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2008, The Year of the Spaceship
DynaSoar writes "2008 Could be a the year of the Spaceship.
Virgin Galactic intends to unveil White Knight 2 as well as Spaceship 2 during the next year, at this point planning for January. Burt Rutan, always reticent to comments on progress of any project, says nothing to support or contradict Virgin Galactic's announcement. However, the report states that Spaceship 2 is 50% complete and White Knight 2 is 60% complete. In addition, Virgin Galactic is considering using White Knight 2, or possible its successor White Knight 3, to put small satellites in orbit for a cost of US$3 million, less than half the current front runner in (projected) low cost orbital launches; SpaceX's Falcon at US$6.7 million. Tourism aside, this could be an extremely lucrative spin off of Virgin Galactic's original plans. If this turns out to be a profitable endeavor, the cost of tourism flights could drop significantly."
Is this the new 2.0 edition of the Chinese Calendar. Let me know when it's the year of the iPod.
the cost of tourism flights could drop significantly
Or not.
There is till time for me to go from pauper to baller so I can fly in to space!
:-/
To bad I'm always smoking weed and playing video games
run linux, so 2008 is the year of the spaceship AND the year of linux on the desktop?
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Last I heard, White Knight 2 was the *first stage* of a *sub*-orbital launch. How is it meant to get anything into orbit? Starting a sub-orbital craft from high altitude (as WK2 allows SS2 to do) makes sense, but I can't see it being much help with an orbital launch.
This whole space-tourism thing is at a precarious stage. Should there be just one freak accident, their revenue prospects would turn off like a Fossett.
Sorry, bad pun. In the 1970s, we seemed to be ready to do daring things even after lives are lost. Today, the public is far more risk averse. One more shuttle disaster and we'll be on the ground for twenty years. And I doubt a private company would fare much better than NASA in this regard.
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Just three ridiculous million dollars? With the contents of my wallet right now I could send 0.00002077886 satellites!
Interstellar domination is finally at reach.
I'm fairly sure Spaceship 1 was only able to get to sub-orbital altitudes. Assuming Spaceship 2 will have the same capabilities, surely that's a bit of a problem for their plans to launch satelites?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
what will this this spaceship be called...how about spaceship, no! spaceship two, hell yeah! Meeting adjourned.
They said lets call this hotel something tree, so they had a meeting, it was quite short. how about tree, no! double tree, hell yeah! Meeting adjourned. I had my heart set on quadruple tree. Well we were almost there.
Mitch Hedberg was a funny guy.
While I'm certainly cheering on Virgin Galactic, and wish them well in this stage of their business model, I have to say that I won't really be personally tempted until an orbital tourist flight is available.
Of course, unless they establish orbital flights sooner and the price for same comes down farther and faster than I think it will, it's probably a moot point for me.
So the flights will drop to 50K dollars instead of 100K ? Where do I sign up?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I want my flying car before my personal space ship.
Fortunately not everybody in the world are wussies, only the US media seems to be overly concerned with safety. As for the real men, there are still lots of Evil Knievels out there.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Early adopters: This is a good example of when you don't want to be an early adopter. The first version of Windows XP caused a lot of grief for users. The first versions of cheap spacecraft are likely to cause even more serious grief.
When you recognize serious danger, skip the usual enthusiasm.
We'll have to get an intern to test it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Natural resources are running out at a frightening pace, and instead of putting resources into researching alternative energy and sustainable growth, we put out huge amounts of greenhouse gases to send the richest 0,0001% on short tourist trips into space.
We are doomed, and I'm beginning to think we deserve it.
While Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites are certainly the focus of this particular article and thread, they are hardly the only commercial spacecraft corporation that is making some significant progress and will be making headlines in 2008 (assuming that everything is still working the way it should).
SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, the company started by Paypal founder Elon Musk, is scheduled to perform their final test flight for the Falcon 1 in January, 2008. If all goes well, they may even get a flight of their larger Falcon 9 spacecraft before the end of the year. This is particularly significant for manned spaceflight, as their Dragon spacecraft is reliant upon the successful launches of these vehicles. Unlike the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, the Dragon spacecraft is going to have the capabilities of sending as many as six passengers to the ISS.... or anywhere else in Low-earth orbit. In many ways, I think this is going to be far more significant than what Branson is doing with Virgin Galactic.
In addition, the Lunar Landing Challenge will likely be "won" this time next year with the nearly dozen rocket teams competing for the purse. My heart broke when Armadillo Aerospace crashed and burned this year and failed to win the price objectives, but they certainly learned from their experience and will roll those designs into the next generation of their spacecraft. This particular challenge is certainly breeding many future commercial spaceflight companies that are flying real hardware, and not just some imaginative designs on paper that will never see the light of day.
I also don't know what Blue Origin is doing, but that is certainly a company to keep a close ear to the ground and at least try to watch for developments over this next year. Unlike several of the spacecraft manufacturers, they are avoiding the appearance of vaporware by simply not really announcing anything other than the fact that they own one heck of a lot of real estate in Texas and that they have had several successful test flights of their rocketry hardware.... and a long term goal of also doing commercial passenger space travel. They also have some investors with some deep pockets that can help get them there without having to "go public".
I'm just scratching the surface here as well, but there are some amazing groups of individuals who have been devoting resources to commercial spaceflight, and 2008 really could be "the year of the spacecraft", at least in terms of headlines generated by the mainstream press. Virgin Galactic certainly isn't going to be the only one in the headlines here, although they may be the first to send paying passengers into space on something other than a Soyuz capsule.
They would have gone with the Black Night, but he lost his limbs in a fight with King Arthur and thus couldn't handle the spacecraft. It's a shame, really.
Have a look what Armadillo Aerospace has quoted for their flight costs for Pixel & other VTVL vehicles.
Rutan's designs cost that much because he chose stage-and a half, HTHL approach, with hybrid motors. There is relatively high lower bar on flight costs for such thing, because you have to replace the motor for each flight, and thats expensive.
It made sense for winning the X-Prize, because Rutan is an expert of flying craft design, which involves wings etc. so thats what was fastest, lowest-risk development path. Whether it makes sense for really low-cost spaceflight is another matter.
VTVL vehicles, like the ones that Armadillo, Masten Space Systems, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and a few others are building can ( on paper, at least ) approach way lower flight costs in the future, which will remain a small multiple of liquid fuel costs. Expect to see prices in $10K range in less than a decade.
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I wish I had the kind of money to invest in Virgin Galactic. If they can come through on this they are going to have more money than Gates in no time. We are watching the future unfold here.
WTF?
Just some thoughts: Ok asking for deposits on future tickets is a bad idea. Instead, they should be selling sponsorships both corporate and individual and get the U.S. populace to be part of this. Phase 1: Sell engraved pavestones, engravings on a wall of sponsors, advertisements, construction tours, etc. and get this rolling. Phase 2: Continue selling sponsorship for construction of shuttles based on best existing reusable craft design at that point. Phase 3: Once they have the spaceport built, they should start selling sponsorship of a commercial space port and begin construction as soon as possible. Primary focus of the spaceport would be in-space construction. Phase 4: Build space-locked (non-landing) mining ships at the space port, and start mining near-Earth asteroids . At this point the space economy would be started, as the minerals mined could be used to build new stations and ships to continue the process with the only planetary launches/landings required for crew and basic life support needs. Phase 5: At $10,000/kg cost to fly food into space, soybeans and other fast-growing crops should be grown in space as quickly as possible, starting an in-space food market to supplement the mining market and facilitate deployment of a much larger in-space workforce.
Hey, wait a minute. Space tourism is cool, and breaking governments' monopoly of space travel has its merits, but is no one concerned about the environmental damage this is going to wreak? Why is there no discussion of how much carbon these rockets are going to be spewing into all levels of the atmosphere?
This troll is tired. It's simple. If a resources is exhausted, we'll switch to a resource that isn't exhausted. Also, we're putting plenty of money into alternative energy and even "sustainable" growth. And we don't put out huge amounts of greenhouse gasses to send the richest sliver on short tourist trips.
So, if Rutan, Virgin Galactic, and Scaled Composites are aiming for orbital flights, will they have to redesign the spacecraft from scratch?
Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth
However, the report states that Spaceship 2 is 50% complete and White Knight 2 is 60% complete.
Well, you know what they say: the first 90% takes 90% of the time. The last 10% also takes 90% of the time.
Could be a while yet.
That's a bit of a nonsensical comparison. The small satellites White Knight will able to launch will be a fraction of the size of that which could be launched by Falcon. Kinda like saying "I'm going to use a Vespa for package delivery because it is cheaper than a panel van".
Not only way off topic, (what does vick have to do with spaceships) but he was sentenced to 23 months... and actually he wouldn't have got less for killing a person, becuase if he did have 72 months, he'd be eligible for parole earlier than he would for a murder sentence... Grow a brain... I thought this was a "news for nerds" place, and generally nerds, geeks, whatever you prefer, are generally smart...
They already exist... landings are still problematic, however. All you need is a good high cliff.
Hopefully we can start getting mass into orbit faster and cheaper. I loathe the idea of being stuck in this gravity well when we run out of cheap energy.
Wake me up when Virgin Trains run on time in the UK.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno
Yea, I also heard this is the year they're going to release Duke Nukem Forever and Spore. We're also going to see jetpacks, a cure for diabetes, AIDs, cancer, and a stronger unicorn.
or else!
The catch is... if you go up as a tourist, you will be assisting in deploying the satellite. It's actually an outsourcing scheme for free labor.
Every time I hear the big words 'space', 'space tourism', 'commercial space flight' etc I can't stop thinking how limited we are in our capabilities. Going to space means being able to visit at least our companion planetoid, the Moon, but we can't even do that...