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Space United States Businesses

Virgin Galactic Completes Historic Third Successful Spaceflight with Rocket-powered Plane (cnn.com) 29

Posted by EditorDavid from the touching-the-sky dept.
"60 seconds of rocket burn, straight into space," Virgin Galactic tweeted today, sharing a video of their historic launch.

CNN reports: Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered plane, carrying two pilots, soared into the upper atmosphere on its third mission to reach space Saturday morning. The success cues up Virgin Galactic to begin launching paying customers within the next year as the company works to finish its testing campaign at its new headquarters in New Mexico.

Spaceplane VSS Unity reached an altitude of 55.45 miles, according to the company. The U.S. government recognizes the 50-mile mark as the edge of space. The company tweeted Saturday morning that the spaceflight carried technology experiments for NASA's Flight Opportunities Program...

Saturday's flight comes after Virgin Galactic's last spaceflight attempt ended abruptly when the rocket engine that powers the space plane, called VSS Unity, failed to ignite, setting the company's testing schedule back by months. Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, has spent years pledging to take groups of customers on brief, scenic flights to suborbital space. But the company has faced a series of complications and delays, including a 2014 test flight crash that left one pilot dead.

Nonetheless, Virgin Galactic has already sold tickets for $200,000 to $250,000 to more than 600 people.
The company said it also collected data "to be used for the final two verification reports that are required as part of the current FAA commercial reusable spacecraft operator's license." Virgin Galactic's CEO called it "a major step forward for both Virgin Galactic and human spaceflight in New Mexico. Space travel is a bold and adventurous endeavor, and I am incredibly proud of our talented team for making the dream of private space travel a reality."

In fact, this was the first ever spaceflight from Spaceport America, New Mexico, making it the third U.S. state to launch humans into space. New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham said proudly in the company's statement that "After so many years and so much hard work, New Mexico has finally reached the stars." To commemorate the moment, the flight carried New Mexico's traditional green chile seeds, and featured the Zia Sun Symbol from the state flag on the outside of the spaceship. "The crew experienced extraordinary views of the bright, blue-rimmed curvature of the earth against the blackness of space," reads the statement from Virgin Galactic, adding that New Mexico's White Sands National Park "sparkled brilliantly below."

And pilot-in-command CJ Sturckow now becomes the first person ever to have flown to space from three different states.
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Virgin Galactic Completes Historic Third Successful Spaceflight with Rocket-powered Plane More

Virgin Galactic Completes Historic Third Successful Spaceflight with Rocket-powered Plane

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  • So many issues (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Saturday May 22, 2021 @09:09PM (#61411770) Homepage

    First of all, it isn't even clear if this ship goes past the Karman line. There are multiple definitions, and the ship only goes past by some definitions, and not even the most common ones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line [wikipedia.org]. So it isn't even clear if one should say that Sturckow has reached space each time.

    Second, the safety record at Virgin leaves a massive amount to be desired. There's a recent book about the history of the company, "Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut" by Nicholas Schmidle. And I have to say after reading it, their entire thing feels so unsafe that I'm not sure you could pay me to go up in it. Aside from their repeated physical and mechanical issues, and the fact that they've actually lost a ship while killing one of the pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSS_Enterprise_crash [wikipedia.org], their entire approach seems like it is out of the 1950s. While modern rocket systems and other attempts at orbital tourism (like Blue Origin's New Shepard) use high degrees of automation, Virgin's entire thing requires highly skilled pilots like they are out of the Right Stuff. But humans make mistakes (and it was a pilot error which resulted in their previous disaster). Code doesn't always work better than humans, but you can have a lot of eyes look it over at least. Humans though can always make one split second incorrect decision with horrific consequences.

    • My impression exactly also. The safety and quality control aspects of this operation are scary bad, and then there is the bizarre Rube Goldberg design of the whole thing for an objective, putting a capsule just over 100,000 m, that is really a very low bar to clear aerospacewise. A single stage rocket is all you need, with a parachute for recovery. None of this complex cr@p with a "mothership", and winged glider with a rocket motor that aerodynamically reconfigures itself in flight, and requires a highly sk

      • Re:So many issues (Score:5, Insightful)

        by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Saturday May 22, 2021 @11:52PM (#61412018)
        Yes, its bizarre technology for this application. I have a sneaky suspicion that Branson didn't realize that getting to high altitude is only a small part of the difficulty of getting to orbit. He was sold on something that got "half way to space" and thinks this technology is an approach to an orbital airliner. If you go to their website they talk about "space liners" https://www.virgingalactic.com... [virgingalactic.com] Its a pretty common misconception and I suspect he was sold a bill of goods and can't back down now. This is the real advantage of SpaceX - Musk has a deep understanding of space technology and can make well informed technical decisions. Its why his rockets look like .... rockets, not science fiction space liners. What Virgin Galactic has is a technological dead end. It doesn't address any of the real technical challenges of space (delta-V, reentry heating etc). Its a glorified roller coaster. Even Blue Origins is working on technologies that are directly applicable to space. They are moving more slowly than SpaceX, but they are moving in a reasonable direction. Virgin Galactic is just silly.

        • Branson is after $$ the old fashioned way,quick turnaround and lots of passengers⦠while everyone else is going further for the big NASA money.

          • Well, I'm convinced he's never going to make any money with this design. He'll probably kill a few rich passengers along the way, but even so, the window of opportunity for him is narrowing all the time.

          • Branson is after publicity - thats it. Even money doesn't really matter if publicity can be had instead.

            Virgin Galactic is nothing more than Branson being able to say "the Virgin brand can take people to space".

          • Branson is after $$ the old fashioned way, quick turnaround and lots of passengers...

            Given he started this in 2004 "quick turnaround" might be the wrong term there.
            My theory is that Virgin Galactic is some sort of tax dodge, because they've been at it for 17 years and still got zero tourists into space.

        • Its a pretty common misconception and I suspect he was sold a bill of goods and can't back down now.

          Science doesn't care what you think, though.

          If he can't back down now because the money is sunk and he can't afford to do it right, then what he is doing makes sense. That is, wring every dollar possible out of your mistake. But if he can still afford to do it right, then he can't really afford not to.

      • I think that the design is reasonable (and maybe even necessary) if you have to build a rocket and its engines exclusively with the technologies used to build DIY fiberglass airplanes. I guess that's what the designers were familiar with.

        However, more suitable technologies certainly exist for building spacecraft and rocket engines.

    • First one is a question of definition, not really interesting to people paying for the experience. Second one implies that the author never wants to fly on a plane not being piloted by a computer. Got any real issues ?
      • Regular airplanes have a lot in the way of procedures and safeguards which make it difficult for a pilot to engage in a fraction of a second screwup that destroys the plane. That it is possible for someone to throw a single switch which in the middle of flight which leads to the disintegration of the plane is a design flaw. This to some extent reflects the history; these planes were made by Scaled Composites which has a history of making test aircraft, not commercial aircraft, with very different safety nor
    • The evidence agrees with you.

      The history behind the Virgin Galactic vehicle is interesting. The the original version of "SpaceShip One" came from legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan [wikipedia.org] and Scaled Composites [wikipedia.org], the company he founded.

      In many respects, it has some brilliant engineering - for example the way the vehicle is designed to deform to massively increase drag in the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere, not only to slow it down but also to orient it correctly so that as it descends, flight surface

  • Von Karman (Score:5, Informative)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday May 22, 2021 @09:09PM (#61411772)

    The problem with the US Air Force definition of space of 50 miles, which is well below the international accepted 62 miles, is that there are certain clouds called noctilucent clouds that can float above that height. You cannot be in space if there are visible clouds above you. Whenever the atmospheric density at 50 miles occurs on any other planet, we without hesitation call it atmosphere. For example we say Pluto has an atmosphere though it is a much thinner atmosphere than at 50 miles on earth. Heck the New Horizons space probe took a nice picture of it with clouds. Second, if you are paying two hundred thousand dollars you would feel ripped off if 80 percent of the world didnâ(TM)t really recognize you as having gone to space. You open yourself to ridicule:

  • Virgin Galactic completed its third successful launch into outer space Saturday in New Mexico, according to the company, which aspires to become the first-ever commercial spaceline. The spacecraft, named VSS Unity, was the first completed flight from Virgin Galactic in over two years https://onepunchmanmangaonline... [onepunchma...online.net]

  • "$200,000 to $250,000"

    The extra $50,000 gets you a window seat.

  • The rocket plane didn't cross the Karman line (100km) so the paying customers aren't astronauts. I believe this will eventually sink the entire endeavor.
  • on its third mission to reach space. Just saying?

  • Haha. So, they reached "space" on a technicality.

  • "When you are talking about going from naught to 3,500 mph in 8 seconds straight up - there will be no ride anywhere in the world that will be like it," Branson said.

    That's from something in 2018 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/29/richard-branson-virgin-galactic-is-2-or-3-flights-away-from-space.html [cnbc.com]. Ignore the naught / nought typo. cnbc.

    "They'll be taken up by our mothership up to about 25,000ft, they'll be dropped. They'll go to about 3,500 miles an hour in eight seconds," said Branson.

    That's fro

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