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."

Comments

Dead ringer for Pegasus

[benjfowler]

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.

Re:Dead ringer for Pegasus

[Overzeetop]

A couple of things: Air launches are dangerous - you've got a whole bunch of explosives strapped to the body of a very large aircraft which is carrying humans (pilots, support personnel). This may not sound like a big deal, but it is. The FAA makes certification of a new aircraft a monumental task. Orbital found out that just modifying their jet to carry Pegasus required a very lengthy (and expensive) re-certification process. The initial payload is limited to the capacity of the aircraft minus the booster. That's actually a pretty big deal.

Disclaimer: I worked with the NASA group that designed the original PegSat (first Pegasus payload) and I worked for Orbital, but not their flight group - most of what I know is from the trade rags of the time.

I used to think Branson was just a glory hound...

[Picass0]

... 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.

Calculate this

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.