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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.
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.
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
From what I understand, the White Knight II cockpits act as a simulator for the space ship, with the cockpits being identical between mothership and spaceship. One cockpit flies the plane, the other acts as a simulator. I am guessing both can fly the plane in case of emergency.
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.
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.
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.
You're right, Virgin Space Ship does indeed make the 40 year old geeky technicians sound bad.
Don't forget the Garlic Bubble!
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.
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.
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.
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
I am curious about those "regulatory requirements" that "guide the unveiling".
Anybody know what that is all about?
I'd like 1 kHz worth please.
The Code Master
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
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?!
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.
The same argument, circa late 16th and early 17th century:
I mean seriously, dragging a person across the ocean, water, food, etc. That's a major waste of time and effort. Want to invest, invest in the people who rightly put to sea and run trade vessels around Africa and into the Indian Ocean. The rest is just for fools.
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
Richard Branson disagrees with you.
And now we know why we're all talking about his business and not yours.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
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.
What part of this smells profit? None. It's nothing but a bunch of rich people throwing money around to impress each other.
Ooohh! Ooohh! Pick me! I can figure out the part that says profit!
Hint: It's the part where you said there are "rich people throwing money [at you] to impress each other."
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
Technically anything over the 100km mark counts as space because, at that altitude, the velocity you need to generate enough lift to keep you airborne is equal to the orbital velocity for that altitude.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!