Virgin Galactic Unexpectedly Aborted a Test Flight of Its Space Plane (cnn.com) 34
CNN reports:
Virgin Galactic's supersonic rocket plane was scheduled to fire into the upper atmosphere Saturday, but after climbing more than 40,000 feet over New Mexico attached to its mothership, the space plane made an unexpected turn toward home rather than shooting skyward.
The company confirmed that the space plane, which was carrying test pilots CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay, safely landed.
"The ignition sequence for the rocket motor did not complete," the company said via Twitter. "Vehicle and crew are in great shape. We have several motors ready at Spaceport America. We will check the vehicle and be back to flight soon." The root cause of the issue was not immediately clear...
This mission was meant to be the third test flight of VSS Unity to exceed the 50-mile mark, which the US government considers to be the beginning outer space.
CNN also reports that Virgin Galactic now has 600 customers "who so far have forked over between $200,000 to $250,000 each to reserve seats [for] their brief journey to the edge of space."
The company confirmed that the space plane, which was carrying test pilots CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay, safely landed.
"The ignition sequence for the rocket motor did not complete," the company said via Twitter. "Vehicle and crew are in great shape. We have several motors ready at Spaceport America. We will check the vehicle and be back to flight soon." The root cause of the issue was not immediately clear...
This mission was meant to be the third test flight of VSS Unity to exceed the 50-mile mark, which the US government considers to be the beginning outer space.
CNN also reports that Virgin Galactic now has 600 customers "who so far have forked over between $200,000 to $250,000 each to reserve seats [for] their brief journey to the edge of space."
I don't see the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
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> What is the point of this craft? To fly people with too much money on their hands to the edge of space for 15 minutes? What a waste of resources.
How about people who pay $115K to climb the tallest hill in Nepal? That could fund two inner city schoolteachers, amirite? What a waste of resources!
The nice thing about well-functioning humans is that they enjoy seeing other people happy doing things that they've always wanted to by spending the money they've worked hard to earn.
https://fee.org/articles/subj [fee.org]
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Those two inner city schoolteachers get funded by school fees or taxes paid by people doing things like building rockets or guiding people up hills in Nepal.
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How about people who pay $115K to climb the tallest hill in Nepal? That could fund two inner city schoolteachers, amirite? What a waste of resources!
The hill climbers don't have taxpayers who will never be able to afford such a trip forced to chip in on a billion dollar support facility.
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Nepalese taxpayers certainly end up chipping in a lot of money for the extremely expensive rescue operations for the extremely frequent accidents on Everest.
The only difference is that the mountain climbing business is well-established enough that they can measure that they come up ahead in the end, whereas the suborbital tourism business remains speculative.
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Really? Got proof of that? I heard that Everest climbing/tourist is very lucrative for Nepal. There was some controversy about guides being underpaid, but that's largely fixed.
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What is the point of this craft? To fly people with too much money on their hands to the edge of space for 15 minutes? What a waste of resources..
The world is filled with businesses which are eternally chasing the dollars of the idle rich. We have a right to complain if said companies are wasting our tax dollars on that sort of thing; but, otherwise, it's their money to spend and their time to waste.
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Well it creates jobs, is entertaining. But speaking jobs, perhaps you should apply for one instead of criticizing other people's pastimes?
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What is the point of this craft?
It's the same as with any other attempt: to learn from it and to do it better the next time. Flying to the stars is one of mankind's biggest dreams should this not be obvious.
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Its an adventure sport. If people want to pay for it and the company can make a profit, thats great, but I don't see it as a technological path to actual space (eg orbit).
When was working at the south pole, we saw tourists who'd pay $50-100K to take the long series of flights there pretty much just to say that they had been, and to get a selfie at the pole.
I wouldn't want to see any public money go to this.
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It seemed like a good idea 15 or so years ago when they first proposed it. But at this point it'll probably be obsolete before it makes its first commercial flight.
Re: I don't see the point? (Score:1)
Comparison of Space Tourism Packages (Score:3)
From July 2020:
https://observer.com/2020/07/s... [observer.com]
You could also book a trip on Spaceship Neptune (a balloon), it only goes up 19 miles, only $125,000 per person.
The success of SpaceX (Score:3)
SpaceX would have celebrated it as a success, having gathered lots of data, and saying they didn't even expect to get it this far.
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SpaceX would have celebrated it as a success, having gathered lots of data, and saying they didn't even expect to get it this far.
They exactly would have. Spacex blows up a rocket on landing - It's a great success!. Three days later, another starship tips over and crashes into the inside of their assembly building, and the sycophants are bragging how that's a great thing.
I really like Spacex. I'm too wild about their worshippers.
Re: The success of SpaceX (Score:3)
SpaceX would have done their tests 15 years ago. They would have made a spacecraft that could be piloted remotely. And nobody would have died in their testing and development.
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There's a monumental difference between a craft in the extreme prototype stages of development for orbital/deep space operations (Starship/Superheavy) and a craft designed only for suborbital hops that is being supposedly on the verge of final outfit for paying passengers (SpaceShipTwo).
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It's like a joke, just not funny. (Score:1)
The "spaceport" is nothing more than a runway. https://www.theatlantic.com/te... [theatlantic.com]
Virgin Galactic is a delivery vehicle for MONEY to RICHARD BRANSON'S COMPANY. Think of it like a CELERY STALK in RANCH [or Blue Cheese] DRESSING. You don't eat it for the celery. It's just there to carry dressing to your mouth.
They will never be viable as a company. -- this is my subjective opinion
They have no ability to delivery birds into space. They don't have reusable equipment (SRBs die). They don't have good fallba
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tickets are a bit too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
if they can get it down to under $25K per trip then it'll be lucrative. Oh yeah, and 62 miles height should be the minimum 50 miles is just lame.
50 miles altitude is below some noctilucent clouds. How can you be in space when there's atmospheric phenomena ---frigging CLOUDS -- that can occur above you? The air pressure at 50 miles altitude is only slightly less than the surface pressure on Mars -- which has dust storms and tornados. NASA is even sending a drone to operate in Mars. So if a drone can operate aerodynamically in only slightly more pressure, how is it "space"? In addition, 50 mile altitude is also well below the height at which the space shuttle's tiles glow red hot during re-entry.
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What nonsense, NASA and the USAF both use 50 miles as the boundary of space, for useful reasons.
You have misconception, the atmosphere doesn't suddenly stop at any altitude. It goes far beyond 62 miles, in fact the mesosphere starts at 52 mile up and goes up hundreds of miles depending on solar radiation. It can glow and give us the northern lights. It can reflect or refract radio waves. How is it "space"?
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Above 50 miles, there are water vapor clouds, and even small structures can feel aerodynamic effects .. we can't call that space .. that's ridiculous .. the von karman line makes a lot more sense. 50 miles is still within the mesosphere. Meteors can streak at 50 miles, noctilucent clouds can form at 50 miles. 50 miles is too low. At least 62 miles is outside what everyone agrees is the mesophere. Everyone other than the US Air Force considers 50 miles to be within atmosphere.
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As I pointed out, NASA disagrees with your bullshit. The atmosphere goes to hundreds of miles above earth. Meteors glow at 70+ miles up, because there is atmosphere up there. The northern lights glow, because there is atmosphere up there. The dividing line of "space" is very arbitrary.
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So what if NASA disagrees? I believe my case is stronger than theirs .. so do many other space agencies. Most people agree that if there are water vapor clouds, we can't call it space. We can disagree with NASA. NASA doesn't always make the best decisions that we should follow them, they make mistakes too .. you don't know if some bureacrat at NASA decided it rather than a scientist.
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Why are you fixated on clouds but glowing gas doesn't count? Answer, you're clueless. There is atmosphere at 50 miles and 62 miles and 300 miles. You don't have any credibility compared to NASA, they have huge standing since they have explored more of "space" than any other entity in existence, even have functioning craft in interstellar space.
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Not everyone considers the line to be "arbitrary" by the way .. see the case von Karman makes .. pasted below. Also, i should point out that the 62 miles boundary is even named after von Karman .. a famous and ground breaking aerodynamist. Whereas NASA/USAFs definition .. notice there is no name associated with it. Who decided on that 50 miles? Clearly not anyone with standing. It seems to be lost ot history how that 50 mile mark was arrived at, whereas von Karman actually made a case for the 62 mile number
Another connector issue? (Score:3)
Sounds like some kind of "communications" issue, maybe a connector came loose like with the Electrons (Rocket Lab) power pack? Either that or for some reason it has to maintain connection with ground equipment or an abort is triggered (which would be a bit odd).
"After being released from its mothership, SpaceShipTwo Unity’s onboard computer that monitors the rocket motor lost connection. As designed, this triggered a fail-safe scenario that intentionally halted ignition of the rocket motor."
https://www.space.com/virgin-g... [space.com]
Unexpected abort (Score:1)