SpaceShip Two, XCOR Lynx Prepare For Powered Flights 77
RocketAcademy writes "Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two is in the final stages of preparation for powered flight. The suborbital spacecraft, built by Scaled Composites, has successfully completed airspeed, angle-of-attack, center-of-gravity, and structural tests during unpowered glide flights. It is now on track for powered glide flights by the end of this year. Meanwhile, in the hangar next door, XCOR Aerospace continues to work on the Lynx spacecraft, expected to begin powered flight tests early next year. Some exclusive photos provide a sneak peak at things to come." Also to watch for in the world of private space launches, next month (possibly as early as the 8th), SpaceX has another launch scheduled to reach the ISS.
"powered glide flights" (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't see that in the summary. Perhaps it's been edited already?
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Nevermind... it does say that. Clearly the word "glide" in that sentence should have been omitted.
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Re:"powered glide flights" (Score:5, Informative)
"The powered segment of the flight will be powered by a glide..."
Surely you meant "The powered segment of the flight will be followed by a glide..."
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And both can be technically accurate - a powered glide would seem to describe a flight plan in which the craft is basically in a glide but the engines are on standby to provide any minor adjustments or emergency thrust necessary.
An "underwater flotation test" would likely be termed a "buoyancy test" in most circumstances, but the former might be more informative if you're discussing a craft intended to float on the "surface" of a sharp density gradient such as between two non-mixing thermal masses or an und
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<facepalm
(I can't recall if the space is required or not, but I always add it for readability if no other reason.)
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(Unless you were actually just trying to goad the AC.)
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to compliment their earlier unpowered glide flights
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Wow, that was a REALLY GREAT unpowered glide flight!!
Privatization Working? (Score:2)
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Re:Privatization Working? (Score:4, Insightful)
Last I looked, Republicans were pushing the Senate Launch System while Democrats were pushing for NASA to buy private sector launch services to ISS. Numerous people have commented on what an absurd reversal that is.
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Given the total amount of money spent on private spaceflight vs the amount of tax dollars poured into public spaceflight. I have to say the private guys are doing pretty good. Give them time and money and they will be better than the public sector.
to control costs (Score:3)
Because people who have a stake in what they're building have an incentive to do it right. For example, compare the cost a Falcon 9 launch to an Atlas V. Both were developed and built with public funds (admittedly, only a portion of Falcon 9 was publicly funded) and have similar capabilities, yet Falcon 9 costs 1/3 as much to build and launch. With no profit motive, ULA has no reason to look for ways to control costs with the At
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The RD-180 engines have been driving up the costs lately. They've been getting more expensive in order to compensate for lower volume.
Re:to control costs (Score:4, Informative)
SpaceX quotes their launch price for the Falcon 9 at $54 Million [spacex.com]. All the sources I can find for the Atlas V put the launch cost at $138 Million [astronautix.com]. Though I couldn't find a price listed on their website [ulalaunch.com], which is really understandable if you think about it.
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You are wrong about the subcontractors. Space X [wikipedia.org] makes relatively little use of subcontractors compared to other aerospace companies.
Besides, would you tell me that no-one could build a car for 1/3 the amount of a Mercedes Benz [mbusa.com]? The cheapest car they make is $35,350!
Re:to control costs (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they don't. Those parts are purchased from vendors the same way you or I might purchase a valve or some screws from a hardware store.
Space X buys what they can "off the shelf". They make whatever else they can, and the subcontract out the rest. If you can't trust them about their business model, who can you trust?! You're basically speculating about how things must be with no guiding principle other than "their rockets must be more expensive than they claim."
SpaceX has been winning contracts left and right. Of course, they've only ever launched 3 Falcon 9 rockets, and their capacity is still increasing to meet demand, so if you need something launched in the next few years you can't use SpaceX (they're all booked up). But in the future, if SpaceX is able to ramp up production and get a reasonable success rate with their rockets they most certainly will put all the other launchers out of business.
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. . .Or look up any information of any kind. . .ever. You only seem compelled to pull information directly out of your ass. It doesn't mean you're wrong, but it certainly doesn't give you good odds on being right. This is an ad-homonym attack at best.
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The analogous practice is: government pays to have police car designed, pays for plant to be built, then pays full price for each police car. Meanwhile, private contractor gets to sell additional police cars as it sees fit using the design and assembly line built by taxpayer dollars.
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What government paid to have SpaceShip Two and Lynx designed? What government paid for Scaled and XCOR's plants?
None as far as I know, and I have no objection to them. I was just commenting on the more general situation asked about.
On the other hand, the Federal government invested heavily in General Motors and Chrysler, which build police cars -- you do know that, don't you?
Yes, I am aware of the GM/Chrysler situation. That's fairly apparent if you read my comment carefully.
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What "general situation" is that?
Oh, I see -- the general statement that companies shouldn't be allowed to take public funds and make a profit.
Sorry, but that's inane. Do you think government employees don't earn an income (i.e., profit) off public funds? Just because they say it's not for profit doesn't mean no one's making money off it. If the government does anything, someone is going to make a profit off it, whether it's Sergeant Joe Friday or the Friday Security Corp.
Your "analogy" is actually p
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How about the very one you pointed out w/ GM?
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You know how sometimes a fighter pilot will get so fixated on a target that he doesn't notice he's flying into terrain? You're there. Pull up!
I'm not talking about the spacecraft here.
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Re:Privatization Working? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In fairness, NASA is subsidizing the R&D of at least a part of the cost of these rockets through various programs.
The big difference here is that NASA has sort of a philosophy with these programs that once the industry is up and going, where there are plenty of competitors who can build rockets delivering supplies and passengers into orbit, that there will be plenty of other customers who will take advantage of these services and that these private companies will be able to offer services or products ju
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In terms of charter schools, most do not charge tuition or fees of any kind, or at least are just like public schools in terms of costs. If anything, most of them operate on a per pupil basis with considerably less money than the public schools and don't have access to some kinds of tax revenues such as the ability to levy local property taxes (although they may get some state funds that may include a statewide levy and other educational funds). That they can get higher scores with less money should speak
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Yea, they're doing well because they've gotten the benefits of _both_ the dollars "poured into public spaceflight" AND the private subsidies. What, you think they're reinventing the rocket from the ground up?
NASA is the only R&D shop working for the public benefit. And now that they've done the hard work, we're going to now start funneling our tax dollars into private corporations for them to make private profit off of public funding. "Privatizing profits and socializing debt" indeed...
Re:Privatization Working? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, they're doing well because they've gotten the benefits of _both_ the dollars "poured into public spaceflight" AND the private subsidies. What, you think they're reinventing the rocket from the ground up?
NASA spent about the same to put a fake upper stage on a shuttle SRB and launch it into the sea as SpaceX did to develop a brand new rocket engine and two rockets and launch them into space.
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NASA is the only R&D shop working for the public benefit.
Really? That would come as a bit surprise to DARPA, NIST, etc. Do you know who invented the Internet? Not to mention all the universities, astronomical observatories, private foundations, etc. What "public benefit" do you think NASA should be working for, if you never want the results to be "funneled" to the public?
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Umm, this is how government funded R&D is supposed to work. The government spends money on projects that are too risky or too long-term for private companies to easily justify funding on internal dollars. Then when a higher level of technical maturity is reached private companies can take the body of knowledge, develop their own products for the government and private users, and start selling products to the government (and other customers) for less money than the government would have spent to build
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Where were they 20-30 years ago then? I mean, they're all coming out now (but not commercially available yet, still undergoing testing). Considering we archived orbital flight 30 years ago, they have 30 years of experience to build with.
Or could it be perhaps today there's actually enough money being thrown around by people who want to be astronauts that there's now a good enough ROI? 30 years ago, there was no ROI so no one invested in it (other than NASA).
We had the technology to do so 30 years ago. Yet t
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Yet these private companies advertising orbital flights (for the last decade or so) still haven't launched a commercial service yet (I'm not talking preorders. I mean launching and recovering now as a regular mission).
The ULA (and its predecessors, Lockheed Martin and Boeing) have launched many things into orbit over the past twenty five years. Orbital Sciences has launched stuff for about 20 years. These are private companies advertising orbital flights.
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Funny you should say that, since none of Virgin, Scaled Composites, and XCOR are working on orbital flight.
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XCOR has a two-stage fully reusable orbital system in early development to directly follow the Lynx. XCOR CEO Jeff Greason has mentioned this during several talks, but the company in general avoids speaking about things which are not actual hardware yet.
Rest assured, however, suborbital systems in general are steeping stones to bigger things, much like Mercury was to Apollo.
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Mercury was orbital after the first two manned flights, which used the same vehicle on top of a smaller rocket. Scaled Composites' work is not something that will apply to orbital flight (unless you want to re-create the space shuttle, and take a long time to get there).
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Hardly a similar comparison. We know what it takes to get to space.
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Hardly a similar comparison. We know what it takes to get to space.
Yes, and IBM, DEC, CDC, etc. knew how to build computers. So it *is* a "similar" comparison.
But there's a difference between merely "getting to space" (which was the goal in the 1960's) and getting to space affordably (which is the goal today).
If you just want to stuff an astronaut into a capsule and shoot him into space, regardless of cost or safety, that can be done pretty quickly. Especially if you buy the capsule from the Russians.
But that's not what we're looking for. The goal for companies like
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Exactly. Aviation did not start with nonstop flights from New York to Australia. It started with once or twice around the field.
And there were people who looked at the first airplanes and snickered. Airships were already making *much* longer flights, carrying *much* larger payloads. Cynics could see no value in a technology that promised to *someday* do what airships had done long ago.
It's the perennial battle between those who see what can be and those who see only what has been.
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I think it is more like the difference between gliding and powered flight. Building a dedicated glider can teach you a few things applicable to powered flight... assuming that someone else doing powered flight hasn't already worked those particular details out.
These are not dedicated gliders. Scaled and XCOR have done powered flights in the past -- and Lynx will start with powered flight on its very first flight. The engine was the first component XCOR developed.
Some of the suboribital craft seem to achieve speeds almost an order of magnitude short of orbital velocity, which suggests a rather significant difference is needed for engines and reentry handling. There is already quite a bit known about the latter, and it seems like the baby-steps being taken are for financial reasons and not the technology learning curve. At the very least, that is less romantic than early pioneers taking the first few steps to learn new things, as opposed to trying to get some quick funding before moving on.
Again, there is a difference between merely getting into space and doing so affordable.
So, if someone can't afford to go into orbit, they should never go into space at all? Because it isn't romantic enough for you? Do you really believe that?
If Jobs and Wozniak couldn't afford to build a Cray 1, th
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Would we be better served via the public sector?
To develop much of the technology and necessary knowledge in the first place, probably. But to take it further and bring the costs down to within reach of more people, the private sector probably has a better chance. There's a role for both.
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First of all, what the commercial space companies are doing is very exciting but only SpaceX is really on track to manned orbital flights.
What evidence do you have that Boeing and Sierra Nevada are not on track? (And why are manned orbital flights the only ones that count?)
Second, SpaceX profited from a huge amount of technology transfer and consulting engineers from NASA.
Just as the aviation industry profited from a huge amount of technology transfer and consulting from the NACA. That is bad because...?
Third, the reason NASA is happy about this is that they can't get anything done anymore without getting overridden by congress and being forced into massive amounts of pork spending.
Sorry, now you're just whining. *Every* government agency is responsible to Congress (and, through Congress, to the taxpayers). If you don't want to be responsible to elected officials, you shouldn't be working for the government. Period.
Hopefully (Score:1)
Their powered gliders are not susceptible to brute force attacks.
Powerglide.. (Score:2)
Coolest transformer..Powerglide G1. When is he launching? Yet another instance of life imitating art. His head is pointy though, maybe an ablative heat shield hat for re-entry!
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Obvious troll is obvious. Have you been in the XCOR hangar lately? I didn't think so.