Virgin Galactic Dumps Scaled Composites For Spaceship Two 38
PvtVoid writes Virgin Galactic, following an aggressive schedule to build a replacement for the Spaceship Two which crashed in October, is doing so without partner Scaled Composites, according to the Los Angeles Times. Kevin Mickey, the president of Scaled Composites, confirmed this week that his company would no longer be involved in testing. He said Scaled would still work as a consultant to Virgin Galactic.
That's a shame (Score:4, Informative)
I remember watching the great documentary Black Sky [wikipedia.org] long before Virgin was even involved. Scaled Composites and Burt Rutan were the real focus back then, long before Richard Branson's ego occupied most of their hanger space.
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So you were impressed with Scaled Composites marketing video?
Did you rush out to buy a Power Glove after watching the Wizard?
Re:That's a shame (Score:5, Funny)
Well, of course. I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.
"A hangar in Mojave" (Score:2)
Re:"A hangar in Mojave" (Score:4, Informative)
That's actually what it's like at "Mojave Spaceport". Hangers of small aviation practicioners and their junk. Gary Hudson, Burt Rutan, etc. Old aircraft and parts strewn about. Left-over facilities from Rotary Rocket used by flight schools. A medium-sized facility for Orbital. Some big facilities for BAE, etc. An aircraft graveyard next door.
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Burt Rutan retired from Scaled Composites in 2011 and has had very little to do with them since.
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Scaled Composites renamed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Scaled Composites renamed (Score:5, Informative)
Actually since 2007 They're a division of Northrop Grumman and responsible for the X47B. [wikipedia.org] They have a free creative hand but let's say instead of advances in aviation of a civilian nature they're now in the military business. They still have contracts with Virgin Galactic so don't expect them to be completely out of the picture. Burt retired in 2011 so he's no longer involved with any of it.
Re: Scaled Composites renamed (Score:2)
No big surprise. The military are willing to invest what it takes for what they need. Military entities are, by necessity, pitifully naive when it comes to anything useful, but once they specify what they think they want, they don't shirk at the cost, they get the job done. A pointless job, perhaps, but nonetheless a completed job.
The corporate sector wants money. Things don't ever have to get done, the interest on monies paid is good enough and there hasn't been meaningful competition in living memory. Bec
Re: Scaled Composites renamed (Score:4, Insightful)
> We have the technology today to get a manned mission to Alpha Centauri and back. It would take 15-20 years for the journey and the probability of survival is poor, but we could do it.
Why would you want to send a manned mission as the first mission? A robotic probe should be the first mission. 20 years for alpha centauri and back translates to about half the speed of light. I highly doubt that any current or foreseeable technology could get a probe to that speed. Not even fusion-powered rockets could, and we don't have them. A fission-powered rocket might realistically be able get up to 0.5% c (1500 km/s), in which case it would take a millenium and a half to complete the mission. Some more intelligent proposals like huge orbital linear accelerators might accelerate a tiny robotic probe to 10% the speed of light but even then you're looking at a 90 year journey.
Your scenario sounds insanely over-optimistic, to put it mildly.
Re: Scaled Composites renamed (Score:2)
Solar sail can achieve 25% light speed, according to NASA, and Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away.
You want a manned mission (with robots doing all the actual work) to determine if the conventional wisdom that a manned mission to the outer planets is physically impossible is correct. Even if the pilot dies, you learn the furthest a manned mission can reach. There's seven billion people, you can afford to expend one or two. Ideally, they'd be volunteers and there'll be no shortage of them, but if you're con
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> Solar sail can achieve 25% light speed, according to NASA, and Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away.
Citation needed. According to figures I've read, solar sails can reach a maximum of about 60 km/s. That's several orders of magnitude lower than 25% c.
Laser-propelled sails might be theoretically able to get up to 25% c but that's definitely not currently-available technology. We do not have anything close to the kind of lasers that would be required for this.
About manned/unmanned, it seems kind of point
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furthest uh by what means? like, do some people expect that there's some quartermass movie style field at some point there that just kills people and isn't visible on any instrumentation ?
plenty of stuff to be done without manned missions still..
-lassi
Let's hope ... (Score:5, Interesting)
That this isn't going to come back to them in the form of another smouldering crater, except with paying passengers this time.
Delays and problems notwithstanding, dumping a company that has essentially designed and developed the entire thing and handing the project to someone else who doesn't have the know-how about this particular system sounds really unwise, especially after the enormous amount of resources that were spent already. Probably the wealthy investors started to push on Branson and Rutan didn't want to compromise on something, so they decided to bypass them. Or Scaled isn't trusted to not mess something up again as it wasn't a first serious safety-related incident there.
One way or another, this isn't really a confidence inspiring move from an engineering point of view - I cannot imagine the motivation and morale of the people building the craft after being told that no, they won't be allowed to be involved in the testing, except as consultants.
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I'm not sure if this is as big of a deal as it sounds, especially given some of the comments made.
I suspect this is being done as more of a reorganization-for-liability-reasons sort of thing.
It's pretty rare for an aircraft's flight test pilots to be a part of the organization OTHER than the one owning the aircraft.
For commercial airliners built for multiple customers, the company designing/building the aircraft usually has at least a few test articles that they have full ownership of. These get tested wit
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For commercial airliners built for multiple customers, the company designing/building the aircraft usually has at least a few test articles that they have full ownership of. These get tested with their own pilots.
^ This..
Boeing has test pilots on full time salary who do nothing but fly for Boeing...
Boeing also owns the planes and builds them...
But keep in mind that Virgin Galactic is the airline here, with a spaceplane being built for them. So VG shouldn't really be involved in tested, it should be 100% within Scaled, unless VG actually owns this thing, in which case it should be 100% within VG.
Re:Let's hope ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Scaled Composites' role in Virgin Galactic has been winding down for a while. IIRC, the LA Times story mentions this, possibly in a quote from the Scaled Composites guy.
The Spaceship Company was formed as a joint effort between Virgin and Scaled (Branson and Rutan). Scaled built the first WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, but the plan was for TSC to build the subsequent ones. Virgin bought out Scaled's part of TSC in 2012.
Why is it surprising that Scaled's role is continuing to wind down? Isn't that
who writes this shit? (Score:5, Informative)
This was planned for several years.
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Yeah, sounds like someone is tweaking the headline so they can pick up some cheap stock after it gets dumped.
From actually RTFA, it sounds like VG is just assuming responsibility for further testing. The accident sounds tragic, but it looks like it may have been the co-pilot's ... "fault" is a strong word, but they mentioned he unlocked the stabilizer a bit too early and then it automatically feathered when it wasn't supposed to.
SC may do good work, but these kinds of things happen, unfortunately. But it
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Eh, I've had it happen to me... I won a small paper airplane competition (really more of an art project) years ago, in just one category out of several, and not really anything notable. But all of the news sites ran a little blurb with the headline "Engineer from $AEROSPACE_GIANT (NYSE:$BLAH) wins airplane competition"
I try not to assume too much these days, like that the corporate-controlled media isn't in it for the money if there's money to be made.
Plus, they subliminally put the word "dump" right the
Slashdot comments; the truths behind silly rumours (Score:2)
I read Slashdot not for the "journalism", but because you always get the real story from folks commenting on here.
So, yeah, another sensationalistic article (aka "click bait") all over the internet today.
I come to Slashdot to hear the truths behind silly rumours...
Not a good idea (Score:2)
SS2 has not completed testing and it is probable that there will be a need for redesign of one or more components. So, this is a really bad time to have the hand-off. Publicity isn't a good reason.