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."

Comments

Year of the Spaceship?

[JKSN17]

Is this the new 2.0 edition of the Chinese Calendar. Let me know when it's the year of the iPod.

Re:Year of the Spaceship?

[Rei]

What really got me was this:

says Whitehorn, adding that he wants to offer $3 million launches to low Earth Orbit for small satellites. This launch service could use WK2 or a larger successor in the 2015 timeframe, which Whitehorn referred to as White Knight Three, using in either case a two-stage rocket that would place the payloads into orbits.

And the actual orbital launch vehicle is...?

Don't announce non-news. Now, Virgin Galactic does have a couple rudimentary "orbital designs", if you can even call them "designs". You know what? So do I. So do hundreds of thousands of people and companies. Having a design is not the critical factor. Having something that you're actually building, that has a serious economic study behind it, is.

Incredible claims require incredible evidence. SpaceX's numbers are already an incredible claim (perhaps even justified; time will tell). But Whitehorn is talking about half that, with a so far mythical launch vehicle. Where's the evidence? Scaled is a company that's been building low-performance rocket planes -- a task a couple orders of magnitude less complicated than building actual orbital craft. Show us the evidence. Show us the designs. Explain how these designs are going to violate the economic principles that have held back the rocketry industry.

They mention a two stage rocket. Even with a carrier, a two stage rocket still requires significant ISP, *especially* when that small-scale (30,000 kg loaded; minimally bigger than a Pegasus, and that's a 3-4 stage vehicle), as theirs will certainly have to be. To put it another way, SpaceShipOne's entire propulsion system, from tankage to fuel and oxidizer to combusion and so on, is limited to an ISP of about 250 sec. Each stage of the *three to four* stage Pegasus has an ISP of almost 300sec. There's no way to pull it off without completely scrapping the only rocket design they have experience with and building a complex turbopump-driven LOX/LH vehicle. Scaled's experience with turbopumps: Zero. Their experience with LOX: Zero. Their experience with LH: Zero. Their experience with everything else to do with rocketry, from reentry TPS to gimbaled thrust to RCS to thermal management in a vaccuum environment? Zero. They've worked with the easiest and lowest performance of modern rocket systems, a design that doesn't scale to orbit at all. If they want to do this, they're going to be starting practically from scratch.

Once again: where's the evidence that this is remotely serious?

I know Scaled is everyone's darling, but as far as real, orbital rocketry goes, they're a joke. If you want to cheer for a relatively small private rocketry company, cheer for one that actually is seriously working on getting to orbit and has an actual serious chance of getting there -- SpaceX. Even with them, there are no guarantees, but at least they're building the right things, not joyrides with about as much relevance to orbital rocketry as me building a go cart would be to formula 1 racing.

obWho

[Rob T Firefly]

Burt Rutan, always reticent to comments on progress of any project, says nothing to support or contradict Virgin Galactic's announcement. That's because this Rutan and his brethren are far too busy preparing for the next stage in their ongoing interstellar war against the Sontaran Empire.