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Virgin Galactic Announces New Satellite Launch Vehicle
An anonymous reader writes "Virgin Galactic has announced a new craft called LauncherOne, which it will use to put satellites into orbit. 'It appears to leverage some of the hardware already developed for SpaceShipTwo, Virgin's suborbital tourist vehicle. Like SpaceShipTwo, the new rocket rides up underneath Virgin's big carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, to about 50,000 feet. After release, the rocket drops for approximately four seconds before the first stage ignites. After the first stage burns out, a second stage takes the satellite to orbit.' Launching from a moving airplane eliminates many cost and scheduling concerns inherent to ground-based launches, and it's much easier to reach a broad range of trajectories for putting objects into orbit. According to the press release, LauncherOne will get objects up to 225kg into orbit for less than $10 million."
That's why I bought a Saturn.
Orbital Sciences build something very similar, called Pegasus. It's air launched, is quite reliable, can throw 440kg into LEO, has a very good launch record -- and costs roughly as much ($11m a pop, if memory serves correctly.)
Branson is nuts if he thinks he can prevail against Orbital in this segment of the launch market.
... and to some extent he is as the CEO and the figurehead for Virgin. But he does ambitious stuff nobody else is doing.
I hope he makes mad profits in the space business and other companies see the potential.
Personal space travel?
I am not an expert but some quick calculations reveal that if they can launch 225kg payload for $10M that puts it at pretty close to the same cost other vehicles have been providing for years, like an Athena 2 or Taurus launch vehicle (which can also support much heavier payloads). Is this unique in that it is specifically for smaller payloads? Or, is the ability to do launches "wherever, whenever"? This has interesting implications but doesnt seem like it would shake up the market too much given that most satellites are planned out pretty far in advance of going to orbit.
$10M for 225 kg is more than $40000 per kg. That's even more than Shuttle's effective price-to-orbit for its payload. Once they get their price at least 10 times down then they can start thinking about competing with real rockets.
I can't say announceing a commercial satellite capability's much of a surprise. I just wonder when Branson's going to announce a New York-Tokyo or Los Angeles-London passenger route?
Since the Concorde was mothballed the uber-wealthy have had private jets at their disposal, and that's certainly more convenient then aerial cattle-cars but they don't go much faster and if time's money the time of the wealthy is reduced to the same value as that of us proles by the limitations of current jet aircraft technology.
Would people who could afford the Concorde pony up to be wisked around the globe in less time then it currently takes to cross a medium-sized country? I'd say probably so.
Say you got a 200kg sattelite you want in orbit. How do you get it to launch on a normal rocket? Not alone for sure, it may be the same kilo price but those rockets are not going to go up for just you. Which means you got to fit yourself around the schedules and requirements of others. Want an odd orbit? Sorry, our rocket ain't going there.
Sending cargo by ocean vessel is insanely cheap. Pity if you got a parcel to be delivered to Switzerland. The right vehicle, at the right cost.
Lets just assume for a second that a self-made billionaire knows more about making money then all of slashdot put together.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
People have been saying for the last couple decades that anything going to space should be flown up as high as possible with a high altitude plane then launched from there. The weight vs fuel needed ratio goes way up because then you don't need more fuel to lift the weight of the fuel over and over in some weird logarithm thing that end up with lots and lots of fuel needed. Of course, that didn't stop them from putting a relatively ridiculous price tag on it. Isn't the whole marketing point that it's cheaper than other methods? That doesn't look cheaper to me.
When I met Richard Branson he was living on a houseboat on the Thames. Unlike many of the people who have made a lot of money, he didn't start off rich. He seems to have been successful because he is good at delegation, focusses on the bottom line, and looks after his managers. If he wants to sell space tourism, some very clever people will have worked out how it will get to the bottom line.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
That's just enough to orbit my mother in law.
I've been told his businesses have to make a business case for every publicity stunt he does, and they have to fund it. Think of it as saving some of the money spent on expensive celebrity endorsements by being your own celebrity, and it makes a lot of sense.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It was still a flop, though.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Despite the $/kg numbers, air launch IS more efficient than ground launch, and over time (after the initial cost of development has been diluted), should be significantly cheaper if only because of the fuel savings. Remember, rockets have to carry their oxidizer in big ass tanks that may also need big ass cryogenic cooling systems. Airplanes steal it from the atmosphere.
The effect is so pronounced because a plane is able to carry the rocket past what would be the Max Q point for ground launch, usually around 35,000 to 45,000 feet, which is the point where dynamic pressure (and thus fuel usage) is highest.
Dynamic pressure goes up with increasing velocity and down with thinning atmosphere, which is why it's not just at sea level.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
I wonder when Branson will announce the intent to start a passanger service?
Ever since the Concorde was grounded there hasn't been anyway for the uber-rich to get from here to there faster then us proles. I'm pretty sure there are folks who'd pay more then a few dollars to get from New York to Paris and back with time left over to flog their yacht crew for letting the boat get wet.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Dug around in Wikipedia a little and found that White Knight 2 has a carrying capacity of 35,000 lbs (~16k kilos). The X-37B is listed at 11,000 (5k) fully loaded, the crewcab version X-37C should be under 25,000 and even the old pre-composite X-15 was 34,000(15.4k). Now the X-15 was far shy of orbital velocity, but rocket design has advanced some in the 40+ years since the end of the program and building a standby vehicle for quick launch to orbit might be getting feasible.
I, like many, have mourned the decline of manned space exploration. However, I see the work of Virgin Galactec and SpaceX as reasons to hope that not all is dead.
Maybe the parts are coming together.
-Xanthos
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
Some people are thinking that the advertised cost of 10m per 225kg means that his costs are the same as Pegasus. They do not realize that branson would not start in the market at his lowest profitable point. If market price is 20k per kg, but I can do it for 5k, I'll just take the extra profit until the market catches up!
Ever read any Stephen Baxter? He's got a character called Reid Malenfant who's very Branson-esque, with some trampling-over-regulation thrown in for good measure. Thinking about it, I suspect Branson's main challenge has been red tape.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Maybe the consensus among armchair rocket scientists is it's not much benefit. Among real rocket scientists the consensus is it doubles payload over launching the same rocket from the ground. A rocket starting from sea level has the following losses:
* Gravity loss - when you are thrusting vertically, that is not adding to your orbital velocity.
* Drag loss - aerodynamic drag flying through the atmosphere resists your acceleration
* Thrust loss - rocket engines have less thrust at sea level because of air pressure x nozzle exit area.
Launching at jet airplane altitude helps with all of these, you spend more of the flight near horizontal, less drag because you are above most of the air already, and higher thrust. In addition, you get 10 km altitude and 240 m/s free from the carrier airplane.
I ran a study at Boeing on "jet boost", which is similar to air-launch except we dispense with the airplane part, and just strap fighter engines as boosters to a rocket core. We used the same trajectory program as NASA used to plan Shuttle missions, and got our engine data direct from Pratt & Whitney, so I am fairly confident we were getting accurate results.