
Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space 158
quizdog writes "The latest issue of
Wired has a story on Sir Richard Branson and the history of the Virgin Empire, focusing on his latest venture of partnering with Scaled Composites and Burt Rutan to bring the
X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne hybrid rocket technology to the point where paying passengers can slip those 'surly bonds' of the atmosphere. Starting
at just $200,000 a pop - any chance of a volume discount?" We first mentioned this a while back, but Wired's coverage is nice to see as well.
Article text (Score:2, Informative)
Richard Branson conquered the world. Now he wants to fly you to space.
By Spencer Reiss
One lightly frozen billionaire has just climbed down from the port wing of a Virgin Atlantic 747 parked at the edge of a runway at Mojave Airport. It's a blustery gray morning in California's southern desert, and Virgin in chief Richard Branson has spent more than an hour standing in the wind, waiting to tape the opening sequence of his new reality show, Rebel Billionaire. The jet's not going anywhere, eith
time to cash in my air miles (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Article text (Score:2)
This is incorrect. Branson has always succeeded by taking a different approach to business from his fellow Brits, usually involving giving customers something they want.
With his record business it was an eclectic mix of music that young people wanted to listen to
Re:Article text (Score:2)
When they see him getting up to his gimmicks, they aren't resentful, they are amused. They know that Virgin is Branson's, that is both an asset and a liability - but he is getting the business in.
Booyah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Booyah! (Score:1)
Re:Booyah! (Score:2)
If only... (Score:4, Funny)
Virgin? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Virgin? (Score:3, Funny)
yes
Don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
No, fatass -- in fact, you're gonna have to pay extra.
Virgins in Space? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Virgins in Space? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Virgins in Space? (Score:2)
Then why are MILFs so popular? (Score:2)
Hmmm.
Virgin.
MILF.
Enter cognitive dissonance, stage left.
Re:Then why are MILFs so popular? (Score:1)
Because for some people it is easier and more enjoyable to fantasize about women who might be in their reach someday. The average MILF porn chick is well within the reach of a large part of the male population while Vivid girls and the like are so out of reach that even fantasizing about them can seem unrealistic.
Re:Virgins in Space? (Score:2)
That is one expensive cherry.
(I'm so sorry >_)
Slashdotters (Score:5, Funny)
Article title (Score:2, Funny)
Where did he find manage to find a real Virgin?
Thanks... I'll be here all week.
Re:Article title (Score:1)
But if you meant a female one,
Re:Article title (Score:3, Funny)
The Virgin had a choice of being tossed in the volcano or going on the rocketship.
Standing at the edge of the volcano, she chose the latter.
I'm sorry that you are going to have to browse at -1 to see this post.
Re:Article title (Score:2)
Could have been funnier (Score:2)
Try the veal.
Re:Article title (Score:2)
Re:Article title (Score:1)
Yes, and I doubt any of them are virgins.
For a Second there (Score:4, Funny)
Allow me to be the first... (Score:2, Funny)
Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space (Score:1)
Re:Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space (Score:2)
About time (Score:1)
Re:About time (Score:5, Funny)
Re:About time (Score:2)
Re:About time (Score:2)
Of course, you'd probably want either carry-launch, tow-launch, or a joint jet/rocket hybrid (in such a case, you'd probably be burning kerosene or rp1 in your rocket so you can use the same fuel for your engines without having to reinvent them). Too much of your energy will be expended while in the atmosphere if you
This just in... (Score:1)
Virgin into space, eh? (Score:2, Funny)
$200K per ticket?! (Score:1)
So after the handful of people that are both rich & interested have taken the trip, what's Sir Richard going to do with his space travel business?
Re:$200K per ticket?! (Score:1)
Re:$200K per ticket?! (Score:2)
He's going to use the profits from the early adopters to reduce the price, and develop a much larger target market.
"a stor" (Score:2)
What's a "stor" ?
Oh, did you mean STORY?
Also, why does Slashdot report on every issue of Wired? If you want to read Wired, then get a subscription!
Re:"a stor" (Score:1)
Space Virgins (Score:2, Interesting)
Good question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Space Virgins (Score:1)
Where can I buy a ticket? (Score:4, Interesting)
Paying $200.000 for a trip that has been my dream for over 30 years is cheap, esp compared to the $20.000.000 pricetag for the Russian trip to the space station. it's a bargain and I want one, Seriously!
Re:Where can I buy a ticket? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where can I buy a ticket? (Score:2)
Of course he does, he's a
Re:Where can I buy a ticket? (Score:2)
http://www.virgingalactic.com/when.asp [virgingalactic.com]
http://www.virgingalactic.com/when.asp
Re:Where can I buy a ticket? (Score:2)
Signed up!
is there a wired.slashdot yet? (Score:1, Interesting)
not alone (Score:2)
It's the sparkling commentary we're here for.
Re:is there a wired.slashdot yet? (Score:2)
people just dont give a fuck. I wonder if I can get this
treated as a hate crime?
Sir Richard Takes Virgin in to Space (Score:2, Funny)
Virgin Brides (Score:2)
Umm.. Isn't this (Score:1)
Boooooring (Score:5, Insightful)
Space travel is controlled space travel. That means travelling into space, establishing a controlled orbit, and then a controlled descent back to earth. That's space travel.
The Wright Brother's big advance was controlled, powered flight. Lots of people could shoot a projectile from one end of the field to the other, which is all (effectively) that was accomplished by Burt Rutan.
I don't want to be a big, wet blanket here, and I don't want to say nothing has been accomplished; it was a necessary first step. But it ain't space travel. Orbital insertions are two orders of magnitude harder.
I don't want marketing, I want real space travel, and that requires being a little harsh on all the marketing that surrounds this.
Re:Boooooring (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
Does that mean I can't criticize Microsoft unless I've personally built my own multi-billion dollar operating system company?
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
Fast forward to 1979. Apple is making a killing with their Apple I and the soon to be announ
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
That'd be great... if this was the equivalent of an 8008. Which it's not.
It's the equivalent
Re:Boooooring (Score:3, Insightful)
Things will improve, in a fairly similar way I'd imagine.
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
Personally I think sitting on the top of a big rocket type thing sounds pretty exciting as travel for travels sake goes. As long as I had a few moments to look down at the earth from a long way away then I think I'd find the destination worthwhile too.
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
Like NASCAR, they will be advancing things like engine performance and safety, but the goals are for things that people will not be using in everyday life.
When the X-Prize was first announced, it was li
Re:Boooooring (Score:1)
Re:Boooooring (Score:4, Insightful)
No, orbital insertions require nearly 10 times the speed (or 100 times more energy). That doesn't mean that they are 100 times harder, and certainly not 100 times more expensive.
Getting out of the atmosphere is the hard part. Once you're in vacuum all you need to do is burn more fuel, for longer. That's easy, and fuel is cheap. And manage the reentry, which we also know how to do.
Yes, this is jus a first step, but it's a lot further towards going orbital than you seem to think.
And once you're in orbit
The Wright Brother's big advance was controlled, powered flight.
Actually, it was mostly the "controlled" part. They flew gliders before they flew powered aircraft, and they went back to gliders afterwards and had ten and thirty minute glider flights before they ever flew for that long in a powered aircraft.
One of Burt Rutan's big accomplishments with SS1 is in fact a way to safely control the reentry with the "feathering" tail.
A few errors (Score:2)
It requires a bit more than 7 times the speed (mach 22 versus 3), which is 50 times the kinetic energy.
True, it's much harder. Exponentially so, according to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. With Space Ship One's exhaust velocity of 2.5 km/s, getting to Mach 3 requires that your
Re:Boooooring (Score:1)
I say: no. "Space travel is space travel" and "Controlled space travel is controlled space travel". Since when did you get chosen to define the semantics ?
And second, I would bet that if you had the chance of being in one of these trips, you wouldn't come back without beeing moved by the event. It must be f*cking impressive. Maybe in 150 years our grand-grand children will have to take the space driving license. In the mean time, according to our times,
Re:Boooooring (Score:3, Funny)
Exactly. Let me summarize, people.
Step 1. Take a Virgin into space.
Step 2. Orbital insertion.
Step 3. PROFIT!!!
Re:Boooooring (Score:3, Informative)
How would you define "real space travel"?
Judging by the cockpit view [scaled.com], this sure seems like space travel as far as I'm concerned.
The Wright Brother's big advance was controlled, powered flight. Lots of people could shoot a projectile from one end of the field to the other, which is all (effectively) that was accomplished by Burt Rutan.
SpaceShipOne is equipped with (and make
Re:Boooooring (Score:2)
In many cases the Scaled team had to create the tools and features needed to make SpaceShipOne work. As an example, Gionta explained how the reinvented reaction control system on SpaceShipOne works:
When we're out in space, all you need to do is release a puff of air in a direction to give you a reaction force to push you the other way. That's pretty much what [a reaction control system] is. We have high-pressure air stored in bottles on the ship, and we release a li
surly bonds' of the atmosphere (Score:1)
1. I think the biggest bond to the planet is gravity, not friction.
2. Why would the "bonds" be described [bartleby.com] as sullen ill-humored, threatening, or arrogant?
Re:surly bonds' of the atmosphere (Score:2)
Re:surly bonds' of the atmosphere (Score:2)
Costs in perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
But look at the upside. The total price tag [for Virgin Galactic] is half the cost of a single Airbus A340-600 - and Virgin Atlantic ordered 26 of those last summer. In return, Branson gets bragging rights to one of the cooler breakthroughs of the early 21st century, with rocket-powered marketing opportunities that could fuel excitement - and sales - in his entire 200-company holding group.
People often complain about how much stuff like this supposedly costs, but it's interesting to see what a small amount it is compared to how much is typically thrown around in the airline industry. The marketing value alone is probably worth the cost of the fleet.
Re:Costs in perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is right, though - look at all the exposure it's gotten Virgin on Slashdot alone
Re:Costs in perspective (Score:2)
In all fairness, since it's so early in the game Branson is also paying for a large chunk of the development costs per unit. I can't find stats for the A340-600, but it looks like the A380 has cost around $10.7 billion so far. Of course, this is still very much an apples-and-oranges comparison.
In terms of capacities, it's possible that a marginal
Re:Costs in perspective (Score:2)
Wired has a stor (Score:5, Funny)
Cheers
Stor
Wired subscribers have seen all these a while ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wired subscribers have seen all these a while a (Score:1)
WTF (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, someone's having a field day with this... (Score:3, Funny)
The Rebel Billionaire (Score:1)
Re:The Rebel Billionaire (Score:2)
So, how many referrals do you need for this? (Score:2)
Wait a second...
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Watch me prove I'm clueless here [blogspot.com]
fogetting his duties as a knight (Score:1)
better get.... (Score:2)
had to go one better (Score:1)
Sir Richard takes Virgin... (Score:1)
This headline should have read: (Score:2)
Entrepreneur of the Year: Burt Rutan (Score:5, Informative)
A snippet:
As a manager, Rutan has proven intuitively adept at inspiring loyalty and extraordinary work. He doesn't worry so much about the formal background of the engineers he hires. He looks for people who share his passion for aircraft design and gives those who have it free rein. Instead of the specialists sought by aerospace companies, he encourages his staffers to remain generalists who can design anything from a fuselage to a door handle and then go into the shop and build it. Chief engineer Matthew Gionta recalls starting off at the company right out of graduate school in 1994 and being handed the project-leader slot on an ultra-high-tech unmanned aircraft. "What I had to learn on the job made my formal education pale in comparison, but I had to learn it because no one else was going to do it for me," Gionta says. "The stress took years off my life, but when you get that kind of responsibility, it's hard not to feel ownership."
Rutan is loath to codify his approach to managing. "I don't like rules," he says. "Things are so easy to change if you don't write them down." But one way or another, he has communicated a few simple principles to employees. One is that when it comes to safety issues -- and in aircraft design, almost everything is a safety issue -- everyone should be quick to raise questions. Rutan makes sure that when people at Scaled point out their own mistakes, they're applauded rather than reprimanded. And instead of extensively analyzing a design before building it, a notion that's axiomatic in the aerospace industry, Rutan pushes his people to get a first version built quickly, test it, and fix it. Says Gionta: "Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding."
Re:Entrepreneur of the Year: Burt Rutan (Score:2)
Lazy Contributors (Score:2)
It must be because the damn lazy editors of slashdot have posted at least 3 stories from wired in the few couple days.
Wow! (Score:1)
Most...deceptive...title...ever! (Score:2)
For reference (Score:2)
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with eas
Re:Come on, Slashdot! (Score:1)
Slashdot is alwaays behind, definitely never what you would call current at any rate.