SpaceShipTwo Tests Its Rocket Engine and Goes Supersonic 103
ehartwell writes "It's official. This morning, after WhiteKnightTwo released SpaceShipTwo at an altitude of around 50,000 feet, pilots Mark Stucky and Mike Alsbury ignited the engine for a roughly 16-second blast. After the engine cutoff, the plane coasted back to its landing back at the Mojave airport. Virgin Galactic tweeted that the pilots confirmed 'SpaceShipTwo exceeded the speed of sound on today's flight!' Its predecessor, SpaceShipOne, first went supersonic December 17, 2003."
Speed? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it taking Virgin Galactic so long for development? Is it a financing or technical issue?
SpaceX was founded in 2002 and is already making re-supply missions to the ISS. Granted that's not quite the same as human spaceflight but it seems like there's a lot faster advancement occurring at SpaceX than at Virgin Galactic.
Re:Terribly Exciting - 10 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
I got a chance to meet Rutan a few years ago here in Colorado Springs at the USAFA - he spoke passionately to the cadets about the fact that when he started in aerospace the speed/power/altitude curve was bent upwards, and then after the shuttle it bent back over itself into decline (think about the fact that the SR-71 is the fastest aircraft in the world right now, and we haven't built a new one in a LONG time). Then he talked about his work, building year after year on the EZ and other aircraft to become an expert at composite fabrication and aircraft.
The gist of his talk was loosely - `get out there and do it - and this time STAY`. I'm pretty sure if you asked him why Scaled is running so "slowly" you'll get an earful about how much they've learned. What is missing from Scaled is the money and industry savvy that Elon pumped into SpaceX. Scaled was really only made to win the X prize, and even with Brason on-board hyping the hell out of it, Rutan is not a "run flat-out" kind of guy. A big difference between the software engineer mindset (Elon) and the test-pilot "I damn sure hope this plane flys" aerospace engineers.
These flights have nothing to do really with space (Score:5, Interesting)
The bigger goal, IMO is being able to enable flight from the US/Europe to Australia in a matter of hours by a "plane" jumping into low Earth orbit and circling the globe in 2 hours. Imagine being able to "jump" to the other side of the Earth in an 1 hour? A 2 hour flight to China? Australia? Europe?
It takes 88 minutes in LOE to circle the globe.
It would simply be revolutionary. IMO that is the near term end goal of Branson's interest in space flight. I think the "manned space flights" are tangential to what the immediate goals are. Hammering out the science to allow cheap cross earth flights, is simply incredible.
Re:Speed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:These flights have nothing to do really with sp (Score:4, Interesting)
They're not even in the ballpark.
Energy is not hard to come by. SpaceShipOne generated about a sixth of the delta-v it'd need to reach orbit. I consider that fairly close given the type of engine and relatively low mass fraction. SST is supposed to have slightly better performance in that regard. But neither is intended for this particular role.
But I think naysayers are overstating the difficulty of more delta v and a different thermal protection system. Sure, it might need a radical vehicle redesign. But guess who demonstrated that they can design such suborbital vehicles?
Re:Speed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is it taking Virgin Galactic so long for development? Is it a financing or technical issue?
SpaceX was founded in 2002 and is already making re-supply missions to the ISS. Granted that's not quite the same as human spaceflight but it seems like there's a lot faster advancement occurring at SpaceX than at Virgin Galactic.
They are approaching it from a cost-is-everything perspective, instead of an orbit-is-everything perspective. The SpaceX supply missions run at least $20,000 per orbited kilo. For a person to buy a ticket, even if they were treated as cargo, would cost in the $1.5M range. For Virgin Galactic to say that they will get a human up and down (safely) for around 1/10th that price, requires approaching the problem a lot differently (for example, a multi vehicle setup).
For Virgin, I don't think it's a financing or technical issue, because the purpose of Virgin Galactic is marketing for the Virgin brand, not producing a fleet of passenger-carrying spaceships. It puts Branson's brand in front of geeks, and geeks are a legitimate market demographic who can be manipulated by marketing propaganda just like any other market demographic. After all, smart geeks like to think they are investing their money in smart, geeky ways. As long as Branson keeps up the appearance of creating that fleet, he wins -- geeks will be able to cite Virgin Galactic in defense of the presence of any Branson-tainted investment in their portfolio, even if Virgin Galactic never puts another single human in space.
For SpaceX, cost-is-everything is indeed one driving factor, but getting payload tariffs as low a possible is a means to an end, not the end itself. Unlike Branson, Musk is a neo-industrialist who is deliberately and successfully following in the footsteps of Harriman, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller. He is using technology to create a self-financing infrastructure that will enable the (lucrative, he expects) exploitation of off-planet resources, in almost the exact same way his predecessors used technology 125 years ago to create the infrastructure necessary to exploit terrestrial resources (and along the way created the social, political, and economic system that put America at the top of the industrial food-chain for nearly a century.) Musk's game plan is thus materially little different than that of any robber baron from the late 19th century. It remains to be seen whether or not history will repeat itself -- I haven't heard any manifest-destiny claims being issued from Musk's PR department yet, but I imagine it's only a matter of time, if he sticks to his current plan.