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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.
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.
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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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.
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 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
How's that jumbo airliner come out against a schooner?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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