Some old billionaires
just play with supermodels . . .
Real super models!
Posted on 08/23/2005 11:50:28 AM PDT by JeffersonRepublic.com
Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites to develop orbital version of tourist spacecraft
Orbital vehicle SpaceShipThree (SS3) will be developed by space tourism company Virgin Galactic and Mojave-based SpaceShipTwo (SS2)-developer Scaled Composites, if the planned SS2 suborbitalservice is successful, says Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn.
SpaceShipThree is planned for Scaled’s tier 2 manned space programme, while the nine-person SpaceShipTwo is part of the current tier 1b programme.
The suborbital three-crew SpaceShipOne (SS1), which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize last October, was developed within Scaled Composites’ tier 1 programme.
“If the SpaceShipTwo service is successful we will develop SpaceShipThree, which is orbital,” says Whitehorn.
Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan spoke about a orbital version of SS1 at a UK Royal Aeronautical Society lecture in London last year (Flight International, 17-23 August 2004).
Scaled Composites was not available for comment about SS3.
Meanwhile, Whitehorn says his company was given approval earlier this month by the US government for technology transfer for SS2 from Scaled Composites.
Under US export rules the country’s companies and individuals cannot provide information on certain technologies to non-US organisations and foreign citizens. The technologies used by SS1, such as its hybrid rocket engine, are covered by this law.
With the transfer approval Virgin Galactic can now activate its intellectual property licence with Paul Allen’s company Mojave Aerospace Ventures. The company owns the technology rights for SS1 systems that will be used for SS2.
Virgin Galactic began its export application earlier this year after becoming a registered US company in the third quarter of 2004.
The company needs the technology transfer to enable it to buy five nine-seater SS2 vehicles and two White Knight 2 (WK2) carrier aircraft it will get from the UK’s Virgin Group and Scaled Composites joint venture The Spaceship Company.
The Spaceship Company will also need technology transfer approval to work with Scaled Composites. Whitehorn expects the new spacecraft manufacturer to become a legal US company later this year.
The prototype SS2 and WK2 vehicles will be built at Scaled Composites. The production SS2s and WK2s will be built at The Spaceship Company’s factory, which is expected to be based at Scaled Composites.
NASA spent $100's of millions and 2.5 years inorder to fix the foam problem on the shuttle. During that time, for ~$10 million, Burt Rutan built a three seater space ship in a desert hanger. Now he is talking about going to orbit. He is the modern day Wright brothers.
Burt wants to go to orbit. space ping
Anyone know how Rutan proposes to deal with re-entry friction? Even the tiny Mercury capsules required a substantial heat shield.
Ball bearings.
Composites.
Yeah, he's talking about it. His current design is nowhere near capable of achieving earth orbit. I absolutely love the idea of private or commercial concerns showing NASA up and commercializing space travel and resources. However, Ratan has so incredibly far to go that I don't think he can do it.
Rutan will be creating a new market. Nice thing about free markets, they don't require that one group lose jobs in order for another group to gain them.
Furthermore, it's the federal government, they don't ever lose their jobs.
Any idea of when regularmoonservice will begin?
Some old billionaires
just play with supermodels . . .
Real super models!
First part, okay; second part, forget it.
Say what you want about Branson, he knows a good thing when he sees it.
And Burt has a REALLY good thing...
Rutan is an inspiration. He's got Branson parting with some of his money in what will be an up-scaled version of the craft he built for the Ansari prize.
Getting into orbit -- that's going to take a clean sheet of paper. I think that what Rutan has at present is a technological dead-end. There won't be much to build on.
You're talking about the difference between an extremely high altitude airplane and a manned vehicle capable of achieving orbit and returning. Granted, SS1 was a great accomplishment, but a ship capable of achieving orbit and returning is an order of magnitude (at least) bigger in terms of cost, complexity, danger, and energy required to get it into orbit. Rutan is a dreamer and an achiever, his accomplishments so far are commendable. However, I think all of this talk of an orbital ship are very premature.
Consider that to achieve orbit Rutan's ship must accelerate to around 17,500 mph. In comparison, SS1 only hit around 2,200 mph. Yes, almost an order of magnitude less than what is needed. If - and I mean IF - Rutan ever achieves orbit it will be in a vehicle which will bear little if any resemblance to SS1 and will likely look like a traditional rocket. Then to make the vehicle reusable is quite unlikely on his budget. NASA may be a huge glacial bureacracy, but their engineers do know what they are doing.
Here is another person's take on the whole thing about Rutan achieving orbit with passengers in a reusable space vehicle:
The specific energy required to reach the altitude SpaceShipOne (SS1) reached is this, corresponding to this speed. Orbits are only stable above around 180 km. A 200 km orbit requires a speed of 7.78 km/s, so getting into a 200 km high orbit requires a specific energy of this, corresponding to this speed. That's 7.54159384 times faster! The formula for the speed of a rocket tells us that to go that much faster requires 693.390852 times as much rocket.
The exact cost of SS1 isn't public, but was probably between $20 and $50 million - I'll say $30 million here. Scaling this up to a low earth orbit capable rocket, we get $20.8 billion. I'm estimating the payload of SpaceShipOne at 400 kg from the rules. The shuttle launches 24,400 kg - 61 times as much. Scaling costs up to something that size, we get $1.2688 trillion The costs of the shuttle program over its entire life? About $145 billion.
Add in the costs of protecting the craft from re-entry from actual orbit, and things start to look expensive.
Now, one can get higher specific impulses than Rutan did, which reduces that number above the e. It makes for more expensive engines, but it doesn't have to cost nearly as much as it costs NASA. (Maybe they're paying people to make presentations like this one from the military?) One can argue that Rutan could make a design that could make orbit cheaply. However, his building SS1 is not good evidence of that. That is a completely different requirement requiring entirely different engineering. A much harder and much more expensive requirement.
I'm not bagging on Rutan, just all the hype. Rutan's achievement is remarkable and his design of SS1 is awesome. This is not the Sci Fi channel though and Rutan can't use cool CGI tricks to get a cool looking spaceship into orbit around the planet. Earth sucks - and it sucks hard.
Composite ball bearings.
Square it. Two orders of magnitude.
So, how is he going to carry twice the fuel necessary to get him out of the atmosphere? You have to slow down from 17,500mph somehow. To use rockets to slow down to nearly zero (you can let your landing gear and parachute handle a couple hundred mph for you) you need just as much fuel to decelerate as you need fuel to accelerate to that speed in the first place. Atmospheric friction will do it for free. Well, except for all that heat you have to deal with.
I agree.
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