Slashdot Mirror
Virgin Galactic Unveils SpaceShipTwo
RobGoldsmith writes to tell us that Virgin Galactic has unveiled their latest take on manned space travel for the immediate future: SpaceShipTwo. The craft comes complete with matching mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, and will be officially unveiled today in the Mojave Desert just after dark. "Subject to certain US regulatory requirements that will guide the unveiling, SS2 will be attached to her WK2 mothership which was last year unveiled and named EVE after Sir Richard Branson's mother. In the future, WK2 will carry SS2 to above 50,000 feet (16 kilometers) before the spaceship is dropped and fires her rocket motor to launch into space from that altitude. In honor of a long tradition of using the word Enterprise in the naming of Royal Navy, US Navy, NASA vehicles and even science fiction spacecraft, Governor Schwarzenegger of California and Governor Richardson of New Mexico will today christen SS2 with the name Virgin Space Ship (VSS) ENTERPRISE. This represents not only an acknowledgment to that name’s honorable past but also looks to the future of the role of private enterprise in the development of the exploration, industrialization and human habitation of space."
That the guy that I guess history will say started commercial space flight for real, owned a company that used to sell cassettes and records.
As much as I love NASA and the space program, it is time to private companies to start building an industry out of it. Only when private companies find profits in space will we see real progress. Unfortunately, no one has thought of a way to make money off of it yet. Other than insanely rich tourists.
The display on NCC-1701x that shows several ships and a Space Shuttle prototype is now inaccurate... unless Gary Seven sabotages the Virgin craft... hmmm....
In honor of a long tradition of using the word Enterprise in the naming of Royal Navy, US Navy, NASA vehicles and even science fiction spacecraft, Governor Schwarzenegger of California and Governor Richardson of New Mexico will today christen SS2 with the name Virgin Space Ship (VSS) ENTERPRISE.
Oh, come on. We all know why they really named it that.
It won't be long before we are strip mining Mars, don't worry.
Have they release any sort of flight prices to the public or we can all assume right now the flight cost would be completely out of the range of the general population.
I doubt that true exploration will ever be done privately. There's no money to be made that way.
Just wondering.
No, it couldn't be a design feature to carry that little rocket plane.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
SpaceShip2 will be rechristened to Jupiter2 once the new drive system is installed.
A family has volunteered for the first manned flight. The child appears to own a Robosapien named 'Robot'.
They're still waiting for the paranoid sociopathic doctor who is expected to arrive shortly...
I doubt that true exploration will ever be done privately. There's no money to be made that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Gold_Rush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bend_Gold_Rush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayoosh_Gold_Rush
...etc.
mmmm...forbidden donut
Seriously, read it. It makes it sound like the scene from the James Bond movie that has Madonna in it. What part of this smells profit? None. It's nothing but a bunch of rich people throwing money around to impress each other. Eventually you run out of rich people willing to subsidize. And that will happen pretty quickly after the first 2 go up and it loses its appeal. Spending gobs of money to be the 30+ person to use it quickly loses its luster.
development bill. There seems to always be a sufficient number of them who are free with their money to get new modes of travel off the ground (no pun intended)
Time is one commodity which for some has a lot of value. In the current incarnation SS2 and such are simple frivolity but the questions becomes, how can this be extended to get somewhere else on the globe is a shortened amount of time? Granted in this day of video conferencing and such the need to be there isn't as great.
Carrying people up is neat, carry them from point to point faster is something that has value too. Yeah, the cost is more than its value but further development would bring it down to where it would fit within "exceptional need"
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Did that article seriously try to argue that a new spaceplane was going to be an ecological breakthrough? No, no, no! SS2 is cool because it's a spaceship, not because it's engines are fricking low-carbon.
there's gold on that thar Mars?!!! </2049'er>
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I doubt that true exploration will ever be done privately. There's no money to be made that way.
What? You might want to tell that to the whole computer technology and pharmaceutical industry. Or pretty much every other industry. They're always exploring new ways to generate income.
Of course, currently real space exploration (as in, space shuttles flying to see different places) is still too costly and we don't have the necessary technology yet. But it's being developed.
You never know what kind new energy source or other rich things you will find from these pretty much infinite number of planets. When possible return on investment comes to acceptable levels, you can be sure there will be tons of people trying to get rich that way. It's a real goldmine, almost completely unexplored area.
Well as a recent Slashdot story told, Helium3 just hit $20,000 per pound, the moon has plenty of it. The Rare Earth metals that China is hording are likely plentiful in the Near Earth Objects.
For each mining venture, you send up a module with two units inside with two solar arrays, a VASIMR drive gets them out to the resources. Unload the mining-module and attach the VASIMR to the transport module, the miner makes ingots which the transporter takes from the mine to LEO, and back. Possibly the VASIMR is always attached to the transporter, and the miner is berthed inside its cargo bay for the first trip.
My two oddest notions here are using mechanical gecko feet to attach the miner to an asteroid, and then using cutting lasers to make oblique cuts into an asteroid producing cones of ore, and footholds for itself at the same time.
There's enough stuff in a single nickel iron asteroid to keep the earth supplies for centuries.
Unfortunately, no one has thought of a way to make money off of it yet. Other than insanely rich tourists.
...RIGHT NOW at least. If "insanely rich tourists" are willing to pay to drive down the price of the technology so that I can afford it in 20 years (and all the other benefits that cheap access to space can offer), I'm all for that.
Hell of a lot better use of their money than the government taxing them and giving it to Al Gore in exchange for carbon credits.
Not to downplay this milestone, but don't forget to get to orbital speeds SS2 would need around 60 times more energy. It is and stays a wannabe astronaut toy. SpaceX or some scramjet stuff is the way to go.
You're right, Virgin Space Ship does indeed make the 40 year old geeky technicians sound bad.
Don't forget the Garlic Bubble!
I think if large deposits of easily mined gold were discovered on mars then there would be a hell of a lot more interest in getting there. The logistics still do not exist, but at least people would start really working on solutions. Which would be a big improvement, right now space travel is viewed as a novelty. Make it something useful and productive and we'll see huge advancements in short periods of time.
Wikipedia tells me that there have been 15 "HMS Enterprise" in the British Royal Navy, and 4 others without "HMS". There have been six "USS Enterprise" in the American navy, and 2 others without "USS". There have been 6 other notable ships called "Enterprise". There is a *type* of boat called enterprise, as well as a type of hot air balloon. There was a Space Shuttle Enterprise.
But of course someone who *wasn't* a geek would think they were going for the fictional one.
Patrick Stewart will be christening the ship...
With no connection between the tails of WK2, it looks like it wants to twist apart. Wouldn't that stress the wing unnecessarily? Obviously the folks at Scaled Composites know a bit than me about building airplanes, but it doesn't look right.
Every time I see Sir Richard Branson, my brain says "Zaphod Beeblebrox". Am I the only one?
the Eugenics Wars which devastated the world
You mean the Yugoslav eugenics wars?
We've got excess gold on Earth. That's why most of it is in vaults. What about something useful like uranium? How much of that is in asteroids? If we could get over the nuclear jitters, then having a rock full of uranium and/or deposits on Mars would be a great thing. That and water of course, but don't comets supply plenty of water? Snagging resources from low-gravity bodies seems like the first potentially profitable venture in planetary space.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The problem with GOLD is that if you had a huge gold nugget sitting in space, some have said it wouldn't be worth the cost of de-orbiting it. Not to mention what it would do to the precious metals markets to have tons of gold dumped on the market.
In this instance you need something with worthwhile industrial uses, not just novelty or scarcity driving the prices.
This is why I brought up the helium3 in another part of this thread, its useful in Nuclear Fusion, apparently in Medical imaging, and other stuff. Its currently worth $20,000 per pound.
We have insufficient Astromech Droid technology to name anything the Ebon Hawk.
Everybody can buy Virgin media to for chance to get the golden ticket and a free flight. Watch out Apple!
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
yep, delivery is scheduled for 2012....or if nobody's home delivery is rescheduled for 2029
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
an entirely new vehicle capable of carrying up to 6 passenger astronauts and up to 2 pilot astronauts into space on a sub-orbital flight.
No offense... but only 6 passengers? That's not not really that impressive. In my opinion you need at least 20 to 30 passengers before you can start saying it's really mass-market space tourism.
That aside, it's an interesting craft, and I'll be watching the launch.
Well, I guess I better get my ass to mars.
How do you weigh helium????
That the guy that I guess history will say started commercial space flight for real, owned a company that used to sell cassettes and records.
Yeah, but what really makes me wonder is how did he afford it? I thought everyone went bankrupt after the "collapse" of the Recording and Movie industry? At least that's what the MPAA and RIAA said.
I hear Bill gates isn't doing too well either, according to the BSA. He's a couple dozen pirated Win7 keys away from begging on a street corner I hear.../p
If any vehicle in the history of human flight needed to play this song on it's maiden voyage, this is the one... "I'm leavin' on a jet plane. Don't know when I'll be back again..."
How much are the tickets? I'm willing to fly coach. I bet there are already a bunch of dates blacked out.
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
I am curious about those "regulatory requirements" that "guide the unveiling".
Anybody know what that is all about?
Nah - colonise mars - (got to be at least a class 4 planet, (GalcivII)) - strip mine the moon and asteroids instead...
...Unfortunately, no one has thought of a way to make money off of it yet. Other than insanely rich tourists.
Yes, and if you're wondering where you can find any of those "insanely rich tourists" for your customer base, ah, the line forms to the left...
Smart billionaires tend to at least try and see if there's a customer base out there before starting something like this. REALLY smart billionaires ask for deposits years ago and enjoy the compounding interest.
Martian rust rush...
Osht 2012!
I'd like 1 kHz worth please.
The Code Master
Gold? Gold is so yesterday. Minerals and vespene gas is what we should really be looking for up there. Everyone knows you can't build any spacecraft without vespene gas!
Gods that's a beautiful spaceship. I will toast their success with fine wine.
This is exactly the sort of thing that got me interested in science as a young boy. Granted that was in the day of Von Braun and Willey Ley and Chesley Bonestell (yes I am that old) but the Universe wrote large in my imagination back then, and I wanted something more than cars that tried to look like airplanes. I wanted the stars. There is nothing as hungry as the imagination of the young.
I was fortunate to work for NASA for a short while in my career, writing software for the Pioneer spacecraft. I've gone on a bit since then, still in the IT industry and laid a lot of networks. But nothing compares with having been lucky enough to work on something that fired my imagination as a boy.
Did I mention that's a beautiful spaceship? If form follows function, then something with that form has to be awfully functional.
There's our Orient Express, people. It's a short step from tourists to passengers.
I salute you, Sir Richard.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
It's either "has released its" or "have released their".
At the bottom of the
The problem with VASIMR is that it's way too complicated for what you get: an engine which varies between "inefficient, and not enough thrust to do anything with minimum thrust requirements" and "moderately efficient, with much less thrust"
If you want to get off planet, VASIMR does you no good. You need Chemical or nuclear rockets, and nuclear rockets aren't clean enough to use on a populated planet.
The problem with 3He, though, is that that the price is high, but the demand is low. Nothing about collecting it from the moon (which doesn't have much of it at all, just higher concentration than the earth's crust, which would be useful if we weren't getting the current supply from natural gas pockets....) will increase the demand for it in the near-term. Maybe in fifty or a hundred years if fusion becomes practical and just can't be done with more available isotopes, but i've got my money on "we realize that fission is more than enough for the next fifty-thousand years, so fusion research will have plenty of time to figure out how to use elements we have in abundance on the ground"
You want commercial space? Bring costs down. That's it. Getting stuff into space is so ridiculously expensive that communications companies are talking about using airships and solar-powered drones instead of satellites for many purposes.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I mean seriously, dragging a person into orbit, life support systems, food, etc. Thats a major waste of time and effort. Want to invest, invest in the people who call BS and put unmanned, fairly smart computer-controlled ships in orbit for profit. The rest is just for tourists.
Seriously? Well, on the moon, without any atmosphere, you could use a scale. Otherwise you could use the Idea Gas Law
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
Visual source safe?
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
One thing no one said anything about is the "facebook" compatibility. If they restrain electronics inside why the hell would a millionaire's daughter take such a trip... If she can't upload pictures to Facebook, that's not fun for her!
If they seek for complete success, they need to enable wireless on board so people can tweet their pics at real time and even stream video to their loved (less wealthier) ones.
But we have enough technology to burn a hole through you, meatbags!
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Can that thing actually achieve orbit? Is it really a spaceship if it can't? Otherwise I'd think it's just a glorified bottle rocket...
We won't see it but our grandchildren might.
Perhaps, but there are certainly other important metals (platinum group, rare earths, etc) on near Earth asteroids.
I'm certainly no expert on the subject but is this even really "space" flight or just "extremely high altitude" flight? At best I think all they have there is simply a novel launching system that allows "slightly cheaper than nasa" low earth orbit, nothing revolutionary in my opinion. But I suppose its a start in the right direction.
I do however applaud the trend towards privatizing space travel. I think a corportation with some financial incentive and without all the red tape can do this much more efficiently than the government possibly could.
Some have commented that Space Ship Two is only a thrill ride. That may be so for now but the company is already on record as saying that if SS2 is successful, then there will be a SS3 that will be orbital. There is some speculation that SS3 will be only hypersonic point to point but if there is money in it, I am sure Branson will go for an orbital verson some day.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
This is cool. Now when NASA finally gets to Mars, they'll be able to stop at the Virgin Galactic Megastore and get some souvenirs for the kids.
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
I know this thing is sub-orbital, but in theory, how far could it go, if you let it go?
It seems to me that your next tourist market might be launching it in the US and landing it in, say, Japan. It would hit a market a bit like the Concorde: a somewhat faster trip with a really high markup for coolness.
I doubt you'd make it a daily flight, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could drum up enough business to make a flight from the US to Japan and back once a month. Or maybe even once a week, once the price tag comes down below six figures.
"The problem with GOLD is that if you had a huge gold nugget sitting in space, some have said it wouldn't be worth the cost of de-orbiting it."
Well, you can deorbit a solid gold asteroid itself fairly cheaply.
It's paying compensation to the next of kin of several hundred million vaporised civilians that's the expensive part.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
No way! It should have been the "Galactica"!
My google-fu has failed me. Will there be a place to watch this live online?
You sure about that? R?-Unit?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
they can get George Lucas to fix it.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
...that the name Enterprise is translation from its native Ferengi name.
SpaceShipTwo will be unveiled after darkness has fallen over the Mojave Desert to the sound of a space-themed anthem from Britain's biggest DJs, Above & Beyond. Fittingly titled "Buzz" the track will sample Buzz Aldrin's original moon landing dialogue. Following the naming by Governors Richardson and Schwarzenegger, the DJs will also perform an exclusive set at the celebration cocktail party which will follow and feature the first ever IceBar in the desert hosted by Absolut and the world famous Swedish IceHotel. All the guests will be protected from the desert cold by designer space jackets supplied by PUMA. Finally, to close off the celebrations, all the guests will have the opportunity to view the stunning night skies using specialist telescopes supplied by Ron Dantowitz of the Clay Observatory whose unique tracking cameras followed SS1 into space during the epic flights of 2004.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It is a translation of an ancient Ferengi concept, meaning "a business organization".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
nuclear rockets aren't clean enough to use on a populated planet.
Why does this keep getting repeated? An Orion-type launch would require less than 1000 nuclear devices of about .15 kT yield each. Considering that the US and Soviet Union test thousands of devices with much high yields with minimal environmental impact, using nuclear rockets aren't the doomsday scenario that people think.
So you're saying that to make sure the stories in the Star Trek films stay factually correct (in their fictional fantasy way), Trek fans are duty bound to destroy the Virgin Space Ship and make sure it never flies? :-)
..It's about where aviation was in the first 20 years or so in the last century, give them time.
So, how long till someone vandalizes the V to a U?
This whole project isn't going to last past its first accident. Some millionaire going up in flames will kill idea of space tourism.
weight of canister with gas - weight of canister without gas= weight of the gas
duh.
Clamp a couple of rockets on it and crash it into death valley
That explains the Bush Administration and Iraq. If so, September 11th WAS an inside job.
Gold Nuggets are valuable, but no one would want a gold pancake.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
WK2 is not fly-by-wire. In fact there is no hydraulic boost, even. Its control surfaces are all human powered by long composite cables.
The WK2 is also fully aerobatic, so it will see high loadings. It was designed for them.
Disclaimer - I work at Scaled Composites, and I am not at liberty to discuss any proprietary information. The information provided above is publicly acknowledged and available from other sources.
-- Len
The actual press release:
http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/virgin-galactic-unveils-spaceshiptwo-the-worlds-first-commercial-manned-spaceship/
with more pictures:
http://www.virgingalactic.com/multimedia/album/spaceshiptwo-unveil/
If it's strip mining, then get your bare ass to mars.
Private space industry has existed since the dawn of the space age.
Boeing, LockMart, Arianespace, etc. have been making a profit off of space for decades.
Which still leaves the original question: is it worth more, or less than the gold asteroid in question to launch a rocket big enough to contain a rocket big enough to deorbit the gold asteroid?
Considering that the US and Soviet Union tested thousands of devices with much high yields with minimal environmental impact
There, fixed that for you.
Minimal global environmental impact perhaps, but certainly not local. Maralinga/Bikini Atoll/Bits of Nevada (and no doubt chunks of the former USSR) are all still uncomfortably hot.
And seeing as just about any environmental release of anything even suggested to be slightly radioactive results in the Green equivalent of "release the hounds!", I don't see any orion-type systems being available any time soon.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Huh? Are you posting from the 1960's? There haven't been air burst tests in the US or the USSR for a long time.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you think 3He has no demand, just try and buy some, as I did. You can't, it's on total allocation for government uses only. You can buy a neutron detector tube, which a lot like a proportional counter, with several cubic inches of 3He in it for a mere 3-4000 dollars. Yup.
I needed one and thought making my own would be cheaper (I am a fusor hobbyist), but nope, can't get the gas period in the USA unless you're government from any of the suppliers that list it -- I tried very hard, much harder than I had to try to get deuterium which is my main reactor fuel.
We don't get it from natural gas or oil wells which do have He, they don't have much 3He at all, ppb at most, and it's hard to get any of the lighter isotope out of it.
We get it from decaying tritium, which we don't make much of anymore, as we're not in that cold war and needing to make weapons.
Whether there is enough on the moon to pay for getting it is certainly the hope of us space flight fans, and has been for awhile -- it's been collecting solar wind for a few billion years now. I have heard numbers from "no way" to "yah, there's tons of it" all from fairly respectable sources in the space science world, so who actually knows?
Don't all go there at once, but there's a nice forum (few flames, people use real names and such, and are mostly pretty smart) about hobby fusion here:
http://www.fusor.net/board/quicklist.php?site=fusor&s=3
I didn't make it clicky as this site can definately not take a slashdotting, and one of us pays for the bandwidth out of pocket, but there are some pretty serious heavy hitters hanging out there. Some of us are doing about as well as world governments and on a comparative shoe string -- no PHBs makes a large difference to the rate you can do science.
We are applying the open source model to science, and it's working out pretty well in this case. You can search for "Doug Coulter" to see my comments and recent record fusion run.
To be fair, this method would give inconsistent results unless the measurement was taken while the gas was at a set pressure.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
A couple of points:
You need to have a better chance of making money before businesses will consider investing.
How do you weigh helium????
Step one: Bolt a scale to the ceiling...
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
nuclear rockets aren't clean enough to use on a populated planet.
Why does this keep getting repeated. There are other types of nuclear rockets other than the Orion style. NERVA rockets were successfully tested by NASA back in the day. They did not spew radioactive exhaust. The propellant never touched the reactives. A gas core nuclear rocket would be even safer, not having a nuclear core that could melt.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
How far off is this from the fabled 3-hour New York to Tokyo flight?
It's paying compensation to the next of kin of several hundred million vaporised civilians that's the expensive part.
Yeah, but that's where all that gold comes in handy.
VASIMR isn't what you're lookign for when it comes to going back and forth to the Moon and NEOs. Mars and further out, and keeping ISS in a stable orbit, sure.
This is blinging
People confuse nuclear rockets with dirty bombs
This is blinging
In Manchester there is a franchisee of the Virgin group that operates a store selling bridal apparel and accessories.
It's called "Virgin Brides".
Low yield nukes are dirtier than medium/high yield ones. You need a certain minimum amount of fissile material to start the explosion, and for such small yields, the only way to make it work is a very dirty bomb.
You take an empty tank, weigh it, fill it with helium, and weigh it again. The difference in weight is the helium.
Or, you obtain some in a container of known volume, measure the temperature and pressure, and convert to mass using basic high-school chemistry.
Or, chill it until it turns to liquid, pour it in a cup, and put it on a scale.
Further methods are left as an exercise to the reader.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Let me blunt: God bless you and everyone else on your team and of course Burt Rutan and Branson as well.
You and SpaceX and XCOR and Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems and Bigelow Aerospace all the rest.
You are our future, there will be setbacks and I know your team already has suffered but humanity will prevail as long as people like you exist.
A sincere thank you from Europe.
California, Alaska, and the other gold rushes you mention were already in areas which had been "explored." Yes, once you find gold, they'll be plenty of folks running over to jump your claim. But they won't be the ones doing the exploring.
So if the US knew gold was there (because they had "explored" these places), then why wasn't the US mining this gold as soon as they found it? The answer is that exploration is not a binary thing. It's not on or off. These gold rushes explored these regions in a new and productive way.
Actually, the land-based bits of Bikini are uncomfortably hot. The underwater bits of the coral reefs used for US nuke testing - because humans don't live on the nearby land - are some of the best diving on Earth.
Sea launch platform + Orion = a clean and safe ticket off this rock.
The US actually designed a shoulder launched atomic bomb. It wasn't really that powerful, (well actually it was incredibly impressive compared to conventional shoulder fired weapons) but it released quite a lot of radiation. It was intended to be used as an area denial weapon. Fire it into the path of an approaching army/tank battalion, and they would be forced to stop and go around the area that was hit by the shoulder fired bomb.
That's certainly true, but they probably wouldn't have gotten to that point as quickly as they did without NASA developing and handing them the technologies, or at least subsidizing the development of those technologies.
I think the point the parent was trying to make is that governments have been leading development in space since the beginning. While it is still quite meager compared to what is happening on the government side, endeavors such as SS2, developed to make money and without government support, suggest that commercial companies leading the development of space may be just over the horizon.
...Or maybe SS2 is just a dead end, but I prefer to be an optimist.
So what? The point it, the OP is wrong. Period. There has been a private space industry for decades, making a profit selling goods and services to other private industries. NASA and other government space activities really represent a small (however very well publicized) portion of the space industry.
It's actually quite sad, but I've found that the vocal majority of the space advocacy community to be generally rather ill informed. Most just repeat the same articles of faith (like the OP's) without knowledge or understanding of the facts.
Again, so what? That doesn't change the facts one bit, the OP's assertion is dead wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of more space access, etc. etc.. But I'm a realist. I deal in facts, not smokescreens and spin, and emphatically not in the urban legends that permeate the space advocacy community.