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.

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

[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.

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.

who writes this shit?

[WindBourne]

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

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.