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20k Down Can Get You Up Into Space
TheOzz writes "Virgin Galactic announced this week that space tourism will be a reality by 2008. The company is already taking $20,000 deposits for the estimated $200,000 seats on their new spaceships. You can reserve your seat today at the Virgin Galactic web site. The Virgin Group's Branson teamed up with SpaceShipOne builder Burt Rutan to form The Spaceship Company that will build these new commercial spaceships. They are building 9-person spaceships that will carry 7 paying passengers and two crew members, according to space.com. They report that test flights should start in 2007."
I just got back from the Experimental Aircraft Association convention and flyin at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, Richard Branson, Mike Melville, Brian Bennie and a bunch of Scaled Composite and Virgin people were there. Mike Melville flew the White Knight to the show, carrying Mr and Mrs Rutan in SpaceShip One.
I heard a press conference and no less than six 90 minute talks about Rutan's space program from SpaceShip One and SpaceShip Two principles.
Here are some more or less random factoids that were discussed in detail at Oshkosh:
1) The White Knight with attached SpaceShip One were remarkably graceful in flight, far more so than the videos I had seen would have suggested.
2) Allen said that the cost of the entire SpaceShip One program were about the same as a ride to the ISS on Soyuz, i.e. on the order of $20 million dollars.
3) Rutan and his people reveled a number of problems that I had not seen in the press prior to this week. For example, on one of the early White Knight flights one of the nose wheels struck a rough spot in the runway during the take off roll. This nose wheel shimmied to the point were the nose wheel detached from the airframe. White Knight had to make a three wheel one stump landing.
4) The first flight into space exceeded 100km of altitude by only a little more than 100 meters. There was great concern that the motor didn't have sufficient impulse to attain the X-Prize goal of 100km altitude when carrying one human pilot and two passengers or 400 pounds of ballast. They went so far as to buy solid rocket booster motors from Thiokol. In the end they were able to improve the performance of the basic engine without needing these extra boosters. Rutan was coy about exactly how this was done, but the two official X Prize flights did exceed 100Km by comfortable margins. He did mention that engineers from both the winning motor company, SpaceDev of California, and the losing company, EAC of Florida, assisted in improving the motor. They have one more complete motor that was not used.
5) The maximum temperature during reentry was on the order of 200F. The craft experienced greater heating on ascent rather than descent. This heat was control by 14 pounds of Scaled proprietary thermal protection material on the leading edges of the wing.
6) Both pilots were effusive in their praise of the "care free" feathered reentry system. They both said that flying the ascent was very demanding, but that during re-entry they had nothing to do except enjoy the ride.
7) SpaceShip Two will be "one hundred times safer than any previous manned space system" according to Rutan. His goal is to attain a safety level equivalent to the airliners of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
8) Scaled Composites will design SpaceShip Two. The SpaceShip Company will manufacture the craft, Scaled will test and certify the craft. Spacelines such as Virgin Galactic will purchase and operate SpaceShip Two and its carrier aircraft.
10) Each SpaceShip Two and carrier will be individually flight tested and certified. This is an approved alternate certification method to that used for mass produced aircraft. By testing each craft individually, they do not have to provide conformity data back to raw materials as is done with airliners.
11) Rutan anticipates 50 to 100 test flights prior to certification and paid passenger travel. Rutan will fly on some of these flights. In fact, he expects that during the test phase, prior to paid passenger flights, more people will fly into space on SpaceShip Two than have ever flown in space by all other craft.
11) SpaceShip One flew straight up, and recovered straight down. SpaceShip Two will fly 200 to 300 miles down range. Rutan anticipates that Virgin will launch SpaceShip Two over the Pacific Ocean and recovering it at Mohave. This will provide several minutes of atmospheric flight at Mach 2-3 during ascent and descent, providing a Concorde like experience.
12) Li