Slashdot Mirror
New Pictures of White Knight Two and SpaceshipTwo
soldeed writes "Over at the Virgin Galactic press site, there are new pictures of both White Knight Two and SpaceShip 2 during construction for media use. After seeing them, I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?"
I don't see any dated newer than February.
OK, kinda cool, but heres the thing. 100 miles is high, but look at it compared to the globe. The radius is 4000 miles, so 100 miles is 2.5 percent of that. No air, sure. But space ? Come on. Apollo 11 went to space. This is just a good place to put satellites.
As long as we depend on cigars with wings and chemical based propellants we will only inch our way along this journey. I had higher hopes for this crew.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Are you also a pilot? No? Then you shouldn't be offended.
After seeing them, I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?
It's the bomb that someone is senting up. After all, AYBABTU.
Is just a clamping weight. Used to hold pieces together while adhesives cure or to prevent warping. Normal technique used in composite construction.
See the other one at the other end of the wing box?
See all the other, smaller weights?
Now tell me - you really couldn't figure this out for yourself?
You need to get out more.
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
Agreed. I thought maybe these were newly published photos that had been held back from the public for a few months, but I've seen at least some of them before.
What's new here?
What has being a feminist got to do with it? If your allegation is that the article author specifically not to use "grandfather" implying some difference in technical ability then I'm sorry to say that I believe most people's grandmothers at this point in time are probably still less technically minded than their grandfathers. This is a reasonably common expression and it's not intended to be malicious against women.
I find your oversensitivity offensive. It's this kind of overreaction that made political correctness so unnecessarily imposing and resented.
I've been lucky enough to see Military aircraft being put together, space ships, and big commercial craft.
By comparison, that place looks like a freaking disaster area.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm having a hard time finding that in any of the article links but regardless of that, maybe you should be complaining there rather than at Slashdot, which is just a simple news aggregator & forum system. It's not like anyone here has any control over the editing of the articles. Even if they did, hell, they can't even edit the summaries correctly most of the time.
Besides, the only articles I see linked are wikipedia articles -- if you saw it there and it bothers you so much, why don't you just go change it?
"I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?"
Well it is a box being delivered to a team of physicists, I guess they wont know for certain until they open it :)
A cat. We don't know if it's dead or alive.
I know the shuttle goes up about 100 miles, which is more than this thing. OK, kinda cool, this thing goes 110 km, but heres the thing. 110 km is high, but look at it compared to the globe. The radius is 4000 miles, so 110 km is 1 percent of that!!! No air, sure. But space ? Come on. Apollo 11 went to space. This is just publicity hogging, and maybe a way to get a boy band member to pay for a ride.
I like how Virgin are naming the first two ships Enterprise and Voyager. IIUC another is supposed to be named Columbia and another Discovery. Virgin ordered seven of these.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Well... I *am* a pilot (well ok, student pilot, but I am about 95% of the way through the course).
My first ever flying lesson was giving to me by a women who was certainly older than 49 and quite possibly a grandmother (I didn't ask). When you are about to take to the skies for a first flying lesson, and shortly before take off, you instructor finishes the final briefing with the phrase, "Ohh.. and here is what you do if anything happens to me up there...". You tend to notice stuff like age! :)
What if everything you ever wanted CAME IN A ROCKET CAN? Featuring all new flavors like White Knight, Spaceship 2, and Gun!
The girl's head is in the box.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRJcxMe1zWY
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
using just photoshop I see QA *12BH133 9/24 *VB40x49x90 * I can't make these out so, it's probably a box being used for laminate clamping, but the box arrived as a shipping container for parts.
Ok, feminist trolls aside, I like what Virgin Galactic are doing. I'm not much of a fan of what Virgin is doing to the interwebs in the UK and elsewhere. It is kind of messed up. But, get me into space and I will be more forgiving.
A space port with a box laying around? Sounds like someone lost their parallel dimension. Quick, turn it inside out before they invade!
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
I'll admit that you don't fit the tendency if you will admit that there is such a thing as a tendency.
Those boxes are weight... About 15 years back I helped build a very ez (Rutan's design too, btw). Construction was 'composite' materials - a bit of a radical chance from the way folks traditional built aircraft. You cut a lot of foam and put fiberglass and resin on it. The real work was making the jigs to get the right camber on the wings. You had to put weight on stuff to make sure it warped at the correct angle. With some parts, you had to do large chunks in one laying (is that even the right word?) of resin since it makes a stronger bond.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Do you want to keep your space vacation or trade it for what is in the box?
God spoke to me.
How new are these photos? I see they're dated from January and February of this year. But that could be deliberately misleading.
Well first you have to check if there's a hole in the box. Next you make sure there is any traces of "junk". After all aforementioned steps are accomplished, make sure there are woman around to examine the contents of the box.
You know, whilst parent makes perhaps bit of an extreme statement, I partly kind of agree. In the photo of the top half of SS2 being manhandled onto the lower half, the workers have their bare hands on the joining edges. Now as anyone who builds scale and/or flying models knows you don't handle surfaces to be glued so that fingerprints and oils don't reduce the bonding strength. In this case you would hope that they would clean them as best as they possibly can before joining.
Well, given that Scaled Composites is one of the most experience builders of aircraft with composite materials I would expect that they know what they're doing.
It is kind of fun that it looks like they're building a spaceship in a big garage. Factories are not always what you think they will be. I used to work for a company that built mini-supercomputers. Our factory was surprisingly modest. I used to love that we would make the official stickers (you know, don't stick your fingers in here or you'll get electrocuted) with the laser printer and cut them out with scissors.
Somebody wrote on the box. It says:
:)
QA
V121B H133 9/24
WB40x49x90
Mystery solve
As a 49 yo grandmother, c programmer and feminist, I find this offensive.
Oh, do you really? Just a few months ago, you told someone else to chill out when they were offended by a similar statement:
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
You know what this means: Next Star Trek movie will have a new ship in the historical Enterprises display...
(Yeah, I know the name has been known for a long time, but just came across it now and couldn't resist.)
This is a lot more progress than NASA made on Ares I in the same amount of time.
It's a Mystery Box.
We still want to know - the orangy-pink paper seems so festive. Maybe the clamping weight is made of ground up Stradivarius violins, or the preserved hearts of virgin sacrificial cloned lambs, or.....unreleased copies of Duke Nukem Forever!
..........FULL STOP.
Cost estimates for things that have never been build are not reliable. Your $30 billion number seems . . . conservative. Seriously, this is a large, dynamic structure. They don't really know how they'd put it in place. They don't know how they would confine the ribbon, or how reliable that system would be. With so many unknowns, you're really just pulling numbers out of your ass. Moreover, the odds that it is actually build-able are not great. The odds of it staying up for any usable period of time are much worse.
I've seen a lot of molded plastic manufacturing facilities (mostly spa manufacturers or boat manufactures. . . or custom car parts). They all look just like this because they all do the same thing. They build plugs, then molds, then finished pieces. I don't know why anyone would expect this factory to be clean. They are always grinding and cutting and spraying. It's just not a clean process.
The important thing is they clean each piece before each step. It doesn't matter if some dust gets into the finished product, because it will be encapsulated in resin. As long as it's not too much, it won't have an appreciable effect. I know it's nice to think that it can be perfect and dust free, but it's just not possible.
> As a 49 yo grandmother, c programmer ...
C programming is so easy, even a grandmother can do it?
Dude: 5 letter word, starts with T, ends with L.
"Tubal"?
Are you implying that conservative former Democrats (define "neocon") forced women to have surgery to prevent pregnancy if they wanted better jobs?
Oh, wait, this wasn't meant to be serious, but looking at the posts, you might well take it to be, and offer "evidence" of just that.
So... nevermind.
Here's your sig.
1: Cut a hole in a box
2: Put your junk in that box
3: Make her open the box
It's the severed head of soldeed's wife. John Doe wins.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
If you are really 49 y.o., then you should be past taking offense at such silly items. Get over it.
And I say this as a 49 y.o. c programmer as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Those MotherShip pics are scary. For one, the work areas are very cluttered which could lead to confusion, errors, rework and overall inefficiency. It appears there is no system in place to ensure that all tools and support equipment are properly accounted for and not left in the ship. This could lead to foreign object debris (FOD) destroying the ship while it is in operation. The other scary element is the apparent lack of work stands or platforms for the mechanics. When a plane gets built, it is important to build work stands or platforms first so that the mechanics have a place to stand wherever they need to be. As you can see from the pictures, they are doing their work standing on ladders. In addition to the inefficiency factor mentioned earlier, this also leads to ergonomic and safety issues. A mechanic standing on a ladder can't do the same quality job as when both feet are firmly on a platform, especially if any riveting is involved. Oddly, SpaceShipTwo has platforms for their mechanics but the MotherShip crew only has ladders. I was actually interested in taking a ride on this until I saw the pictures of their work areas!
If anyone from Scaled wants me to come out and do a full-scale industrial engineering evaluation, feel free to contact me by replying.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Since you guys clearly know more about this business than Scaled Composites, maybe you should go start your own composite aircraft company.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I'll take a look and tell you what's in the box...my god, it's full of stars! DUN DUN!!!!!
stuff |
"NOTHING, absolutely nothing! STUPID, you're so stupid!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KezvwARhBIc
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I seem to have a tendency not to admit that there is such a thing as a tendency. But for tendency's sake I will admit that I don't fit the tendency by admitting that there is such a thing as a tendency. Sometimes I have a tendency to botch jokes on Slashdot and they get rated as troll by people who don't understand the joke as it has a tendency to go over their head.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
All this bull****in' around with government space agencies, etc., is just a nice way to move tax dollars around in a shell game that in the end avails nothing.
You get REAL PEOPLE anteing up their own money for commercial space ventures, and the "high frontier" will finally become a reality.
(N.B. I live in Houston. It's impossible to get people here to see how useless NASA is. Living on the government teat will do that).
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
You mean, a cavewoman?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
Government still zero.
Those MotherShip pics are scary.
People said things like that about the Skunk Works back when Kelly Johnson was running the place, when they created the U-2 and SR-71. If we adhere strictly to your doctrine, those planes would be impossible. Yet they were built in those sorts of conditions, and remain incredible achievements to this day.
Turns out that if the organization has a lot of people who are truly amazingly talented, a lot of that corporate wisdom doesn't apply so much. Scaled Composites has the right combination of small size, corporate youth, and flexibility to be able to pull it off.
I'm not saying they *are* pulling it off, but I don't think you can say they aren't, either.
Of course, most organizations are not staffed that way -- there just aren't that many truly amazingly talented people out there. In any large organization, you have to plan on having some people who are merely excellent, a lot who are moderately talented, and your fair share of duds. (And that's if you're lucky.) You have design the organization itself to be fault tolerant.
There are also technical reasons why big companies and small companies can operate in different ways successfully. Take work platforms, for example. They're larger, more expensive, and less flexible. If you're building hundreds of planes, they pay off. If you're building an evolving prototype, they might actually hamper efforts.
I work for a small defense contractor. We get lots of work sub'ed to us from the big boys, precisely because we're more flexible and don't play by their rules. They keep telling us we're doing things inefficiently, but we consistently do things cheaper than their own in-house staff can.
So don't assume that just because Lockheed Martin and Boeing have to do things your way, that everyone has to.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I tried to read the writing on the box and at first I thought I could read HL-33 9/24 which is a type of threaded fastener called a Hi-Lok, -33 is stainless which would make sense to use in carbon but I don't think that's what's in the box. 9/24 is a nonstandard size anyway I don't think it exists.
The writing appears to be dimensions, the boxes are used for ergonomic tests to make sure the various black boxes inside the vehicle can go in and out the doors. This is typical Rutan construction with rounded cutouts to avoid stress concentrations, that works well in carbon construction because theres not much ductility in the material. Mockup fit tests like these are typical and sometimes work better than trying to simulate it in CAD.
There's a QA label at the top, the QA department has measured and labelled the boxes.
Admittedly the box looks like it's being used as a weight at the time the picture was taken. But not for bonding, I seriously doubt any bonding is being done in the assembly jig, or at room temp. On a craft like this the bonding must be done in an oven or autoclave and the bond prep must be done in a clean room which as has been pointed out this facility isn't.
From the look of the structure I believe this may be a non-flying prototype, at least the fuse and wing pods. But for limited production vehicles like this and prototyping shops like Scaled things don't always look high-tech pretty so it my be flight hardware, R&D often looks like this.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Neil Armstrong? The ISS? Spirit and Oportunity? Phoenix Lander?
That's zero compared to this? Christ, you could be a figure skating judge.
Thanks for watching today's troll, "Feminist-Mom." A classic but under appreciated troll, recognizable by the fact that she's been 49, a grandmother, c programmer, and feminist for the last five years.
On the next edition of 'This Old Troll' we'll be revisiting other classic trolls such as "Mare Sex" and "Consider Your Breathing." Thanks for watching!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"I visited your factory this morning after you'd left. I tried to play pilot. I tried to taste the life of a simple man. It didn't work out, so I took a souvenir... Gwyneth Paltrow's pretty head."
"If it's got a switch... it's my bitch!!"