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Space Businesses Transportation

Space Plane Startup Promises One-Hour Rides to Anywhere on Earth at 9,000 MPH (bloombergquint.com) 91

"Traveling in a space plane is a lot like traveling in a regular plane, except for the middle part," quips Bloomberg Business Week: After reaching cruising altitude, the pilot hits the rocket boosters and blasts the aircraft to the edge of space at more than 9,000 mph, or about 12 times the speed of sound. The plane travels at that speed for about 15 minutes, then glides against the atmosphere to slow itself down, cruising back to Earth to land at a conventional airport.

Venus Aerospace Corp., a startup pursuing a hypersonic space plane, is aiming to use this technique to ferry people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in about an hour.

The company was started by two former Virgin Orbit LLC employees: Sarah "Sassie" Duggleby, a code-writing launch engineer, and her husband, Andrew, who managed launch, payload, and propulsion operations... Venus now has 15 employees, most veterans of the space industry, and has received investment from venture capital firms including Prime Movers and Draper Associates. "Every few decades humans attempt this," says Andrew Duggleby, in a tacit acknowledgment of the idea's repeated failure. "This time it will work...."

Still, flights aren't imminent. The shape of the aircraft is a work in progress, and the company will begin testing three scale models this summer. The Dugglebys, who've secured a small research grant from the U.S. Air Force and are pursuing additional funding from the Department of Defense, expect the project to take a decade or more.

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Space Plane Startup Promises One-Hour Rides to Anywhere on Earth at 9,000 MPH

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  • At least there the only danger is accidentally showing my junk.

  • Hope the Russians don't mistake it for a missile

  • Has something changed that makes these sorts of vehicles less destructive to the ozone layer? NOx and CO are extremely bad pollutants at >10 km altitude.
    • It'll be environmentally safe for two reasons:

      - It'll be a toy for rich fucks: it'll emit incredible amounts of pollutants per passenger per mile, but there will be very few passengers

      - It'll never happen as a pure bueiness venture anyway, because all previous such ventures have never come to anything.. Even the company's founders admit it. If anything comes out of that company, it'll be heavily subsidized by the military for military use only. But that too is marginal use.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Yeah, as much as I'd like to be able to get anywhere in an hour, I know for sure that I won't be able to afford it.

        Unless it can use normal runways I'd probably have to travel quite far too the spaceport too.

        • Unless it can use normal runways I'd probably have to travel quite far too the spaceport too.

          Because that three hour bus ride from Narita to Tokyo is so convenient now.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            About 45 minutes by train. It's not bad by airport standards.

            I'm the UK the proposed spaceport would be about 12 hours away by train or car for me, and will soon be in another country...

    • Has something changed that makes these sorts of vehicles less destructive to the ozone layer? NOx and CO are extremely bad pollutants at >10 km altitude.

      The money they'll be charging ...

    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      NOx and CO are extremely bad pollutants at >10 km altitude.

      Someone call the EPA. Normal aircraft cruising altitude is between 33,000 and 42,000 feet.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @12:49PM (#61437238)

    There's zero details about the engine they are using. And neither of the founders seem to have engine design experience or even mechanical engineering. Did they find out about some amazing engine tech and incorporate it?

    Still, they seem to have convinced somebody (or organization playing with other people's money) to give them $3 million.

    • They'll probably use the burning rubber engines that Virgin used.

      Simple and cheap.

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Simple, cheap, inefficient (low-ish specific impluse) and unreliable for burns longer than a minute or so.

    • 3 *million* in seed funding?! Did someone drop two or three zeros while writing the check? The website shows a photo of the aerospike engine, which would actually make sense for this kind of project (single stage to orbit), but his technology is not mature yet. The X-33 program cost 1.3 *billion* dollars and they didn't even manage to finish building the prototype plane. These bozos will most probably take their 3 million and smoke them, because that's not enough to get a bunch of aerospace engineers to poi

      • Does it make sense to take a failed project that was cancelled at an early stage as a point of comparison?

  • by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @12:49PM (#61437242) Homepage

    Is this plausible? What kind of energy density is needed to reach 9000 mph in a plane-sized vehicle? (For those following along at home, that's about half of actual orbital speeds. The Space Shuttle accelerated to twice as fast in eight or nine minutes.) Are they going to need the equivalent of one of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters for each flight, making for a rather expensive transoceanic jaunt with nasty chemical emissions? Given that kinetic energy scales with the square of velocity, is 9000 mph the right target speed?

    Feel free to make simplifying assumptions, such as "they can safely glide to a landing".

    • Is this plausible? What kind of energy density is needed to reach 9000 mph in a plane-sized vehicle? ...

      Forget the technical side, is the business model plausible? Seriously, who really needs to be on the other side of the world in an hour in this day -- especially for what they're probably going to charge?

      Venus now has 15 employees, most veterans of the space industry, and has received investment from venture capital firms ...

      I think they used to work for Mars One [wikipedia.org] ... :-)

      • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @01:04PM (#61437308)

        is the business model plausible? Seriously, who really needs to be on the other side of the world in an hour in this day

        There is huge demand for international travel with this kind of speed - it's not about being there in an hour, it's about not being on a plane for 12 hours.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The problem is timezones.

          If I go from London to Tokyo, leaving at 1 PM London time I will arrive at around 9 AM Tokyo time. 12 hour flight.

          If the flight takes me 1 hour then I will arrive in Tokyo at 10 PM. Immediately check in to a hotel and try to sleep at what feels to me like 2 PM.

          So actually there isn't really much benefit from travelling faster, I might as well just get one of those reclining seats and sleep on the plane. The jet lag isn't as bad and I arrive early enough to get half a day's work in,

          • by BranMan ( 29917 )

            The solution is timezones. You based your example on arriving at 9AM, in Tokyo, the *next day*. This capability changes the calculus.

            You leave London at 5AM, not 1PM, arriving 9 hours "later" in Tokyo after the one hour flight, at 2PM - the *same* day, not the next day. Meetings in Tokyo from 3PM-6PM or whatever, maybe iron out the details over dinner (lunch to you), so make it to 8PM Tokyo time. Catch the flight back to London and get back 8 hours after you left at 1PM. Your underlings and their under

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              But leaving London at 5AM means arriving at the airport by 3AM, so with travel time to the airport you are not gaining anything.

        • People who can afford this can afford private jets, or first class cabins with showers and beds.

      • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        > Seriously, who really needs to be on the other side of the world in an hour in this day

        Anyone travelling out of Wuhan circa February 2020...

        • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          Nah, the US was still letting them in without so much as a temperature check until the airlines voluntarily stopped flying those routes.

      • by Entrope ( 68843 )

        I think business plausibility depends on the questions I asked. If they can get the price down to about twice a business-class ticket for the same route, I think they'll have enough takers. But I think the only way to make it that cheap that is to use unobtanium fuel in a vibranium engine. Maybe they don't need an SRB for reach flight, but I don't know what other kind of engine they would use that makes it cheap enough to get customers.

      • Compare to the X-37, which can launch on a Falcon 9.

        The Falcon 9 is already basically what you're going to need to launch something like this. $50m per launch.

        People might be willing to pay $5m to travel halfway around the world in an hour... if they could arrive an hour after they realized they needed to make the trip. But since the launches will be scheduled far in advance, the benefit of the transit time seems minimal.

        The business model appears to be to get paid to manage the attempt, rather than to actu

      • Seriously, who really needs to be on the other side of the world in an hour in this day -- especially for what they're probably going to charge?
        A surgeon?

    • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @02:45PM (#61437570)
      Depends on what you mean by "plausable". A methane / oxygen engine has an exhaust velocity around 3500M/S, so if ~80% of the weight is fuel you can get to 9000mph. Hydrogen oxygen is a bit better, but the hydrogen tank needs to be very large - otoh extra hydrogen could be used for cooling. So its not breaking any really basic rocketry rules. But - lots of extremely difficult engineering. The remaining 20% mass needs to include rocket engines, jet engines, heat shielding, structure, landing gear, control surfaces, pressure vessel, etc. It would be extremely challenging to do that and still leave any useful payload. It needs to be able to fly subsonic for landing and hypersonic during cruise and descent. That is a diffcult tradeoff - good hypersonic shapes like the shuttle, tend to glide like bricks (like the shuttle). There are other approaches like rocket with a re-entry shield and no significant attempt at gliding. The heat shield is more difficult and heavy, but no heavy wings. The idea of a hypersonic boost plane goes back to the 1940s - but no one has found a way to solve the myriad of technical challenges to make it practical and I don't see any evidence these guys have either
      • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        The poor glide performance isn't the biggest issue, as the shuttle did manage to do it quite consistently. The heat protection on the other hand...

        9000 mph is 4 km/s, or Mach 13. Fast enough to melt most materials and much faster than the NASA X-43 which flew at Mach 9.6 and kept itself from melting with water-cooling, a method that doesn't work with flights longer than a minute. That means the space plane would need shuttle-like tiles or ablative shielding, both of which comes with massive weight penalties

        • Who's paying for all the first class flights and learjets then?

          • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

            First class is more like $10,000 per trip. And you might notice airlines have been removing first class seats and replacing them with more business class seats. Of course there will always be some who are rich by inheritance and aren't worried about spending their wealth away, but overall there's very little demand for it.

            Private jets cost a bit more than first class and aren't losing popularity. The proposed space plane can't replace it though, since the point of a private jet is that it leaves on-demand a

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Sure. We've got lots of suborbital anywhere-in-the-world rocket propelled vehicles already. The ones we have now usually lack wings and have nukes on them instead of rich dudes though. The Nazis even had plans to build a bomber that would do this.

      When Elon Musk was talking about doing this with Starship I worked out the numbers, and for Starship the cost of fuel was in the ballpark of what an intercontinental airliner uses.

      Fuel is a minor cost anyway. The big one is how fast you can turn the vehicle around.

    • No, it is not plausible.

      At least, not without a whole suite of supporting technologies which have also not yet been invented.

  • by Subm ( 79417 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @12:51PM (#61437248)

    > "This time it will work...."

    Lol.

  • Just what the world needs. A form of transport burning huge amounts of fuel and delivering Covid to your door within the hour (amongst the vomit), just because you fucked up remembering your granny's birthday until the day itself.

    They became fascinated by hypersonic travel after missing Sassie’s grandmother’s 95th birthday party because the flights were too long from Japan

  • Investors fooled ! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wimg ( 300673 ) on Sunday May 30, 2021 @12:56PM (#61437264) Homepage

    You can immediately spot this is a scam, one that probably fooled a number of rich investors :
    9000mph = 14000kmh
    Earth's circumference is 40000km, so going to 'anywhere on earth' means up to 20000km.
    This 'plane' has to reach cruising altitude before accelerating to 14000kmh, then needs to slow down again... so you'd be lucky to get 'anywhere on earth' in 3 hours.

    • Shut up and take my etherium!
    • You can take off large chunk the world off your list, it's a shithole. Anywhere with clean water and people with basic hygiene in a hour is doable.

    • by kackle ( 910159 )

      so you'd be lucky to get 'anywhere on earth' in 3 hours.

      Yes, but in what time zone? "Look! It only took negative 45 minutes!"

    • For the longer trips it bores through the Earth's core at 9000 mph.
    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      The title is wrong. The summary says, "Los Angeles to Tokyo in about an hour." That's a distance of only 5,474 miles.

    • There are investors around who are willing to take a long shot if it "only" costs them a couple of million dollars.

      If they have a billion to burn, and take 500 long shots at 2 mil each, and even ONE turns out to work, they have probably made 10x(or more) the billion they spent on the various long shots.

      I imagine it's a similar class of investors who got involved with SpaceX when Musk claimed to be attempting to make a reusuable rocket.

  • So that you can spend more time jet-lagging. What a great idea...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      So that you can spend more time jet-lagging. What a great idea...

      Oddly enough, you wouldn't. You've only been away from your area for one hour, not sitting on a plane for hours on end while crossing time zones. For example, you fly out of New York at 10 AM to go to Rome. Rome is six hours ahead of New York via time zones. While the local time upon arrival in Rome is 5 PM (10 AM + 6 hour time difference + 1 hour of flight time), your body will think it's roughly 11 AM. You will still be wide awake and won't notice the time difference (other than it being much darker

      • So 6 hours after you arrive in Rome in your scenario, it's bed time if you want to get in 8 hours before starting tomorrow. Your body thinks it's 5pm. Now what?
        • Nobody is going to take a trip like this in order to work a 9-5 shift. They'd be attending a meeting, one that was held at their convenience, and then they'd return home. Even if they take a regular flight home, they're just tired, they weren't there long enough to mess up their internal clock enough to be jet-lagged.

        • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          People already do this for short trips. The key is having the discipline to go to sleep on your regular schedule and not try to match the schedule at the destination. That does mean you'll miss breakfast or lunch because you're soundly asleep at that time and you will probably have to find a 24-hour convenience store for your dinner.

  • expect the project to take a decade or more.

    I find it pretty amusing this story was posted just before then about Aerion shutting down...

    Sub-orbital is a better plan, but I think ten years is too long - SpaceX has already said they plan to do sub-orbital flights for point to point travel across the Earth, and they are way closer than ten years from having that be viable.

    The advantage this company has is that they can use existing airports, but they have a major risk factor in a vehicle with a totally new de

    • by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      SpaceX has already said they plan to do sub-orbital flights for point to point travel across the Earth, and they are way closer than ten years from having that be viable.

      Yeah, sure. And they'll have people walking on the Sun by 2050.

      What ever happened to the Hyperloop which Elon described as a "tube with an air hokey table" and "not that hard"? Wasn't that supposed to be operational years ago? Ah that's right, he couldn't get it to work, sold off the name and now Virgin Hyperloop has a 500 m test track in which they reached a whopping 107 mph.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The advantage this company has is they're designing the vehicle for the purpose. They'll have wings or parachutes.

      SpaceX will certainly have a vehicle that can make the trip first, but propulsive landings are always going to be more dangerous than something with wings.

      • propulsive landings are always going to be more dangerous than something with wings.

        I don't see why that has to be the case at all. Plenty of winged airplanes have gone down.

        Propulsive landings with multiple redundant engines made at higher tolerances may well yield an overall safer, if somewhat more expensive, trip than a plane. I think SpaceX prices may well be less than business class trips on normal airlines though.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          SpaceX may be able to get their propulsive landings to be acceptably safe, but in the history of the world reliability has always gone: no moving parts >> simple mechanical >> fluidic spinny black magic that explodes.

          Planes typically go down because of human error or catastrophic failure, which is itself very rare. Wings falling off is exceptionally rare.

          • no moving parts >> simple mechanical >> fluidic spinny black magic that explodes.

            Let me blow your mind - SpaceX Starship rocket has fewer moving parts than a modern jet, and the plane is less safe for passengers as far as where it contains the explodely fluids.

            • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              Number of parts is a terrible way to compare reliability. Particularly when you're counting parts like the buttons in the seat back entertainment systems.

              An aircraft requires a handful of mechanical parts to land. The wings are fixed and unmoving (super reliable) and you need control surfaces (mechanical, highly reliable and often redundant in an emergency) OR engines (mechanical+, less reliable) to maneuver.

              Starship requires more or less the same number of control surfaces plus Raptor engines to land. The

  • by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Sunday May 30, 2021 @01:47PM (#61437422) Homepage
    Is the rate at which they'll burn through their venture capital angel Whike-Ombinator funding
  • and how much CO2 are those trips going to emit?
  • plus 1/2 hour at: airport security, passport control, baggage reclaim, ... What is the total travel time ?

    • If they can figure out how to get through those in half an hour, forget the hypersonic part .. I'm investing.

      • by BranMan ( 29917 )

        No problem for me - when I use the regional airport in Manchester, NH I have couch to gate:
        Get off couch, grab my packed bags.
        Drive to airport (2 towns away)
        Park.
        Check in at airline, check bag.
        Go through security
        Arrive at gate.

        Clocked, consistently, in under 1 hour.
        Next!

  • Groups have been promising variations of that for decades. e.g. Britain was involved in a project called HOTOL in the 80s that was the same idea and the engineers involved with that are *still* putting out press releases every few years pretending rocket travel is only a decade away.
  • What is it that they claim makes this practical? Yes, inexpensive mach 9 travel would be nice - that idea isn't exactly innovative. There is very little information, not even the usual artistic renderings of how they plan to actually do it. "more efficient engines" Great. That sounds good, "innovative shape" which is not shown "leading edge cooling tech" - good for reentry - but how? and why - the shuttle came in faster and was OK with carbon / carbon tips If they have anything at all , the sure aren'
  • Really? An engineer who can code? What ever next?

    FFS Slashdot.

    • You're going to get hung up on that?

      The headline is "1 hr to anywhere on earth", and that's not the bigger issue? 15 minutes to take off and get to altitude, 15 minutes to accelerate, 15 minutes to decelerate, 15 minutes to descend and land.

      Want to do the math on what that acceleration and deceleration looks like? That's more of an engineering concern than what you brought up.

      • Touche'
        I complain about the small stuff, and leave the big problems to other, smarter, people, like you.

  • (spoken in mock-Tamarian) KSP Career Mode after unlocking the 'Whiplash'!

    Good times with extra re-entry heat and other mods.
  • At sea level, it is 12,500 miles to the furthest place on Earth. So with a promise of anywhere on Earth within one hour at a top speed of 9000mph, they are already dooming themselves to not meet their goal. We discovered centuries ago that Europe and Asia was not all there was to the Earth, did these guys not get that memo?

  • >"Still, flights aren't imminent. The shape of the aircraft is a work in progress, and the company will begin testing three scale models this summer. "

    I would think the ultimate price of the ticket is just as major an obstacle. More fuel, likely smaller craft, fewer seats, much heavier (heat shielding), more safety equipment, more O2, fewer places to land. Still, would be really neat/convenient, if you could afford to fly on it.

  • I found it most informative to see these two topics adjacent in my feed...
    "Aerion Shuts Down, Halts Work On Proposed Supersonic Business Jet"
    and next we have
    "Space Plane Startup Promises One-Hour Rides to Anywhere on Earth at 9,000 MPH"
    I am going to guess that the latter company will be a "replace all" article with the former article within a year or so...
  • ...once SS begins point-to-point suborbital hops. SpaceX cost to operate will be considerable lower since they've amortizing the R&D and vehicle production costs for orbital space travel.

  • Slashdot: 9000mph space plane will take you anywhere in 1 hour, $3 million invested!

    Next post on Slashdot: Hypersonic airplane company goes bankrupt after $11 million invested!

    Hypersonics is one of several trendy current US government funding sinks. Expect to see a lot of people doing work in the field with no results, as well as lots of clickbait media.

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