Posted on 12/11/2018 9:53:03 PM PST by BenLurkin
The statement didn’t specify what it meant by “space altitude,” but company officials have previously said they were using the altitude of 50 miles, or approximately 80 kilometers, used by NASA and the U.S. Air Force for awarding astronaut wings.
“For Virgin Galactic, the major milestone that we perceive is the altitude at which NASA and Air Force folks get their astronaut wings, which is 50 miles,” George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said last month. “For us and our customers, I think we’ll be focused on 50 miles, at least at the start.”
That is below the 100-kilometer Karman Line commonly used as the boundary of space, including in the Ansari X Prize competition won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. However, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world air sports federation that maintains records for both aviation and spaceflight, announced Nov. 30 it would reconsider that definition with an eye towards lowering it.
The company added that, on this test flight, it is carrying four unnamed payloads through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which provides suborbital and related flights of research payloads. Those experiments, the company said, are part of an effort by the company “to start simulating the commercial weight distribution in the spaceship represented by our future passengers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at spacenews.com ...
So were SR-71 crewmen astronauts?
They would have to have flown at least three times higher to have qualified under this 50 mile definition. Even more if the Karman line criterion is used. X-15 pilots, though, definitely qualified.
*ping*
That is below the 100-kilometer Karman Line commonly used as the boundary of space, including in the Ansari X Prize competition won by SpaceShipOne in 2004.
...
They seemed so promising back than and more accomplished than the young SpaceX.
Virgin Galactic, what might have been. My wild guess is, they'll be selling their first suborbital thrill ride sometime after SpaceX sends the Japanese billionaire and friends around the Moon.
The max on the SR-71 was about 16 miles (roughly 40 percent higher than the flight ceiling used by private jets, which fly above commercial airliners), or 1/4 the distance to the Karman Line. Still, I'd rather fly the distances in the SR-71, even facing backward (since I'm not a pilot). Only aircraft capable of sustained flight above Mach 3 (not counting the X-15, about which one test pilot said, it was the only plane he'd ever flown where he was glad when the engine quit). Never had an operational loss, outran every missile ever fired at it, what an engineering achievement of Clarence "Kelly" Johnson (see his memoir, "More Than My Share", grad of MTU btw) and his Skunk Works at Lockheed. Just building windows that wouldn't melt or fall out, and keeping the cockpit cool, oh those little things, brilliant, brilliant.
yes.
the space suit was invented for u2 pilots
“oh those little things, brilliant, brilliant.”
Regarding “little things” I recall a documentary regarding either the U2 or the SR-71 on how they had to survey and modify the roads between the Skunk Works and the airstrip (in Nevada???).
Every guardrail, sign, post, etc. had to be measured and moved out of the way of the oversized load. And I presume under some cover story.
Yeah, I think there are some photos online of that transfer.
Once upon a time I got upbraided online for stating the fact that, after LBJ blabbed about the secret plane and bragged about it, the Soviets blew up in diplomatic channels, threatening parallel development and implying war and the usual, and so he ordered the tool and die equipment (which also was unique and had had to be developed) destroyed.
There was no chance that the technology could have been developed into an operational fighter or bomber, but regardless, he shouldn't have run his mouth (or ever been President, for that matter).
OTOH, those Skunk Works guys, if anyone could have, they could have done it.
The titanium needed for their construction was actually mined in Central Asia, in one of the SSRs, under some false front company that was run by the CIA, and shipped to the US for the project.
The forerunners of the U2 suits (which only made it to space during the Mercury program, NASA hadn't had time to develop their own) was the suit developed by and for Wiley Post when he pioneered high altitude flight (some more details from Johnson's book, he knew Post) and the Germans' flight suits used for the ME-163B. Those suits were mostly for protection of the pilot in case of a fuel leak, because the fuel dissolved tissues analogously to the way acid does.
David Clarke Company MC-3A lineage suit used in balloon jumps for ejection parachute testing by USAF Captain Joe Kittinger.
Was an engineering test flight which suffered a propulsion malfunction. It lost directional stability at 83,000 feet and over MACH 3. The pilot Bill Weaver survived being thrown from the disintegrating aircraft. Kittenger’s automated drogue system rescued the unconscious pilot, whose suit helmet was encased in ice until just prior to deployment of the main parachute.
The man who fell from space?
Wiley Post made his own pressure suit in 1934 to support his high altitude flights. He eventually exceeded 50,000 feet and discovered the existence of the Jet Stream on one of these flights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_Post#Pressure_suit
http://www.astronautix.com/w/wileypostsuit.html
http://wileypost.org/pressuresuit/
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