White Knight Two Unveiled

xanthos writes "Sir Richard Branson was at the annual Experimental Aircraft Assoc Fly-in to show off EVE (previously known as White Knight Two), the launch vehicle for Virgin Galactic's commercial space operation. Test flights for the vehicle are slated for next year with the first paying passengers going up in 2011. What surprised me was the following from the article: 'So many people have signed up already, Whitehorn said, that the company has collected $40 million in deposits with orders to build five spaceships to meet the demand.' Will this mean that the $200k price tag may be dropping?"

Comments

$200K for outerspace?

[MyLongNickName]

Expensive, but I would do it if it were for a couple days in orbit...

Obligatory skepticism

[Robaato]

Space tourism, yeah. But orbital flights?

Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth

Re:Obligatory skepticism

[FleaPlus]

Orbital human flights aren't planned for SpaceShipTwo, but they are planning on doing orbital microsatellite launches:

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/07/30/330347/oshkosh-2009-virgin-galactic-flies-high-at-oshkosh.html

Virgin Galactic will use the cash injection to develop equipment - including a new pylon between the twin hulls of WhiteKnight Two - able to carry a two-stage launcher and satellite weighing up to 200kg (440lb), with a total payload of 17t- into orbit. The aircraft is designed as the mothership for Virgin Galactic's spaceliner SpaceShip Two.
Virgin Galactic's chief executive Will Whitehorn says that the company will begin its space cargo business in about three years time, two years after it expects to carry the first paying space tourists into suborbit. "For the first five or six years, 80% of our business will be tourism, but five to nine years after that it will be 50/50 [between passengers and cargo or training and scientific flights]," he says.
Whitehorn says the company could take the cost of launching a satellite into space using a ground-based launcher from $30 million to "as low as $2 million" using WhiteKnight Two.
He expects the first satellite launchers to be Virgin's own design, either built at its factory in Mojave, California or contracted out to a specialist manufacturer, but eventually the aircraft will be able to carry third-party boosters.
Whitehorn says that Virgin Galactic was approached by Aabar because the latter saw the opportunity beyond space tourism for the Scaled Composites-built WhiteKnight Two.
"This investment now gives us the capital to take us through the commercial launch and build an extra WhiteKnight for the satellite business," he says.

Not likely...

[Drakkenmensch]

Will this mean that the $200k price tag may be dropping?

Because everybody knows that when people are trampling each other at the gates to pay the retail price, it's a sure sign that the store is going to lower it in a hurry.

Re:Not likely...

[moderatorrater]

Because everybody knows that when people are trampling each other at the gates to pay the retail price, it's a sure sign that the store is going to lower it in a hurry.

If they're smart, that's exactly what they'll do. If they can get it working smoothly, then scale up to where their costs are lower, then lowering the expense of the flight is the most profitable route. Right now the only market they're tapping is the market of the very rich and those who are willing to save up multiple annual incomes for one trip. Every time they lower the price they'll increase the size of their market.

But it's not - it's suborbital.

[maillemaker]

Unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure that the Virgin experience is completely suborbital. Basically it's $200K for a parabolic rocket ride. I don't understand the appeal. OK, so you left Earth's atmosphere for a couple of minutes.

Where's my 2001 space station?

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[mcgrew]

Where's my 2001 space station?

Did you lose that thing again? It's outside, parked next to my flying car.

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where's my 2001 space station?"

They spent the money on Iraq. I'm not trolling it's a fact. They have spent around a trillion dollars with no end in sight. When you add in the continued cost of staying in Iraq and the support costs for all the soldiers it's a lot more. A trillion would buy a big chunk of your 2001 space station if not the whole thing. If we spent half on space what we do on defense it would be a very different world. The problem is people will accept the money being flushed down a rathole in Iraq because of fear but they don't want to see it "wasted" on something like making 2001 a reality. There's another problem that few talk about. There simply aren't enough resources to get large numbers of people into orbit. Dropping the price down to say $10,000 would mean millions, maybe tens or hundreds of millions could potentially aford a trip into space. We're having trouble providing food and water and energy to the world so the resources have to come from some where. You really have to focus on a space infrastructure first then work on making it accessible to large numbers of people. The space elevator was an option but it's hard to say how practical it will be. We almost need to consider space mining and space based power before we think about putting a million people into orbit. I realize it'd be over time but the amount of resources is the same.

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[jollyreaper]

Unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure that the Virgin experience is completely suborbital. Basically it's $200K for a parabolic rocket ride. I don't understand the appeal. OK, so you left Earth's atmosphere for a couple of minutes.

Where's my 2001 space station?

This is creating a paying way to get there. Of course, there needs to be a use for the 2001-style space station. It's rather useless if it's only an orbital hotel. I'd say the killer app for space tech right now would be the solar power sats followed eventually by space-based mining and manufacture. You move the industry off into space, the surface of Earth can be left for living.

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[Runaway1956]

It clearly demonstrates that there is a demand for space flight. If someone developed an affordable means to get there, there are plenty of people who would be booking flights to the moon, or to Mars. Given an assurance of supplies to make the stay survivable, plenty of people would be making their flights one way. All the BS about exploring space for science if just fine - but PEOPLE WANT TO GO! Call us kooks, or whatever. There is a drive to explore, in person.

Screw reality shows, let's get out there and meet reality, eyeball to - whatever reality looks back at us with.

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[MobyDisk]

A potential use for such flights is a 1 hour trip between any two points on the globe. Plus, I think you can clearly see the shape of the earth - which to me, would make it feel f'n C.O.O.L.

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[Kepesk]

Actually, there is an orbital hotel in the works. Most people aren't aware that there are already two orbital space hotel proof-of-concepts. http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[NoahTheDuke]

Why do you hate paragraphs so much? What did they ever do to you?! WHYYYYYY???

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[mahdi13]

What we need is a good old fashioned galactic invasion to kick the space program back in gear. If a military threat was coming from another world you know they would spend a couple trillion on the space program in a heartbeat.

Re:But it's not - it's suborbital.

[demachina]

"They have spent around a trillion dollars with no end in sight."

Actually I think the end is very much in sight in Iraq, 2011 all U.S. combat forces are supposed to be out of Iraq. There is talk they might accelerate the withdrawal by another brigade soon. Iraq mostly wants the U.S. out so they can finish their civil war, the U.S. doesn't want to be in the middle of their looming civil war.

The war with no end in sight is in Afghanistan. They just added 21,000 more troops added this year and rumors today McChrystal may request more next year. I think there we will be fighting a forever war because we are trying to prop up a completely corrupt government the Afghan people hate so much they often prefer the Taliban.

It should be remembered the war in Vietnam played a pretty key role in Nixon killing Apollo and sending NASA on a road to no where (the ISS and Shuttle) since Vietnam was bankrupting the U.S. in parallel with Apollo.

Considering we spent $100 billion on the ISS, its one of the most expensive science projects in history, and it doesn't do anything useful I'm not really sure building a 2001 class space station would have really been any better even if we hadn't blown the money on wars. Maybe there would be a tourism case but I think its dubious you will get real space tourism anywhere close to a break even point any time soon, other than flying the super rich.

Before anyone dreams of a 2001 space station we need to get LEO launch cost down, way down, to like $1 a pound instead of $1000-$10000 a pound. Virgin Galactic is talking $200K for a 200 lb person to suborbital for a few minutes. That's $1000 a lb for not much. At present a space elevator is probably the only thing that will make getting out of Earth's gravity well economical and that still faces some enormous hurdles that throwing money at it may or may not solve.

I think the problem with Apollo, 2001, Star Trek, Star Wars syndrome, especially in the U.S., is they created a lot of dreamers who dwell on how romantic space travel is, when most of the time it wouldn't be anything like that. Space is an empty vacuum, it has all the appeal of a vacuum. It is mostly a nasty place, and working and traveling in space will for a long time to come be tedious, boring, stressful and dangerous. Only things interesting in space are the other rocks in space and most of them are no picnic.

I predict manned space travel will continue to have a really rocky future until A) we take all the inflated romance out of the idea and B) figure out ways to utilize space that are actually useful and make sense. Some early leaks out of the upcoming Augustine report worry me. There was talk they were going to propose manned space flights to Lagrange points just to prove we could do long duration space flights. They seem to miss the fact that flying to points in space in a tin can and sitting there would leave the world aghast with the stupidity of it all.

Planting a permanent colony on Mars is the mission most likely to be worth and that would fire the imagination of the whole planet like Apollo 11 did. It is the one place where humans have a fighting chance of making another biosphere and fulfilling the human desire to break new frontiers.

Tapping solar power in space to solve our energy problem might be worth exploring.

Working towards asteroid mining to eliminate future shortages of resources on earth, and to use in construction of structures in space might be worth doing.

Its just an opinion but:

- returning to the moon isn't very useful and smacks of the ISS all over again, except on the Moon
- putting men in tin cans in space going no place in particular isn't worth it either
- Justifying every mission in space with "searching for life" is weak, really weak. Searching for signs of life is a worthwhile secondary goal to primary missions that matter. The odds of finding life elsewhere in our solar system are not great so when that is the be all, end all goal for your space program you ar

Passenger Compartment?

[Ngarrang]

So, instead of optimizing the vehicle to be just a launch system, they are creating additional revenue by adding in a passenger compartment. "Only $1,000 will get you a window seat where you can watch rich people fly into space!"

Re:Passenger Compartment?

[FleaPlus]

So, instead of optimizing the vehicle to be just a launch system, they are creating additional revenue by adding in a passenger compartment. "Only $1,000 will get you a window seat where you can watch rich people fly into space!"

Hey, I'd pay to see something that cool up close, especially if they also threw in a few zero-g parabolas.

Of course the price will drop

[bytestorm]

Virgin's FAQ says 200000 is only for the first 100 and then scaling down between 100 and 175K for the remainder of the first 1000 and 20k thereafter.

Re:Of course the price will drop

[bytestorm]

That's just the deposit price; full ticket price is still 200,000.

Flight video; more details

[FleaPlus]

There's some pretty cool video of White Knight Two flying at Oshkosh here:

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2009/08/video-all-the-virgin-galactic.html

There's also some notes from a panel discussion on the craft. Some highlights:

* Production run for the program is set up for 12 WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft and 50 SpaceShipTwo crafts;
* This is the first all-composites aircraft, something that the aviation industry needs to embrace more;
* WhiteKnightTwo is not just an aircraft, it is a spacecraft delivery system that is capable of delivering cargo into space cheaply; [orbital microsatellite launch]
* Scaled and Virgin are confident they can build a WhiteKnightThree that will allow they to launch even larger payloads into space;
* Rutan said WhiteKnightTwo is very manueverable, and he expected to put the vehicle through aerobatic manuevers at the Oshkosh show next year;
* Whitehorn didnâ(TM)t seem to like this idea very much, vigorously shaking his head and trying to dissuade the designer from such an idea.

Re:Flight video; more details

[Tekfactory]

I know this was from the website so I don't refute you, but.

* Rutan said WhiteKnightTwo is very manueverable, and he expected to put the vehicle through aerobatic manuevers at the Oshkosh show next year;
* Whitehorn didnâ(TM)t seem to like this idea very much, vigorously shaking his head and trying to dissuade the designer from such an idea.

Burt Rutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan
has a brother Richard "Dick" Rutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Rutan
Burt designs aircraft, and Dick flies them.

Richard had been a fighter pilot, and asked Burt for years to build him an Aerobatic plane, Burt wouldn't do it because the liability insurance on such a design would be too expensive.

Instead Burt built an airplane called Voyager to fly around the world, and Richard flew it around the world with his then girlfriend as the copilot.

Dick also flew a Rocket Powered Long EZ for XCOR a test bed for their Rocket motor, and other Rocket Racing League technologies.

Knowing how conservative Burt is, and the fact he doesn't like Aerobatics;
http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/182970-1.html

I have to believe it was Dick not Burt that said he'd fly aerobatics in WhiteKnightTwo at Oshkosh next year.

Re:Stupid Economics

[Deosyne]

God, I hope so. The only way that space exploration is going to really take off is after it becomes commercialized. America wasn't discovered out of idle curiosity; those dudes were out looking for ways to make more loot, whether it be the Vikings looking for resources to take or Columbus looking for a better trade route. I'd rather a rich guy drop a quarter million on a company that will produce bigger orbital launch vehicles and facilities than give the same to a real estate developer for yet another useless suite in New York.

A Science Fiction Life

[mcgrew]

Iirc it was 1964 when Star Trek came out. The science fiction stuff in it was pure fantasy; magic, impossible: cell phones, flat screen computers, doors that opened themselves, medical readouts in the hospitals, etc. It would be five more years before man walked on the moon; orbital flight was in its infancy.

Now it looks like another fantasy will come true - the price of space flight may become affordable to an average guy like me! This is simply amazing.

Re:"passenger's"?

[damien_kane]

Haven't you heard? That's how we make word's plural on the Internet's.

There, FTFY

Re:$40m?

[MightyYar]

And why the hell would you pay $200k for a suborbital flight for a couple minutes?

Hey, people paid $10,000 for a Concord flight... why not go suborbital for $200,000? If you gave me the choice of a trip to space or a Ferrari, I'd personally choose the trip to space.

hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine-WTF?

[zooblethorpe]

Can anyone more familiar with the rocket design explain this perplexing quote?

This is how it works: The launch vehicle takes off like a plane, carrying the spaceship between twin booms; once it gets to a certain height, the spaceship drops from the launch vehicle, firing its hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine to climb vertically at almost four times the speed of sound; once it reaches 62 miles - the edge of space - it floats back down and uses its wings like a badminton shuttlecock to re-enter the atmosphere and land like a plane.

So, does this thing literally burn rubber? :D

Cheers,

Re:hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine-W

[radtea]

So, does this thing literally burn rubber?

Solid fuel compositions tend to be rubbery. This makes them insensitive to vibrations and thermal stresses which could lead to cracking in stiffer compositions. Cracking is a Very Bad Thing as it tends to produce sudden trust variations.

So if by "rubber" you mean "made from the sap of a rubber tree or a similar hydrocarbon synthetic designed primarily for flexibility and resilience", then no, it doesn't burn rubber. The fuel is designed primarily for high specific impulse, with the rubbery characteristics design in secondarily.

The use of a hybrid solid-fuel/fluid-oxidizer design allows the engine to be throttled, and yet is considerably cheaper than a comparably powerful liquid rocket design.

Aside: has anyone noticed that /. is even more borken than usual today, failing to recognize the text entry area for comments past about a 64 column limit?

WK2 at Oshkosh

[Nick Driver]

I just got back home from Oshkosh and saw the WK2 up close and personal there at Aeroshell Square. I didn't know beforehand that only the starboard side fuselage pod has any seats for crew. The left side fuselage has fake painted-on "windows" so that it looks like there are real windows from a distance, but apparently the left fuselage only contains equipment and possibly fuel tanks, there are no seats for any occupants on that side.

I took several photos of the center wing section where the spacecraft is supposed to attach. I saw no big heavy-duty attachment brackets there at all, but instead there were bundles of exposed wires only, and there were two cut-off loose wire ends just dangling out in the slipstream.

I did get one good photo of the WK2 in flight as it approached to land, but they did not do any repeated overflights for the crowd to see, I only saw one overflight, then it landed.

Re:hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine-W

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no, it burns hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (tire rubber) according to this article

NASA has surplus space station in six years

[peter303]

Some people at NASA are talking about deorbiting the ISS as early as 2016. This report is probably a red-herring to raise mroe funds from Congress. But some people are thinking about dumping it. Russians think it can last until 2020 or 2030. Partners could pick it up if US drops out.

Re:NASA has surplus space station in six years

[CecilPL]

You're right. They're talking about it because Congress hasn't given them the funds to continue supporting the ISS beyond 2016. But they aren't doing it as a threat, they're doing it because there are international treaties that require them to deorbit it after they stop supporting it.

Nobody at NASA actually wants to destroy it so soon after completing it, but if Congress doesn't fund it they won't have a choice.

Re:hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine-W

[Enigma2175]

So if by "rubber" you mean "made from the sap of a rubber tree or a similar hydrocarbon synthetic designed primarily for flexibility and resilience", then no, it doesn't burn rubber. The fuel is designed primarily for high specific impulse, with the rubbery characteristics design in secondarily.

You are wrong, the engine burns rubber (at least synthetic rubber). From http://science.howstuffworks.com/spaceshipone5.htm

"To cut down on both cost and risk, SpaceShipOne is propelled by a mixture of hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (tire rubber) and nitrous oxide (laughing gas). The rubber acts as the fuel and the laughing gas as the oxidizer."

Re:hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine-W

[MaskedSlacker]

Yes. Truth be told, it doesn't matter what you use as the solid fuel in a hybrid rocket. You can use cardboard, salami, your mom, whatever. Some fuels are certainly better than others, but anything that burns with your oxidizer will work. They're probably using polyethylene or something similar (it's what we used in our college rocket club's hybrid rocket).

Re:hybrid nitrous oxide and rubber rocket engine-W

[smellsofbikes]

If you look up "hybrid rocket" what you'll see is a lot of similar systems. Traditionally, rockets were either liquid fuel, where you mixed two liquids (oxygen and kerosine, oxygen and hydrogen, for example) or one block of solid fuel like the Thiokol system on the Space Shuttle boosters -- which is, itself, commonly referred to as rubber. A hybrid system uses a solid fuel and a liquid or gaseous oxidizer. Nitrous oxide works well. One interesting thing about it is that you can use just about anything that contains carbon as the solid fuel: rubber, a big stack of paper soaked in wax, or even the infamous Salami Rocket. ("That's what SHE said.") People who build big model rockets often use stacked wax paper discs because they hold up better than salami, and are easier to make than thiokol-type stuff (and they seem to burn more cleanly as well, compared to home-made polymer-type fuels.)

Re:$40m?

[Chris Burke]

And why the hell would you pay $200k for a suborbital flight for a couple minutes?

I don't get why people keep talking about how it's suborbital, like that means it isn't completely fucking awesome. I'm serious, I just don't get it.

I mean, it's almost as if you're saying that if I gave you a free ticket aboard Spaceship Two, you'd begrudgingly take it while muttering "what's the point?", and then once in space you'd be yawning and saying "Sure we're outside the atmosphere but it's not orbital" while the rest of us are shitting our pants at the incredible experience we're having, seeing earth from space.

Is that the wrong impression? Are you just saying orbital would be cooler, but not actually denying that suborbital, if that's all you could get, would still be fucking sweet? I hope so, because otherwise there's just going to be too big a gap between our thinking to overcome.

But if so, then the answer to "why the hell would you pay $200k for a suborbital flight for a couple minutes?" is simple: Because that's how much it costs, that's how high it gets you, and that's how long it lasts, to do one of the most incredible things you may ever have the chance to do in your life.

For people who can afford $200k for a luxury, of which there are quite a few, this must seem like a great deal. If the price gets down to $20k like they suggest, then I'm going to be scrounging up my savings for the day when I will leave the planet's atmosphere, even if briefly. I know I sure as flying fuck won't be complaining that I'm only 100km above the earth's surface, doing something my father and father's father would have given their left nuts to do.

(Though, they don't say if a deposit is 100% the cost, so it might be more people)

Oh and yeah, it's pretty much the definition of a deposit that it isn't 100% of the cost. Putting down a "deposit" that is 100% of the cost is called "paying in advance". Combine this with the fact that Branson is out to make money and thus probably isn't building extra vehicles for no reason, and I think it's safe to say that $40m in deposits represents a lot more than 200 people.

Re:$40m?

[MightyYar]

I'm already married :)

Besides, anyone using a car to find women - well, let's just say those girls are not low-maintenance and you have been warned.

Re:$40m?

[Chris Burke]

I for one don't think its awesome and I am sure I am not the only one. What's so awesome about it?

Seeing earth from space. Leaving the atmosphere. If I have to say more, then there's nothing more I can say because you aren't the kind of kid who looked at the stars and imagined being an astronaut. This is the closest thing you can get. It may be the closest thing we get in our lifetimes.

First, it is completely pointless. It is not like suborbital flight generates useful science, or launches satellites or anything. It sole purpose is just idiotic entertainment for the rich.

Gotcha. Nothing done for just fun can be awesome. Nothing you personally experience that isn't useful is by definition not awesome.

You're kidding me, right? Let me know if you are or not, because it would help me understand if I knew that I was just talking to the most boring person ever.

We were able to make real orbital flights in 1961

You sure as fuck couldn't. We're talking about civilians here. The point is not "what is the limit of human capability". We're talking about "What could you, some random non-astronaut, do?" And by that standard, this is an opportunity that has never been seen before. Still exclusive now due to the price, but they're talking relatively short timeframes to reduce that cost by an order of magnitude. Really, you have to completely lack perspective and imagination not to see how this is new.

Now, if we could dock with the ISS, that would be inbcredible! Not in our life time though.

What's so incredible about that? We've had space stations since 1971. It's not like you would get to do any useful science or launch a satellite. The sole purpose would be for a stupid joyride stunt and a little guided tour, idiotic entertainment for idiots. *snark snark snark*