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SpaceShipThree to be Orbital Spacecraft
FleaPlus writes "The president of spaceflight company Virgin Galactic has recently
stated that if the upcoming suborbital service with SpaceShipTwo
is successful, the follow-up SpaceShipThree will be an orbital craft.
Although orbital spaceflights would be much longer and could
potentially dock with orbital
space stations, they are also considerably more difficult than
suborbital spaceflights. Other private firms working on orbital
spaceflight (and potentially in the running for Robert Bigelow's $50
million America's Space Prize for orbital flight) include t/Space
and SpaceX."
Before discussion about SpaceShipThree occurs, perhaps we should wait until SpaceShipTwo is actually constructed and tested
I suspect that the engineers involved in Vigin Galactic are not complete morons, and might possibly know a little bit about high altitude flight and rocket engines. Perhaps even more than you do, surprising as that may seem.
If they set about designing an orbital craft, I'd hazard a guess and say that they wouldn't use an engine design that is known not to work. Likely as not, they'd use a different engine design that is known to work.
Or expecting a user developed OS to scale from phones to mainframes....hold on a second...
And assuming that they start on the ground. The lift they get by the "white knight" is a very big saver on fuel and engine weight since they do not have to go through the first layers of the atmosphere.
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"There's absolutely no way that White Knight / Spaceship One will scale up to an orbital vehicle."
Sigh. Where did they say it would use the same design as the current vehicles? Ah, they didn't.
"If Rutan thinks he can build a vehicle capable of travelling ten times faster than SS1 with high enough SI and all the rest of that engineering detail, great, let him try"
Putting people into space is 1960s technology: anyone with a few brain cells and enough money can do it. The only question is whether Rutan can do it cheaply enough to make space tourism viable.
1. Because I know the orbital flight will cost 10x the suborbital and I'm not quite rich enough for that.
2. Because I'll be dead before they get the orbital vehicle ready for commercial passengers.
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I have to agree that I prefer to buy products from (and work for) companies that tend to keep their PR under wraps until they actually have something to show for what they have been spending all of their R&D budgets. I have done too many projects that I call "design by press release", where my boss tells me what the product is supposed to do by sending out the press release, and they I have to try and shoehorn the project to meet those expectations (including customer expectations). It is never a good thing.
In the computer software industry, you can sometimes get away with that sort of mentality, but in aviation and especially rocketry I would say that is an absolute mistake. If I were running an aerospace company there is only one way I would dare make that sort of press release, and that would be if I already had the designs "on the drawing board" and had already proven most of the major technological hurdles (at least from a test lab viewpoint). Obviously Scaled Composites hasn't sent anything up besides SS1, and you (as well as others) are correct that SS1 by itself simply won't scale up to orbital velocities without some very substantial structural and raw materials changes. Essentially a whole new spacecraft from the ground up.
SpaceX I think has at least been doing the right thing, and they got a bunch of real rocket scientists that know their stuff. They will get to orbit (unmanned), and if their Falcon I is successful, the Falcon V has a very good chance of success. The Falcon V is also a "next generation" spacecraft, and does demonstrate what scaling in the aerospace industry is really all about. There are also no major "show stoppers" to the Falcon V other than government bureaucracy and idiots in congress calling it a "munition".
I see a number of things that will prevent a scaled up or modified version of SS1 from being successful as an orbital spacecraft. On the other hand, if you compare the DC-3 to the DC-10, there are some similar features between the two aircraft, but it also shows huge leaps of logic as the aeronautical engineers finally figuered out how to build aircraft. I'm willing to do a "wait and see" on this new design by Scaled Composites, but I am very skeptical.
I take issue with the tone of this article, not the content. I do not doubt the accuracy of the information in the article at all, but there's a prevailing sense of: "NASA Knows Best".
Just because an organisation employs thousands of the brightest people it can find doesn't make their end product the best, it simply does not follow.
Beurocracy, design constraints, budgetary constraints and pure "can't think out the box" attitudes in large organisations tend to quash innovation. Not that NASA don't innnovate, of course they do, but if those individual bright people we're allowed to bring their own ideas to fruition there would be much more innovation. Not to mention that government agencies the world over are generally stifled by administration, that just further compounds things.
Again, the article is probably right in it's facts, but claiming that "Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth" (the article title) is like saying that linux would never be more popular on desktops than windows, or that desktop pc's would never outperform mainframes, or any other flippant claims about how the current way of doing things is the best.
In every industry I've bothered to look into there's is always at least one example of a small set-up coming up with something innovative that breaks all the established rules.
SS1 may have been it, it may not, but saying that it'll never happen is just asking to be proven wrong.
The writeup you quote compares the Shuttle engines with the Scaled Composites engine, and says the former are complex enough to do the job, whilst the latter is too simple. But don't the Shuttle's two strap-on solid fuel boosters supply 75% of the thrust at launch? In other words, the Shuttle has three wildly complex engines and a whopping external fuel tank supplying 25% of the thrust, and two relatively simple solid boosters supplying the other 75%. So, in that context, the Shuttle's engines can't do the job by themselves either.
Not really related to the articl, but... I'm getting pretty annoyed by this "look at what this small company is capable of doing, while NASA wastes billions of dollars!". Hell, Rutan himself made some similar comments (was it on 60 Minutes?).
Yes, What Rutan/Scaled Composites did is great, no denying that. But comparing their budget to NASA's is ludicrous. Does Scaled Composites maintain orbiting space-stations? Does Scaled Composites build orbiting space-stations? Do they conduct scientific experiments on other planets and in space? Do they send probes to comets and Mars? Rutan and Co managed to put a spacecraft for a short amount of time in to edge of space. NASA did that in 1961.
Rutan and Co have the advantage of having the knowledge that NASA and others have accumulated over the years at great expense. They use that knowledge, and then make remarks how NASA is "wasting money". Well, without that "waste of money", SS1 would still be nothing but a glimmer in Burt Rutans eye.
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My guess is that Rutan won't be building SS3, though he may build WK3. The turbine powered first stage is a great success.
The orbiter will presubably be a pure rocket SSTO, carrying passengers only. Rutan doesn't have any demonstrated skills in this area so I don't think he will be involved.
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The business plans of these companies... to fund billion-dollar operations with the wallets of monied space geeks... is nothing more than Heinlein-addled wishful thinking. Most of the bazillionaires would much rather spend their spare time at the French Riviera, or their private Greek island or shopping in Hong Kong. There just aren't enough people willing to shell out megabucks to fund the R&D and operating costs of space tourism.
I mean, the Renaissance-era European explorers weren't wealthy sightseers who wedged themselves into tiny wooden deathtraps to sight-see. They were businessmen after profitable trade routes. Money lauched the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria, not tourism. Explorers werre invested in with the expectation that the money spent would return with a huge profit, not a nice story about the local food and colorful customs.
But! Sending techs up to deploy, retrieve or even fix sattelites in orbit... now that's real money.
That sort of work requires an orbital spacecraft with a decent payload capacity. So, this is a very good step in the right direction to making private space enterprise possible.
SoupIsGood Food
An interesting article, but it seems to make a fundamental mistake in comparing Rutan's task to building a Space Shuttle, when reaching orbit will merely require building something that can do the job of Vostok 1, which was early 60s Russian technology.
The shuttle is big, expensive and hugely complex, with a very compact engine, but that's because it's a 10-seater spaceshiip, and has a *huge* payload bay. If all you want to do is get a small crew up there, and not take a 60ft by 15 ft 28,800kg satellite along too, the task is a lot simpler.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
It's amazing how easy the SS1 folks make the achivement appear. Clearly the SS1 team had done their homework and benefited from what was learned in the X-15 program. Whereas the X-15 program built up speed and altitude flights slowly, with each pilot getting experience at every point, the SS1 made large jumps on each flight, often trading off pilots along the way. No doubt Mike Adams was smiling down on the SS1 flights.
It's great to see the private sector advancing technologies like this; what was so hard in the 1950/60's is easier with 21st century materials, engine technology and computer controls (BTW the X-15 was one of the first air/spacecraft to depend on 1st generation flight controls).
Hopefully the engineers at Scaled and Virgin know more than you (and the author of the linked page) do. Who's to say that a direct descendant of SS1 wil not (gasp!) change engine technologies?!
This as got to be one of the most stupid posts/pages that I've seen so far this year.
"When Rutan has a Falcon-1 equiv engine (covered on Slashdot a while back), *then* I'll pay attention to the press releases."
Why develop an engine from scratch when you're not an engine developer and there are dozens of proven engines you can just buy?
Why would anyone pay for a suborbital flight when they expect the next version to be orbital?
Yeah. Because it's not, you know, riding in a freaking spaceship into honest-to-God SPACE. You'll take whatever chance you get.
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I'll tell you what they ought to do...they need to go back to all of the Sci-Fi books written in the sixties and collect the ideas promoted by the authors. Most of the authors were scientists in their own right and spent quite a lot of time researching what the actual details would have to be (within the then known facts and limitations of future tech). Spaceport location, for example, was a common topic that was investigated. I'm not saying that all of the ideas in those old stories are feasable but there's lots of good starting points. Might give one a leg up on the competition :)...
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This article implies a non-sequitur conclusion - that since Spacecship 1 didn't go into orbit, it's not possible to do it better or ceahper than NASA has done with the Shuttle. Yes, it will cost much more than $26M to develop SS3, but I can't see how anyone could have built a "reusable" vehicle less efficiently. BAsed on blindly optimistic and untested assumptions (wich many knew were spurious), NASA went from drawing board to operational system in one jump, so we are stuck with 1970s technology and massive per-flight costs that devastate the NASA budget year after year.
the shuttle has been for some time (15+ years) now been known to be a massive failure. It came nowhere near its putative objective to provide cheap, routine space transport. It is neither cheap nor routine, and so has not found a market.
Let's compare apples and apples - could NASA have built and flown SpaceshipOne for $25M? No. They would still be working on it and would spend that much on paper studies easily. Is spaceship 1 and orbital craft? No. Is it possible to do much, much beter than NASA has done with the shuttle? Yes. Is machinery as complicated as the SSME at all necessary for cheap, reliable space transport? No.
Rutan has several things working for him: he has a small, talented team. He has few or no political constraints. Theirs is a low-ceremony culture (NASA thinks in terms of paper reviews). SC are masters at materials and airframe design, and they are very good and experienced at flight test - both strategy and tactics. I'm optimistic that they (or someone following after them) can take spaceflight to the next level - routine space tourism.
Space Elevators are probably necessary for the next cost plateau, but they are realistically 30 years away. Routine Virgin Galactic flights are probably 4-5 years away.
Helium balloons want to be free.
Not really. I heard Burt and Mike speek at Airventure in 2004. Burt breifly mentioned one of their prototype aircraft built for NASA. It was a very high altitude plane, and required a pressure suit for the pilot. The NASA team to support the "spacesuit" was larger than the Scaled team who designed, built, and supported the aircraft.
And while others here are bashing Scaled for simply repeating what NASA did back in the 60's I have a few words to say:
1) I don't see anyone else making real progress getting the public into space. NASA won't take you suborbital for 200K. Sure, only the rich can afford it now, but it is progress, and it is supposed to get cheaper.
2) Rutan does innovate: Carefree Reentry was never done before - in fact, the X-15 crashed because it reentered with improper attitude.
3) Scaled is making significant progress in a short time. Yes, they are on the shoulders of giants, but did you expect them to start with a moon shot or what?
4) If I ever get to space in my lifetime, even briefly, it's more likely to be in a vehicle designed by Scaled Composites than NASA. NASA can't afford it the way they operate.
5) When did NASA ever express any intention of taking ordinary people into space for fun? Oh right, never.
I still respect the research that NASA does, but someone has to put that to practical use and that's where they fall down.
SS1 performs worse than the V-2 (V2 had roughly twice the payload (counting SS1's cockpit as payload as well as its passengers, and assuming a combined mass around 500kg), and twice the delta-V), let alone Vostok. Yet, the V-2 was at the birth of modern rocketry, and was pumped out in huge numbers. Not that a determined small private company can't reach orbit (determined large private companies reach orbit all the time :) ). SpaceX is pretty darn close at this point, for example (although they don't have to worry about reentry). Scaled isn't, however, and SS1 is completely the wrong direction for reaching orbit.
There is nothing fundamentally stopping Scaled from reaching orbit; on the other hand, there's nothing fundamentally stopping Pizza Hut from reaching orbit either, and the only major thing that Scaled has over them is general avionics experience (which they excel at, mind you, even if they're a bit risk-prone with their testing regime). What technical knowledge can Scaled take away from the SS1 program to an orbital craft that they didn't already have from aircraft work? Part of their flight control software, a bit more experience on pressurized cockpits, and validation of their CFD models. Anything else? I suppose if SS3 is air-drop, some of the craft-separation knowledge might be applicable, although they'll need far better ISP if they want to air-drop to orbit (even better than they'd need from the surface, since carriers can't scale infinitely well). Perhaps if they can demonstrate some reentry technology, or partner with a serious orbital contender like SpaceX, they might be able to be taken more seriously.
As for the article: the Shuttle comparison exists primarily because most slashdotters compare SS1 to the Shuttle. Notes about how an SSME isn't needed to reach orbit (but an engine more complicated than SS1's SpaceDev hybrid is) were added specifically to address this issue.
Mind you, I take issue (as do most of the people here) with the design of a man-rated craft that caries tens of thousands of kilograms of payload, but only a little over half a dozen people. Part of this design issue was overoptimism when the program began - not realizing how high maintenance would be on a first-generation reusable, the numbers predicted for launch price per kilogram made it seem like they'd want to use the shuttle for everything, and since they only had the budget for one craft (underbudget at that...)
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Burt Rutan born in 1943. The X-15 project started in 1953. The X-15 first flew in 1959.
So, if Burt was one of the engineers on the original X-15 team, he was 10 (perhaps 9) when he joined.
He's quite a remarkable man, isn't he?
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