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Space Businesses

Will Virgin Galactic Ever Lift Off? (theguardian.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
It's taken 17 years, with many setbacks and some deaths, and still Richard Branson's space mission is yet to launch. From a report: Richard Branson was running almost 15 years late. But as we rode into the Mojave desert on the morning of 12 December 2018, he was feeling upbeat and untroubled by the past. He wore jeans, a leather jacket and the easy smile of someone used to being behind schedule. Branson hadn't exactly squandered the past 15 years. He'd become a grandfather, moved to a private island in the Caribbean and expanded Virgin's business empire into banking, hotels, gyms, wedding dresses and more. But he was staking his legacy on Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company he formed in 2004. The idea was to build a rocketship with seats for eight -- two pilots, six passengers -- that would be carried aloft by a mothership, released about 45,000ft in the air and then zoom just beyond the lower limit of space, float around for a few minutes, before returning to Earth. He was charging $200,000 a seat. It did not initially seem like such a crazy idea. That year, a boutique aviation firm in Mojave, California, two hours north of Los Angeles, had built a prototype mothership and rocketship that a pair of test pilots flew to space three times, becoming the first privately built space craft. Branson hired the firm to design, build and test him a bigger version of the craft.

But the undertaking was proving far more difficult than Branson anticipated. An accidental explosion in 2007 killed three engineers. A mid-air accident in 2014 destroyed the ship and killed a test pilot, forcing Virgin Galactic to more or less start over. I approached the company shortly after the accident to ask if I could embed with them and write a story about their space programme for the New Yorker. I worked on the story for four years. After it came out, in August 2018, I spent another two years reporting and writing a book about the test pilots who fly Branson's spaceship. Amid the tragedies and setbacks, Branson remained optimistic of the prospect of imminent success. In 2004: "It is envisaged that Virgin Galactic will open for business by the beginning of 2005 and, subject to the necessary safety and regulatory approvals, begin operating flights from 2007." Then, in 2009: "I'm very confident that we should be able to meet 2011." Later, in 2017: "We are hopefully about three months before we are in space, maybe six months before I'm in space." Meanwhile, other private space companies, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, were making progress. Branson confessed that had he known in 2004 what he knew now, "I wouldn't have gone ahead with the project... We simply couldn't afford it."

His record on delivering promises has made him a polarising figure. Branson has appeared on lists of both hucksters and heroes. One poll ranked him second among people whom British children should emulate; Jesus Christ came third. His biographer describes him as "a card player with a weak hand who plays to strength," but also a "self-made and self-deprecating man whose flamboyance endears him to aspiring tycoons, who snap up his books and flock to his lectures to glean the secrets of fortune-hunting." But all of that was in the past; the turmoil and hardship would hopefully make the triumph all that much sweeter. For he and I knew as we headed into the desert that tomorrow could finally be the day that Virgin Galactic went to space.
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Will Virgin Galactic Ever Lift Off? More

Will Virgin Galactic Ever Lift Off?

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  • Lot of people from 1969 still waiting for their $500 PanAm reservation to the Moon...

    Juan Trippe has Branson beat cold in the scam size and time length.

  • Should have chosen a better name? Just a thought. At least they didn't go with Incel Galactic.

  • If they did the company would just be Galactic.

  • ...their best bet would be to work out a deal with SpaceX.

  • They're not doing this for scientific inquiry or any sort of utility. This is an ultra-high-end amusement park ride for stupendously rich people. I'm thinking it's not even a good idea to make relatively pointless madly expensive things for stupendously rich people to spend their money on, it gives them more incentive to peel more money off their workers. $200k is at least a fifth of a worker's lifetime earnings.

    • Yet for the people the service would target, 200k is nothing. It won't add incentive to rip off their workers. They're already maximizing that potential as much as they possibly can.

      That said, isn't this pretty much what Bezos's plan was for Blue Origin, just with a different procedure? Non orbital space tourist attraction?

      I will find it especially funny when these guys are still trying to get regular flights with test crews and SpaceX is providing full orbital tourist attractions for the same price or l

    • Re:Is this a good idea? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Monday May 03, 2021 @04:47PM (#61343696)

      I'm thinking it's not even a good idea to make relatively pointless madly expensive things for stupendously rich people to spend their money on, it gives them more incentive to peel more money off their workers. $200k is at least a fifth of a worker's lifetime earnings.

      So if you remove all luxury goods and services then the rich will pay their workers more? What about the workers in the luxury goods and services? All those out of work yacht crews, for instance.

      • Fuck those guys, they're a tiny fraction of the economy, and if my theory is correct they're doing massive harm to furnish their own unremarkable paychecks.

        • Would you say anything that targets people making more than 5 times the average income is a waste?

          Is that about right?

          The average income is about $9,000. So you want to ban anything for people making over $45K. Things like new cars. The house you live in.

          > if my theory is correct

          If you read any Economics 101 book you'll find out whether your theory is correct or not.

          • Ps, if you make over $69K, you are the 1%.

            You're richer than 99% of the people in the entire world.
            One of the world's wealthiest people.

            • Ps, if you make over $69K, you are the 1%.

              You're richer than 99% of the people in the entire world. One of the world's wealthiest people.

              Shhh you're ruining the victim narrative. Eat the rich!*

              *only for people richer than me

          • New cars and houses have indeed become insanely expensive, but these are a symptom of the same problem. Address inequality and the prices of cars, and to a much greater extent, houses, will move much closer to sanity.

            • Again if you're interested in this stuff, I'll just recommend any Economics 101 textbook.

              • Ah yes, the brilliant "science" of economics that assumes that every human is perfectly rational, perfectly informed, and perfectly selfish, the field that has delivered us into decades of violent boom-and-bust cycles, runaway hyperinequality, and workers with less free time than feudal peasants. I'm sure that will has all the answers and will set me straight quickly. Are we talking freshwater or saltwater economics BTW?

          • If you read any Economics 101 book you'll find out whether your theory is correct or not.

            Ah yes economics, the discipline that assumed people were rational then awarded a nobel prize to someone who figured out that they weren't.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        We tried the trickle down experiment for decades, it doesn't work.

        All it does is concentrate wealth, meaning that while that yacht crew might be getting work if the money was spread around more a lot more people could be employed and earning decent ages. There just aren't enough rich people with yachts compared to the number of ordinary people who might, say, go to a restaurant or buy some software or get their house renovated if they had some extra discretionary income.

        • You would have to be the pettiest and dimmest of tyrants to believe banning yachts, or space tourism, would have a beneficial effect on society.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Who said anything about banning them? If anything, distributing wealth a bit more would allow more people to own yachts and create more work for yacht crews.

            • I brought up yacht crews just to show that there are unintended consequences when you try to legislate behavior. The OP seems to be suggesting that providing luxury space tourism is immoral because it will (somehow) lead to lower wages for the common man.

  • There was always a certain amount of romance about Virgin Galactic - very spashy with interesting technology and lots of celebrities (Bill Shatner was originally booked to be on the first passenger flight) but always doomed to failures and missteps.

    If I were asked 20 or so years ago, who would first succeed in creating private orbital spaceflight, I would have put Branson as number one with Bezos as number two and Musk third. It seemed that Galactic's approach had the most promise for getting up there so

    • Place A to Place B on earth only needs suborbital which Virgin Galactic fits better than anybody else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      Remember that at least one of Branson's companies has actually launched something to orbit. Blue Origin has been dicking around with their toy yoyo rocket forever, but still has made hardly any visible progress on BE-4 or New Glenn, partly because Bezos has been treating it like a weekend project. Meanwhile, SpaceX is hard at work on a next generation of rocket beyond what the rest of the world has been dicking with for over 50 years.

  • Concept Wasn't Good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Monday May 03, 2021 @04:30PM (#61343638)

    The Virgin Galactic concept of using aircraft to carry the rocket for the initial ascent was never a good one. The delta V between rocket launching from a stationary launchpad on the ground and a rocket launched at 500mph and 40,000 feet from an aircraft isn't that great relative to the velocity necessary to reach orbit. It only makes a decent difference if all you want is a suborbital flight. That's why the X-15 concept was abandoned in the early days of spaceflight. There wasn't anywhere to go from the initial test flights. It was an easy way to get experience with very high altitudes, but otherwise a dead end.

    It's true the concept makes some sense if all you are doing is selling high-altitude thrill rides. It's cheaper than developing an orbital spacecraft. But, as Virgin Galactic found out the hard way, safety is a huge issue. The X-15 was also plagued with serious safety issues that were never fully resolved, which should have been a pretty big red flag. The problem is the need to transition back and forth between atmospheric flight and spaceflight dynamics quickly. An orbital spacecraft with the traditional capsule/parachute configuration doesn't need to fully master atmospheric flight- it just needs to be able to control its attack angle until the chutes are ready to deploy.

    So setting aside the personalities at play, I'm not surprised at all that Virgin Galactic has failed to go anywhere. Even if they do end up with commercial launches, another safety incident could easily doom the company (especially if a well-known celebrity is killed in the process). Unlike SpaceX or Blue Origin, the concept doesn't work for cargo, so there is no option to run the company without human spaceflight.

    • Dead on. The whole concept has always seemed overbaked and overwrought. Blue Origin took the basic boring approach and will likely be getting customers up into space before Virgin.

      I have to wonder if in the early days when they were going over the initial approach if Branson just wanted to go with the "sexier" design versus a boring old capsule and rocket. I get Burt Rutan is a talented guy but all those negative points about it were known decades ago.

      • Blue Origin took the basic boring approach and will likely be getting customers up into space before Virgin.

        Both of them will be after SpaceX, which plans to take paying customers up on its next flight.

      • I assumed the concept revolved around making money from getting subsidies from taxpayers somewhere, but I can't find any evidence for that.
        They've had 16 years to get to space, I don't think they're going to.
    • I agree that for what they were doing, air launch didn't make sense. I don't think its crazy in general though. The delta-V and altitude are very small advantages ,but there are some more significant ones that result from the lower air pressure at launch 1). Lower air makes the rocket engine have somewhat higher specific impulse because the exhaust is expanding into lower pressure. You can see this by looking at the ISP of engines for sea level and altitdue. 2) maybe more important, low pressure mean

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The goal was to remove the need for a first stage, and thus simplify the whole system. It's not a terrible idea but they set their sights a bit low with sub-orbital joyrides.

  • I've always wondered why they didn't just go straight for passenger flights with spaceship one. After all, it was there in 2004, proven to work, theoretically a 3-seater, risky for sure, but ahead of everything at the time. Seems like they missed the real opportunity by saying "yeah, but we want an FAA certified 7-seater" and bang went 15 years. In the meantime, Spacex.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dmpot ( 1708950 )

      SpaceShipOne was certified as an experimentally aircraft. If you want to take paying customers, you need to certificate it under Part 135 (Charter-Type Services), and apparently they could not do that. So I believe the biggest issue was not going from a 3-seater to a 7-seater, but that the original design was inherently too risky to meet FAA requirements under Part 135.

  • But the undertaking was proving far more difficult than Branson anticipated.

    Anyone with a cursory knowledge of engineering and history already knew what Branson is learning the hard way... Scaling up from a bare-bones subscale proof-of-concept demonstrator to a fully operational vehicle is hard.

  • The same goes for Blue Origin, in terms of why? Why pay so much money to just touch the edge of space and come right back down? It's very very niche, at best. This never made sense, as such. And Blue Origin's capsule looks very vomit inducing.

    But beyond why, I wonder if it was ever intended for Virgin Galactic. The marketing was flamboyant. It looked and felt far more like a way to grab attention but the drive and reality checks were very lacking.

    If it were orbital then that would make sense. That wo

  • Richard Branson got bamboozled by hybrid rocket technology that worked just enough to win a prize, but is totally unsuitable to recurring revenue operation. It was a big shortcut that allowed Burt Rutan and Paul Allen to win the X-Prize. Richard did not understand the nuances of the industry (like many people who enter it with a big wad of cash and end up failing spectacularly) and went with "the team that won".

    The feathering operation, another clever shortcut for avoiding development of a more advanced r

  • Here's a simple ELI5 glossary:
    Orbital class:
    Vehicles that go (at least) 100km up (where Low Earth Orbit starts) and also accelerate by 28,000km/h sideways. That way, though they're still falling towards the earth, they forever "miss" it because of how far they've flown sideways. Orbit.

    Sub-orbital class:
    Vehicles that go 100km up, stay there for a few minutes, and fall back down, because they haven't brought a big rocket to also get them going 28,000km/h sideways.

    Here's a simple business glossary:
    Orbital clas

  • I remember watching the X-Prize winning flight streaming live on my shitty internet connection, thinking 'This is the start of a new generation of space flight'.
    Of course I didn't know the difference between 'space' and orbit at the time.
    And I wouldn't even hear of SpaceX for maybe another half decade.
    Yet SpaceX has managed to do more than a hundred operational launches and eighty landings since then while all Virgin has done in the name of a glorified joy ride for the rich is kill several people and go pub

  • Accounts I have read recently discuss the two fatal accidents (one on the ground, one in flight) and the fact that the first flight since the fatal one, in 2019, though successful, narrowly avoided catastrophe due to "pencil whipped" sign-off for improperly assembled parts. It appears that Virgin Galactic has been doomed, if for no other reason, by poor management -- the essential safety and quality cultures required to pull something like this off never existed.

    It is managements duty to see that the corre

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BranMan ( 29917 )

      Anyone have any insight into the most recent set-back? The only word I'd heard was that failure of the rocket to ignite was due to "EM interference". I'm an EE and software engineer and that phrase just set off an alarm bell in my mind (and keep in mind this is pure speculation without a shred of evidence to back it up): "Whaddayoumean EM interference? Was some idiot trying to use wireless tech to control systems? In a ROCKET? Even I'm not that idiotic!"

      Anyone with a better theory please chime in - this

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