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Space Transportation Technology

New Pictures of White Knight Two and SpaceshipTwo 195

Posted by timothy from the what-they-look-like dept.
soldeed writes "Over at the Virgin Galactic press site, there are new pictures of both White Knight Two and SpaceShip 2 during construction for media use. After seeing them, I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?"
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New Pictures of White Knight Two and SpaceshipTwo More

New Pictures of White Knight Two and SpaceshipTwo

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  • What new pictures? (Score:5, Informative)

    by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) * on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:02PM (#24071667)

    I don't see any dated newer than February.

    • Not new? (Score:5, Informative)

      by CarpetShark ( 865376 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:19PM (#24071793)

      Agreed. I thought maybe these were newly published photos that had been held back from the public for a few months, but I've seen at least some of them before.

      What's new here?

    • They're as exciting as looking at all the parts in a fresh-out of the box model --

      As in, not very exciting. At least you get a complete picture on the front of a model's box. Yawn.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _Pablo ( 126574 )

      The only new picture i've seen is this grainy airborne spy shot [flightglobal.com] that shows the wing attached to at least one of the booms.

      I'm a little surprised that there are not more frequent progress updates from Virgin Galactic given the level of interest in the project.

  • OK, kinda cool, but heres the thing. 100 miles is high, but look at it compared to the globe. The radius is 4000 miles, so 100 miles is 2.5 percent of that. No air, sure. But space ? Come on. Apollo 11 went to space. This is just a good place to put satellites.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by emtilt ( 618098 )
      It's ceiling is actually 110 km, not 100 miles. And 110 km is way lower than where you need to put satellites if you want them to be at all stable in orbit for any long term use (ie more than a couple months).

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pmac2322 ( 950847 )
        However, referencing that same link, all other countries with a space program consider space to start at 100km or 62 miles, while the US uses 50 miles. I thought that was interesting anyway.

  • Same old... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by B5_geek ( 638928 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:07PM (#24071693)

    As long as we depend on cigars with wings and chemical based propellants we will only inch our way along this journey. I had higher hopes for this crew.

    • Re:Same old... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Free the Cowards ( 1280296 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:14PM (#24071739)

      Such as what? The technology simply isn't there for anything else, especially not for the miniscule budget these guys have.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hardburn ( 141468 )

        Launch loops can be built without any unobtainium. Though it is still in government-funded territory.

        Space elevators might have a higher cool factor than a launch loop, but I don't think it's going to be even theoretically cheaper by any significant amount compared to a launch loop. And a launch loop is still pretty cool.

        • Re:Same old... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:36PM (#24071943)

          It's an interesting idea, but holy crap did you read the Wiki page on launch loops? [wikipedia.org]

          It would have to be 2000km long. That would be a little bit pricey. And it would have to be built over the ocean because the momentum of the thing if it breaks would be equivalent to a nuke going off. I hate to go all George Carlin, but Not In My Back Yard.

          • Re:Same old... (Score:4, Interesting)

            by hardburn ( 141468 ) <hardburn.wumpus-cave@net> on Sunday July 06, 2008 @12:35AM (#24072511)

            A rough estimate [launchloop.com] (pdf link to presentation slides, estimates towards end) puts it around $10 billion for a small system, and $30 billion for a larger one. Add on an order of magnitude to the price for government waste, and it's still pretty good. Better than the most optimistic estimates for a space elevator, and way better than rockets.

            Building over an ocean (or rather, starting from an uninhabited island and extending over the ocean) isn't really a big deal. Baker Island [wikipedia.org] will do as long as we can deal with the pesky environmentalists trying to save its status as a wildlife refuge.

            • Oh yeah, I like the idea of it. It's brilliant. And compared to the space shuttle it seems pretty affordable. But with needing exotic locations and the multibillion price tag, this project seems like something that you'd need to be a government to pull off. I don't see Virgin Galactic having this kind of clout.

            • These costs estimates are not meaningful (Score:4, Interesting)

              by mosb1000 ( 710161 ) <mosb1000@mac.com> on Sunday July 06, 2008 @04:13AM (#24073291)

              Cost estimates for things that have never been build are not reliable. Your $30 billion number seems . . . conservative. Seriously, this is a large, dynamic structure. They don't really know how they'd put it in place. They don't know how they would confine the ribbon, or how reliable that system would be. With so many unknowns, you're really just pulling numbers out of your ass. Moreover, the odds that it is actually build-able are not great. The odds of it staying up for any usable period of time are much worse.

          • Just out of interest, how long is the great wall of China?

            We as a society have simply lost the capacity for large projects.

            • Your sig is an awesome rebuttal to your claim. You do remember Apollo, don't you? That was less than 40 years ago. If you're going to invoke the Great Wall of China, a largely useless structure built in fits and starts over a period of a thousand years, then surely a pause of 40 is nowhere near sufficient.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by khallow ( 566160 )
              Nonsense. Our transportation network alone is far greater than any large project ever built.

        • This is one of those things that sounds extremely simple in concept but turns out to be very difficult to construct in practice, even ignoring the ridiculous amount of money that such a thing would cost. It is therefore beyond current technology.

        • I prefer the skyhook. The idea is to launch a cable about 1000 km long into orbit then spin it up so that it rolls along its orbit. At the lowest point one end of the cable is inside the atmosphere almost stationary relative to the ground. The other end of the cable is 1000 km higher and moving above escape velocity.

          This system could easily exchange mass between any two planetary surfaces in the solar system for a much smaller cost than chemical rockets. Of course for every kilo of food you send to Mars

      • Well clearly, if Zefram Cochrane can come up with a warp drive in a shed, these guys have no excuse.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Buran ( 150348 )

          Care to tell us how he did it? You could build a spacecraft and launch it on a Titan II-class rocket if you so chose, but you can't make the drive work with the technology we have right now and our current understanding of physics. Once the tech improves, sure, you could build a spaceship in a shed -- that's essentially what these guys are doing here.

          You won't use a Titan for it, though -- the last Titans have already been used up.

    • As long as we depend on cigars with wings and chemical based propellants we will only inch our way along this journey. I had higher hopes for this crew.

      What new space-alien-derived here-to-unknown technology where you proposing they use? This thing isn't headed for Mars, you know.

    • Re:Same old... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rocketman_Ryan ( 1276180 ) on Sunday July 06, 2008 @12:06AM (#24072381)

      As long as we depend on cigars with wings and chemical based propellants we will only inch our way along this journey. I had higher hopes for this crew.

      You know, this is precisely the reason there are so few private companies doing this. People expect miracles, and when the miracles don't happen the public loses interest.

      Yes, we need to invest more heavily in advanced propulsion concepts. However, we don't currently have any private manned platforms based on *conventional* propulsion, so how could you possibly expect this? You could never raise enough venture capital to do anything other than conventional craft, because the risks are huge enough as-is. That will hopefully change in the future, but people need to prove that this is even feasible first. The Virgin Galactic team is going a long way to demonstrating this, and they should be commended for it. And this is all you have to say? Seriously?

      I shouldn't drink and post; it makes me care too much :D

    • Yeah... Where the hell are those damn anti-gravity devices we were promised!

    • Considering they are using materials you can goto the store and buy and build your own projects in your garage, I'm not exactly sure what you dissapointed about.

      That and one of the engineers who worked on the engine design, built a little one and put it on his bycicle, which now can hit 60mph in under 8 seconds.

      If that isn't a giant leap forward for mankind, I don't know what is.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vidarh ( 309115 )
      There's a famous quote attributed to Richard Branson. On the question from an interviewer about how to become a millionaire, he supposedly answered "you begin as a billionaire, and then you start an airline" in reference to Virgin Atlantic. Somehow I have the feeling he'd prefer to be more cautious this time around - Branson lost a whole lot of money before they managed to turn Virgin Atlantic around.

    • No no no, you didn't allude to the proper movie line. It's not a cigar with wings.

      "Well it looks like a big tylenol with wiiings."

      http://www.moviequotes.com/fullquote.cgi?qnum=33100 [moviequotes.com]

    • One must learn to crawl before one learns to walk. What magical technology should we be using instead? Reasearch goes on into new propulsion and delivery methods. In the meantime I guess based on your logic we should stop what we're doing until we have flying saucers.

  • After seeing them, I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?

    It's the bomb that someone is senting up. After all, AYBABTU.

  • Seriously - the box (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wapiti-eater ( 759089 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:15PM (#24071757)
    Is just a clamping weight. Used to hold pieces together while adhesives cure or to prevent warping. Normal technique used in composite construction.

    See the other one at the other end of the wing box?

    See all the other, smaller weights?

    Now tell me - you really couldn't figure this out for yourself?

    You need to get out more.

  • A little messy. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:20PM (#24071803) Homepage Journal

    I've been lucky enough to see Military aircraft being put together, space ships, and big commercial craft.
    By comparison, that place looks like a freaking disaster area.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You've no doubt seen metal production aircraft and over-paperworked metal and unobtanium space ships being assembled. White Knight Two and SpaceShip Two are both pre-production prototypes being built from composites, with totally different materials and techniques. You don't need a billion parts and fasteners, nor the cataloging system to track them when you build with composites. Also, trimming and fitting composites tends to be a messy business, when compared to punched and finished metal bits that onl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )
      Actually, it looks a bit too neat. Almost no trash on the floor and most surfaces are clean and empty. They must have cleaned up for the camera. But this workplace [autofieldguide.com] looks pathologically clean (look for the shot of an F-22 under assembly).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well, maybe the boss likes things to look tidier than they really need to be so he can do a VIP tour at the drop of a hat. This looks more like the workshops of a few genius inventors I've known. They simply scale things differently; they don't have different teams of engineers and fabricators working on different pieces, they do everything in one place and move back and forth between different aspects of the project.

      Granted, the modular approach to scaling a project (split off a team for every major pr

  • The box (Score:4, Funny)

    by D-Cypell ( 446534 ) * on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:30PM (#24071901)

    "I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?"

    Well it is a box being delivered to a team of physicists, I guess they wont know for certain until they open it :)

  • What's in the box? (Score:3, Funny)

    by gparent ( 1242548 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @10:31PM (#24071907)
    A cat. We don't know if it's dead or alive.

  • Space port with a box, it has to be: (Score:3, Funny)

    by sjs132 ( 631745 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @11:34PM (#24072265) Homepage Journal

    A space port with a box laying around? Sounds like someone lost their parallel dimension. Quick, turn it inside out before they invade!

  • It is weight... (Score:5, Informative)

    by (H)elix1 ( 231155 ) * <slashdot.helix@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Saturday July 05, 2008 @11:40PM (#24072305) Homepage Journal

    Those boxes are weight... About 15 years back I helped build a very ez [wikipedia.org] (Rutan's design too, btw). Construction was 'composite' materials - a bit of a radical chance from the way folks traditional built aircraft. You cut a lot of foam and put fiberglass and resin on it. The real work was making the jigs to get the right camber on the wings. You had to put weight on stuff to make sure it warped at the correct angle. With some parts, you had to do large chunks in one laying (is that even the right word?) of resin since it makes a stronger bond.

  • So you've won a trip into space (Score:5, Funny)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Saturday July 05, 2008 @11:59PM (#24072355) Journal
    Do you want to keep your space vacation or trade it for what is in the box?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by rhiorg ( 213355 )

      What could be in the box? Boy, it could be anything! It could even be a space vacation!

  • How new are these photos? I see they're dated from January and February of this year. But that could be deliberately misleading.

  • VSS Enterprise (Score:3, Interesting)

    by okoskimi ( 878708 ) on Sunday July 06, 2008 @01:38AM (#24072787)

    You know what this means: Next Star Trek movie will have a new ship [wikipedia.org] in the historical Enterprises display...

    (Yeah, I know the name has been known for a long time, but just came across it now and couldn't resist.)

  • This is a lot more progress than NASA made on Ares I in the same amount of time.

    • Apples and motherfucking Oranges!

      For a start, SpaceShipTwo is simple a bigger version of an already tested craft, which was in development for longer than Ares I has. Second, Ares I is a much, much bigger vehicle. It will be able to heft 25t into orbit (not a pissy little suborbital trajectory)

      If you are trying to make some point about private space flight being better, you should save it until they actually manage, 50 years behind those government agencies you think are so inefficient, to put men into orbi

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by WindBourne ( 631190 )
        For a start, SpaceShipTwo is simple a bigger version of an already tested craft, which was in development for longer than Ares I has. Second, Ares I is a much, much bigger vehicle. It will be able to heft 25t into orbit (not a pissy little suborbital trajectory) Hate to point this out, but Ares I is also just a bigger version of a current booster combined with a slightly improved old engine (all had been fully tested in LOADS of production). IOW, spacex AND NASA are doing the same thing.

        The real differenc

        • Hate to point this out, but Ares I is also just a bigger version of a current booster combined with a slightly improved old engine (all had been fully tested in LOADS of production). IOW, spacex AND NASA are doing the same thing.

          What utter bullshit. There has not been a previous NASA vehicle that involved mounting a liquid fuelled second stage on top of a shuttle SRB.

          The real difference is that the comparison is false since it is between a spacecraft in the lowest of orbits vs. a rocket that goes to at le

  • 1: Cut a hole in a box
    2: Put your junk in that box
    3: Make her open the box

  • It's the severed head of soldeed's wife. John Doe wins.

  • These pictures speak volumes... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Equuleus42 ( 723 ) on Sunday July 06, 2008 @10:19AM (#24074603) Homepage

    Those MotherShip pics are scary. For one, the work areas are very cluttered which could lead to confusion, errors, rework and overall inefficiency. It appears there is no system in place to ensure that all tools and support equipment are properly accounted for and not left in the ship. This could lead to foreign object debris (FOD) destroying the ship while it is in operation. The other scary element is the apparent lack of work stands or platforms for the mechanics. When a plane gets built, it is important to build work stands or platforms first so that the mechanics have a place to stand wherever they need to be. As you can see from the pictures, they are doing their work standing on ladders. In addition to the inefficiency factor mentioned earlier, this also leads to ergonomic and safety issues. A mechanic standing on a ladder can't do the same quality job as when both feet are firmly on a platform, especially if any riveting is involved. Oddly, SpaceShipTwo has platforms for their mechanics but the MotherShip crew only has ladders. I was actually interested in taking a ride on this until I saw the pictures of their work areas!

    If anyone from Scaled wants me to come out and do a full-scale industrial engineering evaluation, feel free to contact me by replying.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by v1 ( 525388 )

      "cluttered" was exactly what I was thinking when I saw that picture. They're packed in there like sardines. Stuff's everywhere. Looks like it's hard to turn around and walk 2 feet without running into something or someone. It must take a lot of planning trying to move anything around in there, imagine someone trying to get a ladder to the middle of that room!

      There's making good use of space and then there's overusing space. That room has long since crossed the line. Don't get me wrong, I wish them luc

    • Those MotherShip pics are scary.

      People said things like that about the Skunk Works back when Kelly Johnson was running the place, when they created the U-2 and SR-71. If we adhere strictly to your doctrine, those planes would be impossible. Yet they were built in those sorts of conditions, and remain incredible achievements to this day.

      Turns out that if the organization has a lot of people who are truly amazingly talented, a lot of that corporate wisdom doesn't apply so much. Scaled Composites has the right combination of small size, c

  • I'll take a look and tell you what's in the box...my god, it's full of stars! DUN DUN!!!!!

  • "NOTHING, absolutely nothing! STUPID, you're so stupid!"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KezvwARhBIc [youtube.com]

  • ...forward. I woulda never thought that "space tourism" would be the key, but hey, whatever works.

    All this bull****in' around with government space agencies, etc., is just a nice way to move tax dollars around in a shell game that in the end avails nothing.

    You get REAL PEOPLE anteing up their own money for commercial space ventures, and the "high frontier" will finally become a reality.

    (N.B. I live in Houston. It's impossible to get people here to see how useless NASA is. Living on the government teat will

  • Another Take on the Box (Score:3, Interesting)

    by florescent_beige ( 608235 ) on Monday July 07, 2008 @12:23AM (#24080251) Journal
    I tried to read the writing on the box and at first I thought I could read HL-33 9/24 which is a type of threaded fastener called a Hi-Lok, -33 is stainless which would make sense to use in carbon but I don't think that's what's in the box. 9/24 is a nonstandard size anyway I don't think it exists.

    The writing appears to be dimensions, the boxes are used for ergonomic tests to make sure the various black boxes inside the vehicle can go in and out the doors. This is typical Rutan construction with rounded cutouts to avoid stress concentrations, that works well in carbon construction because theres not much ductility in the material. Mockup fit tests like these are typical and sometimes work better than trying to simulate it in CAD.

    There's a QA label at the top, the QA department has measured and labelled the boxes.

    Admittedly the box looks like it's being used as a weight at the time the picture was taken. But not for bonding, I seriously doubt any bonding is being done in the assembly jig, or at room temp. On a craft like this the bonding must be done in an oven or autoclave and the bond prep must be done in a clean room which as has been pointed out this facility isn't.

    From the look of the structure I believe this may be a non-flying prototype, at least the fuse and wing pods. But for limited production vehicles like this and prototyping shops like Scaled things don't always look high-tech pretty so it my be flight hardware, R&D often looks like this.

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