SpaceShipTwo Flies Free For the First Time 164
mknewman writes "SpaceShipTwo was successfully dropped off its WhiteKnight 2 mothership today from an altitude of 45,000 feet and glided to a landing in the Mojave airstrip." From the article: "More than 300 would-be passengers have already put down more than $45 million in deposits for $200,000-a-seat rides on the plane. The experience will include a roller-coaster rocket ride to a spaceworthy altitude of more than 65 miles, several minutes of weightlessness, a picture-window view of the curving Earth beneath the black sky of space ... and spaceflight bragging rights for years afterward."
This is how train and air travel began, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly how train and air travel began, too. The rich will get to play with it at first, then businessmen will get to use it, and finally it'll be available to the rank-and-file citizenry of the world. Within two decades, we'll likely all be able to fly on space trips.
No need for hurry. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think I'll wait for iPhone version 8. SpaceShipTen will carry people more safely, and all the way into orbit, for only $10,000, I'm guessing.
Re:This is how train and air travel began, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly how train and air travel began, too. The rich will get to play with it at first, then businessmen will get to use it, and finally it'll be available to the rank-and-file citizenry of the world. Within two decades, we'll likely all be able to fly on space trips.
Except trains and planes took people from where they were to where they wanted to go, for traveling between two earth-based locations space is mostly a big detour. We need some targets out there (space stations, moon base, mars base, something) before traveling in space makes any financial sense. In the big picture these people just lift off, circle the landing strip and come back down. They don't go anywhere.
Offensive (Score:0, Interesting)
From the article:
"These things are so simple that a grandmother could fly it".
As a 49 yo grandmother, c programmer and feminist, I find this offensive.
Re:The ride is not worth it, yet. (Score:3, Interesting)
The figures I've seen for SS2's delta-V range from 1,400 to 2,000.
The high end is correct. I did the calculation [nasaspaceflight.com] (the cost of getting to orbit from my post is incorrect, Rei above is correct on the delta-v required for orbit) for SS1 and got 2,250 m/s total (including the contribution from the carrier plane) which is around a quarter what you'd need to get to orbit. With a higher ISP engine (say kerosene/lox) and a higher mass fraction, you can achieve orbit.
Now, getting that factor of four more delta-v (plus the other side of the coin, a thermal protection system that can dissipate the additional energy) may well require a complete redesign of the SS2. But Scaled Composites has demonstrated that it has a team that can do complete redesigns. And by the time any orbital vehicle has come along, Virgin Galactic will have demonstrated that they can handle such vehicles with things like logistics, flight, reliability, fast turn-around, etc. And that they can make money or at least run a loss-leader effectively.
Re:This is how train and air travel began, too. (Score:2, Interesting)
Some will, but not enough to keep the program running. A plane the size of the Concorde needs hundreds of people per day to keep operating and funding its fuel-guzzling engines. Not that many people are willing to pay $5k/seat, so it went bust. Making the plane smaller won't work either; the fuel usage won't fall that much, so the ticket price will increase greatly, further reducing the number of people willing to pay for a seat (the biggest planes like 747s are the most fuel-efficient per passenger).