Virgin Galactic Dumps Scaled Composites For Spaceship Two

PvtVoid writes Virgin Galactic, following an aggressive schedule to build a replacement for the Spaceship Two which crashed in October, is doing so without partner Scaled Composites, according to the Los Angeles Times. Kevin Mickey, the president of Scaled Composites, confirmed this week that his company would no longer be involved in testing. He said Scaled would still work as a consultant to Virgin Galactic.

Comments

That's a shame

[NotDrWho]

I remember watching the great documentary Black Sky long before Virgin was even involved. Scaled Composites and Burt Rutan were the real focus back then, long before Richard Branson's ego occupied most of their hanger space.

Re:That's a shame

[Chris Mattern]

Did you rush out to buy a Power Glove after watching the Wizard?

Well, of course. I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.

"A hangar in Mojave"

[l0ungeb0y]

Is that what they are calling Burt Rutan's Garage these days?

Re:"A hangar in Mojave"

[Bruce Perens]

That's actually what it's like at "Mojave Spaceport". Hangers of small aviation practicioners and their junk. Gary Hudson, Burt Rutan, etc. Old aircraft and parts strewn about. Left-over facilities from Rotary Rocket used by flight schools. A medium-sized facility for Orbital. Some big facilities for BAE, etc. An aircraft graveyard next door.

Re:"A hangar in Mojave"

[Richard_at_work]

Burt Rutan retired from Scaled Composites in 2011 and has had very little to do with them since.

Re:"A hangar in Mojave"

[spiritplumber]

And it shows.

Re:"A hangar in Mojave"

[l0ungeb0y]

Maybe that was my point -- that the "hanger" was putting it back inte Rutan's capable hands. Sorry if my humor was too subtle.

Scaled Composites renamed

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Will change name to Downsized Composites now.

Re:Scaled Composites renamed

[Virtucon]

Actually since 2007 They're a division of Northrop Grumman and responsible for the X47B. They have a free creative hand but let's say instead of advances in aviation of a civilian nature they're now in the military business. They still have contracts with Virgin Galactic so don't expect them to be completely out of the picture. Burt retired in 2011 so he's no longer involved with any of it.

Re: Scaled Composites renamed

[jd]

No big surprise. The military are willing to invest what it takes for what they need. Military entities are, by necessity, pitifully naive when it comes to anything useful, but once they specify what they think they want, they don't shirk at the cost, they get the job done. A pointless job, perhaps, but nonetheless a completed job.

The corporate sector wants money. Things don't ever have to get done, the interest on monies paid is good enough and there hasn't been meaningful competition in living memory. Because one size never fits all, it's not clear competition is even what you want. Economic theory says it isn't.

The only other sector, as I have said many times before, that is remotely in the space race is the hobbyist/open source community. In other words, the background behind virtually all the X-Prize contestants, the background behind the modern waverider era, the background that the next generation of space enthusiasts will come from (Kerbel Space Program and Elite: Dangerous will have a similar effect on the next generation of scientists and engineers as Star Trek the old series and Doctor Who did in the 1960s, except this time it's hands-on).

I never thought the private sector would do bugger all, it's not in their blood. They're incapable of innovation on this kind of scale. It's not clear they're capable of innovation at all, all the major progress is bought or stolen from researchers and inventors.

No, with civilian government essentially walking away, there's only two players in the field and whilst the hobbyists might be able to crowdsource a launch technology, it'll be a long time before they get to space themselves. The military won't get there at all, nobody to fight, so the hobbyists will still be first with manned space missions, but it's going to take 40-50 years at best.

We have the technology today to get a manned mission to Alpha Centauri and back. It would take 15-20 years for the journey and the probability of survival is poor, but we could do it. By my calculations, it would take 12 years to build the components and assemble them in space. Only a little longer than it took for America to get the means to go to the moon and back. We could actually have hand-held camera photos taken in another solar system and chunks of rocky debris from the asteroid belt there back on Earth before Mars One launches its first rocket AND before crowdfunded space missions break the atmosphere.

All it takes is putting personal egos and right wing politics on the shelf, locking the cupboard and then lowering it into an abandoned mineshaft, which should then be sealed with concrete.

Re: Scaled Composites renamed

[Beck_Neard]

> We have the technology today to get a manned mission to Alpha Centauri and back. It would take 15-20 years for the journey and the probability of survival is poor, but we could do it.

Why would you want to send a manned mission as the first mission? A robotic probe should be the first mission. 20 years for alpha centauri and back translates to about half the speed of light. I highly doubt that any current or foreseeable technology could get a probe to that speed. Not even fusion-powered rockets could, and we don't have them. A fission-powered rocket might realistically be able get up to 0.5% c (1500 km/s), in which case it would take a millenium and a half to complete the mission. Some more intelligent proposals like huge orbital linear accelerators might accelerate a tiny robotic probe to 10% the speed of light but even then you're looking at a 90 year journey.

Your scenario sounds insanely over-optimistic, to put it mildly.

Re: Scaled Composites renamed

[jd]

Solar sail can achieve 25% light speed, according to NASA, and Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away.

You want a manned mission (with robots doing all the actual work) to determine if the conventional wisdom that a manned mission to the outer planets is physically impossible is correct. Even if the pilot dies, you learn the furthest a manned mission can reach. There's seven billion people, you can afford to expend one or two. Ideally, they'd be volunteers and there'll be no shortage of them, but if you're concerned about valuable life, send members of the Tea Party.

Re: Scaled Composites renamed

[Beck_Neard]

> Solar sail can achieve 25% light speed, according to NASA, and Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away.

Citation needed. According to figures I've read, solar sails can reach a maximum of about 60 km/s. That's several orders of magnitude lower than 25% c.

Laser-propelled sails might be theoretically able to get up to 25% c but that's definitely not currently-available technology. We do not have anything close to the kind of lasers that would be required for this.

About manned/unmanned, it seems kind of pointless to spend all that time and money on a mission purposefully designed/expected to fail. My advice: never take on a management position.

No, you want a robotic mission that is as small and conservative as you can make it, to test out if short-duration (less than millenia) interstellar travel is possible at all, even in principle. For all we know, radiation and interstellar gas could prevent it from being possible. Once you know that you can send electronics to another star safely, then you send humans (if you need to).

> you learn the furthest a manned mission can reach.

This is a meaningless question. There's no 'distance limit', only a velocity limit. In the trivial case of a generation ship (or just assuming Earth is your starship), a manned 'mission' can 'reach' at least across thousands of light years, as Earth has traveled that much since humans evolved.

Re: Scaled Composites renamed

[gl4ss]

furthest uh by what means? like, do some people expect that there's some quartermass movie style field at some point there that just kills people and isn't visible on any instrumentation ?

plenty of stuff to be done without manned missions still..

-lassi

Let's hope ...

[janoc]

That this isn't going to come back to them in the form of another smouldering crater, except with paying passengers this time.

Delays and problems notwithstanding, dumping a company that has essentially designed and developed the entire thing and handing the project to someone else who doesn't have the know-how about this particular system sounds really unwise, especially after the enormous amount of resources that were spent already. Probably the wealthy investors started to push on Branson and Rutan didn't want to compromise on something, so they decided to bypass them. Or Scaled isn't trusted to not mess something up again as it wasn't a first serious safety-related incident there.

One way or another, this isn't really a confidence inspiring move from an engineering point of view - I cannot imagine the motivation and morale of the people building the craft after being told that no, they won't be allowed to be involved in the testing, except as consultants.

Re:Let's hope ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if this is as big of a deal as it sounds, especially given some of the comments made.

I suspect this is being done as more of a reorganization-for-liability-reasons sort of thing.

It's pretty rare for an aircraft's flight test pilots to be a part of the organization OTHER than the one owning the aircraft.

For commercial airliners built for multiple customers, the company designing/building the aircraft usually has at least a few test articles that they have full ownership of. These get tested with their own pilots.

For aircraft designed/built/integrated under contract for a specific customer, frequently from the beginning, the airframe is owned by the customer and not by the manufacturer. So for liability reasons (well, at least I'm assuming liability reasons), even if the manufacturer is doing 90% of the work of flight testing (planning the test, determining the testing schedule and functional test elements, etc.), the actual pilot-in-control for the flight test will be an employee of the customer.

For example, where I work, 90% of the flight test work and 99% of the development/manufacturing/integration work is done by us or our subcontractors. However for nearly all test flights, the pilot in control is a DCMA employee. I'm assuming, again, that this is for some sort of liability management reasons. It's probably less painful paperwork if your own guy crashes "your" aircraft than if someone else does, even if that someone else was the manufacturer/developer of "your" aircraft.

Re:Let's hope ...

[D-Fly]

Reading the Effing Article suggests that this was a more or less planned separation, even before the crash. They were doing a contracted design/build for Virgin, and were supposed to handoff the project after successful completion of these test flights; Virgin decided (for publicity reasons I suspect) to take nominal control now. Also, note that Scaled Composites is now an (autonomous) unit of Northrop, so the end of their direct partnership with Virgin isn't a very big deal for Rutan and his team.

Re:Let's hope ...

[hondo77]

It isn't a big deal for Rutan because he retired a few years ago.

Re:Let's hope ...

[FlyHelicopters]

For commercial airliners built for multiple customers, the company designing/building the aircraft usually has at least a few test articles that they have full ownership of. These get tested with their own pilots.

^ This..

Boeing has test pilots on full time salary who do nothing but fly for Boeing...

Boeing also owns the planes and builds them...

But keep in mind that Virgin Galactic is the airline here, with a spaceplane being built for them. So VG shouldn't really be involved in tested, it should be 100% within Scaled, unless VG actually owns this thing, in which case it should be 100% within VG.

Re:Let's hope ...

[tipo159]

Scaled Composites' role in Virgin Galactic has been winding down for a while. IIRC, the LA Times story mentions this, possibly in a quote from the Scaled Composites guy.

The Spaceship Company was formed as a joint effort between Virgin and Scaled (Branson and Rutan). Scaled built the first WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, but the plan was for TSC to build the subsequent ones. Virgin bought out Scaled's part of TSC in 2012.

Why is it surprising that Scaled's role is continuing to wind down? Isn't that the way that things work with them anyway? They work with clients to develop designs and build prototypes, not refine a product (i.e., the planned Virgin Galactic fleet).

who writes this shit?

[WindBourne]

VG did NOT dump SC.
This was planned for several years.

Re:who writes this shit?

[rwa2]

Yeah, sounds like someone is tweaking the headline so they can pick up some cheap stock after it gets dumped.

From actually RTFA, it sounds like VG is just assuming responsibility for further testing. The accident sounds tragic, but it looks like it may have been the co-pilot's ... "fault" is a strong word, but they mentioned he unlocked the stabilizer a bit too early and then it automatically feathered when it wasn't supposed to.

SC may do good work, but these kinds of things happen, unfortunately. But it's really bad press for VG, and I can see their board upset about why they're letting a relatively "small" engineering outfit determine their fate. It sounds like VG should be in charge of this project and their own future now, for better or for worse. Now they're fully responsible for the risks and can certainly handle them differently.

Re:who writes this shit?

[rwa2]

Eh, I've had it happen to me... I won a small paper airplane competition (really more of an art project) years ago, in just one category out of several, and not really anything notable. But all of the news sites ran a little blurb with the headline "Engineer from $AEROSPACE_GIANT (NYSE:$BLAH) wins airplane competition"

I try not to assume too much these days, like that the corporate-controlled media isn't in it for the money if there's money to be made.

Plus, they subliminally put the word "dump" right there in the headline next to the company names, and you know all the robotic stock traders make trades automatically off of the incoming stream of news feeds.

Not a good idea

[Bruce Perens]

SS2 has not completed testing and it is probable that there will be a need for redesign of one or more components. So, this is a really bad time to have the hand-off. Publicity isn't a good reason.

Slashdot comments; the truths behind silly rumours

[seoras]

I read Slashdot not for the "journalism", but because you always get the real story from folks commenting on here.
So, yeah, another sensationalistic article (aka "click bait") all over the internet today.
I come to Slashdot to hear the truths behind silly rumours...