First Image of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo

mtargettuk writes "First image of Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo structure: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is under construction at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California and Flightglobal has obtained what appears to be the first image of its cockpit section."

Comments

UH...

[Anonymous Coward]

Virgin Cockpit. dur hur hur hur.

Re:UH...

[sa1lnr]

http://home.clara.net/lesmcdm/images/virgin.jpg

Re:UH...

[justleavealonemmmkay]

It's funny because the Slut plane is actually a Sabena plane. In the 1990s Sabena slept with Air France, with KLM, with BA and finally got a deadly disease from Swissair (who sunk Sabena to delay their own downfall)

Re:UH...

[ToadMan8]

LOL how in the world did this get moderated "Interesting" ?! Funny, perhaps!

Re:UH...

[Plazmid]

It is moderated interesting because it is interesting it got moderated interesting.

Re:UH...

[prestomation]

Are the mods all drunk? Who modded this informative?

Well, maybe it is

Who knew?

[word munger]

Who knew the first spaceship for the masses would be modeled after the VW beetle?

Re:Who knew?

[camperdave]

Volksraumschiff?

Re:Who knew?

[Rei]

"The masses" in this context are people who can afford to pay six figures for a joyride to take them to a tenth of the delta-V needed for orbit in an vehicle design that physically cannot scale to orbit.

Meanwhile, actual orbital vehicle development continues. The massive Falcon 9 has not only completed its one engine firing, its two engine firing, and its three engine firing, all flawlessly, but also it's five engine firing. Only one more static firing is scheduled before launch (all nine engines). The smaller Falcon 1, which would have easily reached orbit in its last test flight but for either the lack of a bump *or* the presence of an upper-stage baffle, now is designed both to prevent the bump *and* now has an upper-stage baffle. It will be launching within the next month with its first payload, and the Falcon 9 should launch by the end of the year. The Falcon series represents a two to three fold price cut per kilogram compared to similar sized launch vehicles after almost half a century of price stagnation.

But hey, by all means, Slashdot is free to continue largely ignoring them (dedicating roughly the same number of articles to SpaceShipTwo, of which only minimal info has been released yet as the entire Falcon series through its history) and to keep reporting on every last detail from this unscaleable joyride.

Re:Who knew?

[nmg196]

They're hardly comparable are they! Slashdot readers are far more interested in something which will take PEOPLE into space, rather than yet another satellite lifter that's only interesting because it's cheaper to make.

Apart from anything, SpaceShipOne/Two just simply looks WAY cooler! I know that's not a very good reason, but it probably IS a reason.

I think most people are interested in feeling like they're going into space, zero-G, black sky, take some pics, then coming back again safely. You don't need an orbital vehicle for ANY of those things.

Falcon 9 is about as exciting as a Toyota Prius - only interesting if you're the one that's going to be saving the money.

Re:Who knew?

[Rei]

They're hardly comparable are they! Slashdot readers are far more interested in something which will take PEOPLE into space, rather than yet another satellite lifter that's only interesting because it's cheaper to make.

Apparently you've never heard of the Dragon. The Falcon series is designed to lift cargo *and* people to orbit. Unlike the shuttle, they made the wise (IMHO) decision to not require people to be on every liftoff; you include people when you want to lift people, and not otherwise. The first Dragon flight is scheduled for early next year. Both Falcon and Dragon have passed every NASA COTS review so far (example).

Also, once again, the old fallacy of "being in space is roughly equivalent to being in orbit" rears its ugly head. Sadly, this happens in pretty much every thread about SS1/SS2.

Apart from anything, SpaceShipOne/Two just simply looks WAY cooler!

You hit the nail on the head.

Re:Who knew?

[Rei]

1) Falcon 9 is far closer to "completing a successful test flight" than SpaceShipTwo. It has completed four static test firings, compared to a resounding zero for SS2.

2) No, it is not a "cargo rocket"; it's designed for either cargo *or* the Dragon spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch in Q1 of next year. You see, back in the real world of orbital rocketry, there's this little thing called "staging" that you have to deal with. And no, the tiny bit of extra altitude and speed from the White Knight hardly counts. In real, orbital rocketry, you can't generally afford to be hauling around the mass of what got you there.

will put space within reach

Count "2" for the number of times that "space" and "orbit" have been predictably treated as though they're roughly equivalent, when they're not even close.

which has already PROVEN its viability with several successful test flights.

Just the first stage of Falcon 1 gave more delta-V in a single launch than all of SS1's flights combined. It was only the second stage that failed, and really, it only "failed" in that the engine shut down early due to a slosh, which has been corrected in two different ways. Even the payload separated normally.

You're comparing a Segway with an EV1 here. The flight envelope of SS1 and SS2 isn't even remotely, slightly, trivially comparable to that of the Falcon series.

Re:Who knew?

[Rei]

Oh, and by the way, please elaborate on the proven viability of SS2.

For years, I was warning people that Scaled was playing fast and loose with safety. I wrote this in 2006 (and updated with the latter link in early 2007, before the accident):

"Rutan, on the other hand, nearly killed his test pilot by launching in high wind shear conditions, and launching before resolving the cause of wild rolls at rocket ignition. With just a small handful of flights. On a task that is incredibly easy compared to reaching orbit. Some view the rocketplane tourism industry as a disaster waiting to happen."

I would rather have been proven wrong.

Re:Who knew?

[Rei]

Blowing up wealthy passengers isn't exactly an attractive business model, no matter what waivers you make them sign. And if the current disregard toward safety continues, that's exactly what's going to happen.

Better link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2008/06/spaceshiptwo-cockpit-composite.html

-V

Link protected

[AKAImBatman]

The link in the article appears to be protected against offsite linking. If you want to view its contents, make sure you open it in a new window. If the site detects Slashdot, you will be redirected to the sitemap.

That being said, I'm not sure if it's worth bothering. The photo is a sneaky shot of a component of the airframe. Specifically the nose-cone and forward portion of the craft. It's gray in color. Really, if you've seen an airplane before, you'll be just about as impressed.

So unless you're a competitor looking to derive secrets about SpaceShipTwo's construction, just move along. There's nothing to see here.

Re:Link protected

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

I clicked the link and got the article fine.

I am in Japan - I wonder if they are IP sniffing... (that's like - P sniffing, but your own... )

Re:Link protected

[khallow]

So unless you're a competitor looking to derive secrets about SpaceShipTwo's construction, just move along. There's nothing to see here.

Have you ever wondered whether Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic were serious about this thing? Or how much that accident almost a year ago set back things? Well this is a data point that indicates some construction (or "bending of metal") is going on. Peeks like this help us understand the progress of another otherwise secretive business.

Re:Don't click that link

[adpsimpson]

And after only 4 comments, it's already slashdotted.

Searching on Google suggests the url was probably correct. The google cache link is here

In case the image doesn't show up (google cache still loads images from origin site), here it is on imageshack

looks like Darth Vader's personal fighter

[peter303]

OK, its carbon composite, and carbon is black before coating.

So where.....

[stainlesssteelpat]

does one find me a swashbuckling Galatic Virgin, arggh...

Re:Don't click that link

[Richard_at_work]

Works perfectly fine here - problem with your browser?

Re:Don't click that link

[Gewalt]

No, I just confused their sitemap with a squatter. It looked like a template squatter page, and definitely did not have the content I was looking for, so I didn't give it a seconds worth of thought.

What kind of plane is it?

[bosef1]

Obligatory quotations:

Excuse me sir, there's been a little problem in the cockpit...
The cockpit...what is it?
It's the little room in the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that's not important right now.

You ever been in a cockpit before?
I've never been up in a plane before.
You ever seen a grown man naked?

Re:What kind of plane is it?

[sconeu]

I'm deadly serious. And don't call me Shirley.

Not the First Image

[CR0WTR0B0T]

I saw an image of the Virgin Spaceship in a potato chip yesterday. I put up for sale on EBay.

Re:Farmer Joe's Truck?

[eln]

Personally, I think it's a smart move. It's a little known fact that private space exploration has failed to take off because most companies are still trying to come up with sufficiently futuristic-looking methods of moving spacecraft parts around before they can start work on the actual going into space bit.

While few doubt that Virgin will eventually need to come up with some sort of overly-aerodynamic truck design propelled by some sort of weird blue jets that cause it to both hover and move in any direction, the "Grandpa's old Ford" method should be okay for the short term.

Re:Farmer Joe's Truck?

[Thrakamazog]

I was actually quite pleased to see it on the back of a plane old truck. Too many people think spaceflight is some magical unreal thing. The more we see it as part of our everyday life the more we expect it to be there. The more we expect it to be there the more likely it will be.

What a heap of junk!

[mccalli]

"You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought".

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Hmmm.

[Rei]

You KNOW that they are not going to use the same engine for SS3

SS3 is vaporware. It's probably had about as much design work done on it as a spacecraft I designed a while back. And if they don't start taking safety more seriously and end up killing paying passengers just once, it'll stand just as much of a chance of actually being built.

For any SS3 to actually work, they would have to literally start over. On virtually everything. Almost nothing they've developed and almost none of the experience they developed will apply to it, apart from a better understanding of dealing with transsonic and supersonic flight (which they could have just hired people for). the materials are wrong, the engines are wrong, the propellants are wrong, the staging is wrong, and on and on, and they haven't even touched on 95% of the actual challenges of real orbital spaceflight. What they built is far closer to a supersonic airplane than it is to an orbital spacecraft.

None of this means that they *can't* do SS3. What I've been pointing out is that SS3 is essentially starting over. SS1/SS2 is a technological dead-end as far as reaching orbit is concerned, and it doesn't retire or even begin to approach the overwhelming majority of the challenges involved.