hour travelling off the port.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
I think it is absolutely amazing that ordinary people will be able to experience space and zero gravity. But I also think that we need to look into the environmental aspects of this development.
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If we will come to see daily flights of maybe hundreds of planes it might have a significant impact on the ozone layer and thus our health. It is therefore important to get an estimate of the impact on the ozone layer so that cleaner fuels and other measures can be taken to prevent this.
Here is a bit of background info on the ozone layer and the impact of the space shuttle and high flying aircraft and rockets on it:
http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/summ
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/intro/
Not including the two to two and a half hours it takes for the mother ship to climb to release altitude, and the flight itself takes more along the lines of a half hour to descend. Still faster than anything short of the concorde, but you'll still have to wait eight hours for your luggage - SS2 is designed for you and enough oxygen to keep you pink on the ride.
Yes it did. Initially it didn't but then someone had the bright idea of asking the regulat passengers how much they thought they were paying (these being the CEOs etc, not the pencil-pushers who booked the flights....) and they all mentioned amounts 2-3 times what they/their companies were being charged. So BA raised the cost of the flights by 2-3 times. They also started running gift flights which would go out over the Atlantic, go supersonic, pop champagne and then head home. This combination made the Concorde profitable.
Now it's probable that had BA etc had to shoulder the full cost of designing and building the thing, they'd never have made anything.....
In the late eighties there was a recession in the UK and this reduced the number of regular passengers and Concorde started becoming less viable. The combination of 9-11, the French Concorde explosion and general world angst finally killed it.
But in the Eighties it made BA and Air France lots of cash.
Troc.
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
TNT has an energy density of around 4.6 MJ/kg, a 1:8 H2/O2 mixture achieves 13 MJ/kg. Hydrogen has little density however (even the liquid), so volume is a major problem there.
Much higher energy densities require more exotic techniques, with Uranium (235) fission at 90 TJ/kg. This is 6 magnitues beyond regular fuels.
Antimatter/matter annihilation is the most energy dense fuel possible so far, and would be 1000 times denser in energy compared to U235.
Will it have bad food, grouchy flight attendants and lose your luggage?
They had to delay the launch to wait for needed parts. I havn't heard anything about them since, but I doubt they would drop out without saying anything.
Of course, there is always the chance that I missed it.
the point is that a single jumbo actually WOULD transfer more people over the atlantic in a weeks time perioid than a cruiseliner ever would be able to.
But it will use disproportionately more fuel to do so.
I think you're wrong.
The Queen Mary 2, which is a modern and fuel-efficient cruise ship, moves 50 feet per gallon, which is about 0.01 miles per gallon. At 2,712 persons (which includes 921 crew, by the way), that's 25.8 person-miles per gallon. Source data.
A Boeing 747-400, which is a modern and fuel-efficient jumbo jet, moves 666 feet per gallon, which is about 0.13 miles per gallon. At 524 persons (not including crew), that's 66.3 person-miles per gallon. Source data.
That makes the jumbo-jet nearly three times more fuel-efficient than the cruise ship. I realize that they don't use the same types of fuel so a real efficiency comparison might require some additional correction factors, but I bet the jumbo jet still comes out way ahead. Especially if you didn't give the cruise ship the unfair advantage of counting the crew in the calculations.
If so, you may want to consider to book a parabolic flight with ZERO-G.
John Carmack has taken the ride and seems to have liked it a lot.
If you want to experience freefall its going to be much cheaper to take a ride on the "Vomit Comet" or just spend fifty bucks at an indoor skydiving facility for a go in the vertical wind tunnel. But I guess the views and bragging rights wouldn't be anywhere near as good. experience is similar
Maybe they should rename them to 'Thunderbirds' or something.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
wasting one hour travelling to the air/spaceport, three [h]ours in check-in and security lanes, half an hour on the other end to get your luggage back, and yet one hour travelling off the port
The ground travel is an unavoidable item of overhead (unless you live at the [space,air]port). The security lines for international flights (including customs) are also unavoidable. Travel light and you won't have to worry about the baggage claim; check-in is usually faster when you are not checking luggage.
Anyway, I think you are missing the bigger picture: if I could fly from Europe to the US in twenty minutes - instead of 7+ hours - I would happily do so riding in the overhead bin. Drawbacks include getting delayed on the runway and the difficulty in receiving beverage service in the bin, but overall the time savings would be worthwhile. YMMV.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
How's that jumbo airliner come out against a schooner?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This book -- The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin -- has a great section on Concorde. It explains the whole thing.
It works better
The Airbus A380, on the other hand, is of a more recent design, and its target mark is 81 person-miles per gallon.
"Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-my-own-Grandpa." - Dr Hubert Farnsworth
A ship can haul more tonnage per pound of fuel than an airliner. That is why things like grain, cars, and clothes tend to go by ship. The problem is when that tonnage is people you have to work time into that equation. When it takes days to travel you then need to provide food, entertainment, space to move, and medical services. All that takes fuel to move as well. For commercial grade travel a jumbo jet wins. Now if you got back to WWII the original Queen Mary once carried 10,000 troops. If the QM2 could do the same it would then beat the jumbo jet. However very few people would ever want to travel that way.
All in all a modern Airliner and yes while the 747 first flew over 30 years ago the -400 has many improvements and very state of the art engines are truly marvels of mass transit. Very fuel efficient, clean, and safe.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I saw this over on X Prize Space Race News, and figured it might be of interest:
STUDENTS AND YOUNG PROFESSIONALS WANTED FOR THE CHANCE OF A LIFETIME
The X PRIZE Foundation is issuing out a call to arms for those interested in getting their hands dirty to further the cause of private spaceflight. In a tribute to the majesty of SpaceShipOne, the X PRIZE Foundation will be creating several full-size mockups of the historic private spacecraft to be used as early as this summer for outreach and education.
We are offering 10 students and young professionals the chance of a lifetime to come to the World's First Inland Spaceport at Mojave, California, to build multiple full-scale mockups of the SpaceShipOne.
This amazing opportunity is only open mainly for students and young professionals as an educational project. We are also looking for a project lead with experience in composites and/or fiberglass lay-up to oversee the project to completion.
Working at Scaled Composites' facilities, this team will dive in and get their hands dirty as they learn the spaceship building business.
Using the original tooling and methods employed in fabricating the actual spaceship, this will be an opportunity unlike any other. The project will take off in mid-January 2005 and continue throughout the spring semester. This highly competitive program could count for academic credit and will provide students and young professionals with the outstanding experience of working with composites, fiberglass lay-up and other processes associated with the building of a spaceship.
"This is an extraordinary educational opportunity to actually build a copy of SpaceShipOne using Burt Rutan's original tooling," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, CEO and Chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation. "The folks who get chosen for this project will work within the Scaled Composites facility and have the opportunity of a lifetime. In fact, I hope to get out to Mojave to participate when I can as well."
Project timeline: Mid January - Mid May
Location: Mojave, CA
Compensation: N/A
Other: Physical work required - must be able to lift more than 40lbs
Security: Background check will be performed
Transportation: You must provide your own transportation
Individuals who wish to be a part of this project should send a resume and cover letter describing why you would like to participate to:
Brooke Owens, Director of Team Relations & Special Projects at brooke@xprize.org. Deadline for application is January 10, 2005, however, we will fill available slots on a rolling basis so please apply as soon as possible. Interested parties should be advised that this opportunity is unpaid, but rich in opportunity.
This month's issue of Wired has a cover article on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which will be using SpaceShipTwo to run a commercial spaceflight service.
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Some interesting quotes:
But look at the upside. The total price tag [of Virgin Galactic] is half the cost of a single Airbus A340-600 - and Virgin Atlantic ordered 26 of those last summer. In return, Branson gets bragging rights to one of the cooler breakthroughs of the early 21st century, with rocket-powered marketing opportunities that could fuel excitement - and sales - in his entire 200-company holding group.
SpaceShipOne's "shuttlecock" design adds an extra measure of safety. When the craft reaches its airless apogee, it hinges (feathers, in pilotspeak) into a broad V shape that automatically brakes the descent. "It lets you take an averagely competent pilot - like me - and throw anything you can think of at him, and still have everyone aboard get away safely," Tai explains. "The space shuttle does that with all sorts of fantastically complex systems. Burt's brilliance is that his ship uses smart design and the laws of physics. Which are, in fact, the only ways you can be truly drop-dead safe."
Why stop there? "I hope we'll get to the moon in my lifetime. The first baby born there - what country will it be a citizen of? Maybe we can put a Virgin bank in space, or maybe a Virgin tax haven. We could pay for all our people to go up there just by depositing their money." Now, that's adventure capitalism!
The simple fact is that going into space gives Branson a chance to do what a lot of massively successful guys wish they could do: grab the wheel of history and tug. Opening the final frontier to private citizens will ensure Branson's place in the human saga. And if that means fleets of Virgin spaceships soaring through the inky void, serving sip-packs of Virgin Cola on the way to the latest Virgin Clubhouse, so be it. "Space is virgin territory," Branson says, trying out a prospective marketing line and shooting another grin. "Is that 21st-century enough for you?"