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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.
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.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
"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.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
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.
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.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
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
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.
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.