Virgin Orbit Just Successfully Launched a 70-Foot Rocket From Its 747 (cnn.com) 44
CNN reports:
A 70-foot rocket, riding beneath the wing of a retrofitted Boeing 747 aircraft, detached from the plane and fired itself into Earth's orbit on Sunday — marking the first successful launch for the California-based rocket startup Virgin Orbit.
Virgin Orbit's 747, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, took off from California around 10:30 am PT with the rocket, called LauncherOne, nestled beneath the plane's left wing. The aircraft flew out over the Pacific Ocean before the rocket was released, freeing LauncherOne and allowing it to power up its rocket motor and propel itself to more than 17,000 miles per hour, fast enough to begin orbiting the Earth... The rocket flew a group of tiny satellites on behalf of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites, or ELaNa, program, which allows high school and college students to design and assemble small satellites that NASA then pays to launch into space... About four hours after takeoff on Saturday, Virgin Orbit confirmed in a tweet that all the satellites were "successfully deployed into our target orbit."
The successful mission makes Virgin Orbit only the third so-called "New Space" company — startups hoping to overhaul the traditional industry with innovative technologies — to reach orbit, after SpaceX and Rocket Lab. The success also paves the way for Virgin Orbit to begin launching satellites for a host of customers that it already has lined up, including NASA, the military and private-sector companies that use satellites for commercial purposes.
Virgin Orbit shared a 57-second video on Twitter showing the moment their rocket was released and then launched, saying the event went exactly as planned.
"To say we're thrilled would be a massive understatement, but 240 characters couldn't do it justice anyway."
Virgin Orbit's 747, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, took off from California around 10:30 am PT with the rocket, called LauncherOne, nestled beneath the plane's left wing. The aircraft flew out over the Pacific Ocean before the rocket was released, freeing LauncherOne and allowing it to power up its rocket motor and propel itself to more than 17,000 miles per hour, fast enough to begin orbiting the Earth... The rocket flew a group of tiny satellites on behalf of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites, or ELaNa, program, which allows high school and college students to design and assemble small satellites that NASA then pays to launch into space... About four hours after takeoff on Saturday, Virgin Orbit confirmed in a tweet that all the satellites were "successfully deployed into our target orbit."
The successful mission makes Virgin Orbit only the third so-called "New Space" company — startups hoping to overhaul the traditional industry with innovative technologies — to reach orbit, after SpaceX and Rocket Lab. The success also paves the way for Virgin Orbit to begin launching satellites for a host of customers that it already has lined up, including NASA, the military and private-sector companies that use satellites for commercial purposes.
Virgin Orbit shared a 57-second video on Twitter showing the moment their rocket was released and then launched, saying the event went exactly as planned.
"To say we're thrilled would be a massive understatement, but 240 characters couldn't do it justice anyway."
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Can they carry a larger payload then a groundbased rocket of similar size?
Re:Small (Score:5, Interesting)
Can they carry a larger payload then a groundbased rocket of similar size?
No. Virgin is heading into a technological cul-de-sac. Rockets launched horizontally from aircraft have a lower payload and a much lower size ceiling.
They also have excess mass and engineering for horizontal structural strength that a vertically launched rocket doesn't need.
Since the aircraft are piloted, the rockets need to be designed with much higher reliability. SpaceX is happy if 99% of its rockets don't blow up. Virgin needs 99.9999% reliability or they have dead pilots. That is MUCH more expensive.
For what? A 2% boost in velocity?
Launching orbital rockets from aircraft is a bad idea.
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Thank you! I was wondering how this could possibly scale, and I guess the answer is "It can't." I guess the only real question is whether this can be made efficient enough to compete with Rocket Lab or other smallsat launchers.
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The advantage that Rocket Lab has is that it can offer a somewhat bigger model to expand their market, or launch more sats at the same time, but Virgin is much less flexible.
Only real advantage of a plane launch is that it can happen in any kind of weather and in any direction, but given that they're aiming for small satellite market, that's probably not a huge advantage.
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There's some other claimed advantages, including the ability to do integration local to the customer if desired and to launch near-equatorial if desired. But I agree, it's hard to justify. Virgin Orbit is about twice as expensive as Rocketlab for similar capabilities, and if anything, I see that gap growing. How much of a market is there for their niche, really? Even Rocketlab is somewhat of a niche, as smallsat operators who aren't picky about precise launch timing / orbits / having an exclusive rocket wi
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The smaller launchers will go bankrupt as soon as SpaceX's StarShip is on a regular launch schedule.
StarShip will beat their kg-to-orbit cost by at least a factor of ten.
If your payload can be loaded as a connected set of Cubesats, StarShip can launch it as a sub-payload with no extra configuration costs.
SpaceX was able to build expertise while earning money on launches. But launch costs are falling so fast that that path is closing. It will be impossible for anyone else to repeat the SpaceX strategy.
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It will be impossible for anyone else to repeat the SpaceX strategy.
Except for nation states that are indifferent to earning money during their program development.
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Not necessarily. When you only need one small satellite in a specific orbit a smallsat launcher may be a way to go. The market for small stas exists for a reason.
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Well, his point was that your one small satellite can be one of dozens included as an ancillary load on a major deployment of something else.
That gives you the economies of scale, rather than needing an entire launch for just your satellite.
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SpaceX is already doing this with dedicated rideshares on Falcons; one doesn't even have to wait for Starship. And they are significantly cheaper than Rocketlab, let alone Virgin Orbit.
There is a market for dedicated launchers, but it's a niche, and looks to be increasingly niche in the future (it's becoming increasingly cheap and easy to include low-mass Hall-Effect thrusters in microsats for maneuvering). But there always will be some fraction of the market that wants their own rocket, and at least the m
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Well, his point was that your one small satellite can be one of dozens included as an ancillary load on a major deployment of something else.
That works as long as the orbits are sufficiently similar such that the satellite can put itself into the correct orbit afterwards, and that the scheduling works. If you need a small satellite in a polar orbit next week, but SpaceX is only doing equatorial launches until six months from now, you have a problem.
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The smaller launchers will go bankrupt as soon as SpaceX's StarShip is on a regular launch schedule.
NASA's SLS should rightly also go bankrupt then. :-(
But it won't
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It isn't about more mass. The main USP that Virgin orbit has is that it can launch from anywhere, so it can put payloads into orbits that would be difficult or impossible to achieve from any existing ground launch site. Whether that is enough to make them commercially viable long term, only time will tell, but it's not nothing.
ShanghaiBill's point about reliability doesn't make any sense BTW. Since SpaceX launch crew on Falcon 9/Crew Dragon, if anything they need Falcon 9 to have a higher reliability than V
Re:Small (Score:4, Informative)
Nonsense. If the rocket blows up when it lights, the plane will be fine. The rocket doesn't light until it's a considerable distance from the plane, as you can see in their launch video.
And Virgin Orbit's prices are very competitive at around $12M per launch for around 500 kg.
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Virgin Orbit is 500kg to 230km SSO, but that barely even counts as "orbit"; it's 300kg to a 500km SSO. For this they charge $12M.
Rocketlab by contrast is 220-300kg to a 500km SSO (so basically the same), but they charge $5,7M**. And this is before they start reusing rockets.
** - Some sources say $7,5M, but this seems to be a typo, as when prices are denominated in foreign currencies, they always seem closer to the $5,7M figure.
Re:Small - it's small 'cos it's the third stage (Score:2)
IIUC The rocket Virgin launched would be the third stage of a conventional rocket, the Boeing 747 and the Virgin Orbiter planes being the first and second stages respectively. They're (a) both reusable, and (b) only carry fuel, not liquid oxygen or other oxidants, because they use atmospheric air. That surely saves a massive amount of energy ferrying all that oxygen up to a height and speed.
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That surely saves a massive amount of energy ferrying all that oxygen up to a height and speed.
Not really. The 747 does only 2 or 3% of orbital velocity.
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I'm not sure it'll save energy (as you're lifting the rocket and the whole aircraft) but it does mean you have a far less complicated rocket (because as you say, you get to skip the 'get off the ground' bits).
If it was an obviously easier option then it would've been explored more fully before now. That doesn't mean that it's not viable (it's just been demonstrated that it is) but it may well be a limited option relative to pointing a large stick full of combustibles vertically and lighting a match.
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I'm not sure it'll save energy (as you're lifting the rocket and the whole aircraft)
I don't think that's a meaningful comparison.
Traditional rockets are expensive to get up in the air because they're basically doing two jobs, accelerating you away from earth (and up to your target velocity), and countering earth's gravity (9.81 m/s^2).
Both approaches need to do the first part, but a plane doesn't need to do that extra 9.81 m/s^2.
Now it looks like the acceleration to get up to velocity is quite a bit more than required to counter gravity [nasa.gov] but that second bit is still significant.
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Virgin release the rocket at approximately the altitude the chart in that PDF shows at 60s. Virgin however release the rocket at just under 300m/s and horizontal, so there'll be energy used to reorient and to accelerate that offsets the altitude.
However, the earth's rotation itself is imparted to the rocket as a horizontal velocity, at around 460m/s and that helps reduce energy for orbit, so add in the 300m/s and you're making quite a difference. How much? around 0.2%. The altitude itself accounts for anoth
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A 70-foot rocket, riding beneath the wing of a retrofitted Boeing 747
Well, at least one rocket-based endeavour that Boeing is involved in actually worked.
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Notably distinct from Pegasus (Score:5, Interesting)
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One will be able to launch from pretty much any major airport
Only if they;re sticking to polar orbits, otherwise the same rules apply.
Congratulations to Virgin Orbit (Score:3)
Not good for NASA? (Score:2)
Virgin Orbit, Blue Origin and SpaceX only highlight how inept, corrupt, unimaginative and risk averse NASA's launch vehicle programs is.
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The goal of NASA programs (including SLS) isn't to get stuff into orbit, its to keep a bunch of people at various companies (including companies that used to make stuff for the space shuttle) in jobs. Actually launching stuff into space is secondary.
Re:Not good for NASA? (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's Congress' vision for NASA. The people who actually work there are incredibly motivated.
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How can anyone be motivated to work on old tech that will soon be redundant ?
Serious question. Surely anyone working on the SLS must realise it is a waste of time and money ? Surely anyone talented ( and not near retirement age ) has already left ?
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I work on physical security systems, some of the technology dates to the 1970s but it's still a fascinating and interesting job. In the case of NASA even if SLS is finally abandoned all the technology developed on the way is available to everyone else, unlike Space X's work which gets patented and restricted.
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In the case of NASA even if [ read 'when' ] SLS is finally abandoned all the technology developed on the way is available to everyone else
I believe there are laws that mean it isn't.
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He who pays the piper calls the tune. Congress is in control of the purse strings, and ultimately decides what goes on at NASA. The people who work there can have the best of intentions and still be hamstrung by bureaucrats.
just "Orbit" from now on (Score:2)
Well done, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why are they launching from an aircraft when everyone else has rejected the idea?
I'll choose to quote the less-than-diplomatic Elon for fun:
"it seems like...you're high up there and so surely that's good and you're going at...0.7 or 0.8 Mach and you've got some speed and altitude, you can use a higher expansion ratio on the nozzle, doesn't all that add up to a meaningful improvement in payload to orbit?
"The answer is no, it does not, unfortunately. It's quite a small improvement. It's maybe a 5% improvement in payload to orbit...and then you've got this humungous plane to deal with. Which is just like having a stage. From SpaceX's standpoint, would it make more sense to have a gigantic plane or to increase the size of the first stage by five percent? Uhh, I'll take option two.
"And then, once you get beyond a certain scale, you just can't make the plane big enough. When you drop...the rocket, you have the slight problem that you're not going the right direction. If you look at what Orbital Sciences did with Pegasus, they have a delta wing to do the turn maneuver but then you've got this big wing that's added a bunch of mass and you've able to mostly, but not entirely, convert your horizontal velocity into vertical velocity, or mostly vertical velocity, and the net is really not great."
"Transcript - Elon Musk lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society". Shit Elon Says. Archived from the original on 11 March 2016. Retrieved 11 March 2016."
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Re: Well done, but ... (Score:1)
In Kerbal I find carrier airplanes helpful for getting spaceplanes up. A big carrier with massive wings, lots of fuel, and big jet engines gets it up to 10-15km altitude after which spaceplane detaches and *dives* to break mach, at which point the air breathing ramjets start kicking in. Constant-G pitch up to 20Â and it accelerates into space.
Re:Well done, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only advantage the plane confers is the ability to relocate the launch site (to any airport that can handle a 747).
And I guess back before SpaceX proved that first stage reuse was doable, it was a way to do that for a very inefficient first stage.
So I guess it serves the market for smallsats that require weird orbits, which I doubt is big enough to be profitable in the long term.
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Any airport that also has support for preparing rockets, and aren't afraid of having a 747 taking off with one? Is this all airports?
Re:Well done, but ... (Score:5, Informative)
Bragging rights, maybe? Although Timeline_of_first_orbital_launches_by_country [wikipedia.org] hasn't been updated yet, it seems that now there are 11 nations and 5 private companies that have achieved orbit. That's a pretty exclusive list, and Virgin is now on it. Even if their launch mode is questionable, good on 'em.
For small sat it makes sense, Mars? Not so much (Score:2)
You have to remember Elon wants to go to Mars, the main reason for SpaceX creating an affordable launch system is a step towards that end. He always wants to scale up because you will never get a human to Mars on a small spacecraft.
For small sats though, as long as you don't want to scale up, the flexibility a near commercial plane based launching system gives you is amazing. You want to launch a polar sat? Just turn north! You are not restricted by whether there is an ocean near your launch facility becaus