Posted on 01/25/2008 9:52:04 PM PST by neverdem
Vision of the future? An artist's drawing of the White Knight Two plane carrying SpaceShip Two aloft.
Virgin Galactic
This week, Richard Branson unveiled his vision for the future of commercial spaceflight (see also our blog post in the Great Beyond). Based on a design by Ansari X-Prize winner Burt Rutan, his new SpaceShip Two will carry six paying passengers and two crew on a suborbital flight.
The craft is heavily based on an earlier prototype built by Rutan. A larger, more conventional aircraft known as White Knight Two carries the spaceship high above Earth before launch. The aircraft releases the spaceship, which then soars to its apogee before first floating and then gliding back to Earth's surface.
The design is clever for several reasons, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space enthusiast at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The White Knight Two's controls are identical to those in the spaceship, allowing it to act as a training vehicle for SpaceShip Two's crew. And the spaceship itself uses a shuttlecock design that makes it fall, rather than fly, back to Earth. This trick is made possible by the fact that the craft doesn't have to go fast enough to achieve orbit, and so can return to Earth at slower, safer speeds than other craft such as the Space Shuttle.
"But ‘safer’ is a relative term," cautions McDowell. The spaceship uses a hybrid solid-liquid propellant engine that is supposed to be more reliable than either liquid or solid fuel. Nevertheless, the ride will depend on volatile propellants. Last week, state regulators fined Rutan’s company, Scaled Composites, US$25,000 after safety inspectors investigated the explosion that killed three employees who were testing a prototype of SpaceShip Two’s engine.
In the near term, SpaceShip Two will take passengers to experience about five minutes of microgravity. But at it’s unveiling on Wednesday, Branson said he hoped that the technology might one day allow humans to travel around the planet quickly by taking short hops outside of the atmosphere.
“This may not happen for some time,” Branson conceded, and McDowell agrees. Moving from point A to B on the planet requires far more energy, and hence a larger rocket, than a straight-up shot. A ship on such a mission would also need a heat shield or system of braking rockets, both of which would add weight. “It’s much more challenging technologically,” McDowell says. “But it’s not completely ridiculous.”
There is no set date for the start of commercial flights. The White Night Two is expected to undergo its first test flights this summer.
I want to go to space.
TO Mars would have been good 20 years ago. Now I will take a sub-orbital ride. If I had 20 mil I could go to the space station.*sigh*
No Sh**! Rutans designs in these regimes of flight may be clever as the article says, but they are also very marginally designed vehicles.
And describing it as a sub orbital vehicle-ride is correct.
These designs have nothing to do with space flight or exploration thereof.
It is an expensive joy-ride and nothing else. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I will call it as it is.
ping
Also, why the passenger windows on the twin booms? Are these off-the shelf passenger cabins? Will there be technicians in there, or nervous spouses of the Spaceship II's passengers?
“These designs have nothing to do with space flight or exploration thereof.”
That’s like saying that The designs of the Wright brothers had nothing to do with air traffic.
If one can make cheap sub-orbital launches, then one can put payloads in range of orbital craft.
A way will be found to accelerate the payload, or snatch it with a carbon nanotube net being drug by a shuttle like a fishing net below a trawler.
The most important effect will be the fertile minds of children exposed to this ‘joy-ride’, who will find ways to get into space.
As you say, though, it is a joy-ride. I doubt McDowell and the Rutan brothers would argue with you.
It is a private enterprise, and they have the same goals as any company. Do it, Do it well, and make money.
We can spend it on rides to the edge of the atmosphere, or we can spend it on signs that say “Warning: Coffee is Hot.”
“Also, why the passenger windows on the twin booms?”
So you can see the engines fall off.
Seriously, though....
Good question about the portholes.
Spaceship Two has these portholes for maximum viewing ability. For test pilots, and later for passengers.
If you noticed in the article, the controls in the cabins of White Knight Two are identical to Spaceship Two.
Look at the picture. All three forward fuselages are exactly identical.
Made on the same jig.
It makes manufacture, piloting easier, and reduces testing time.
Modular construction, assembly line capable, using carbon fiber composites.
//That’s like saying that The designs of the Wright brothers had nothing to do with air traffic//
Hey UCANSEE2, IMO this analogy of yours is totally wrong. Rutan and Virgin are not pioneering anything. They are marketing a carnival ride on a very marginal vehicle.
Sure if people want to pay$$$ to do it, fine. I predict a catastrophe on this contraption. I say ‘think Hindenburg’
From another article:
The engines, coupled with the light weight gained through the use of a high percentage of composite made by Scaled Composites, provide “sufficient lifting capability to launch unmanned vehicles designed to carry small satellites and other scientific payload into low earth orbit,” according to Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.
“I predict a catastrophe on this contraption. “
Has our present SPACE PROGRAM ever had any catastrophes?
Are you aware they had an engine blow up and kill 3 workers?
“Rutan and Virgin are not pioneering anything.”
Well they got $10 Million for pioneering nothing.
You go first ;)
Agreed. Let me know when a serious contender is up with a privately-funded orbit capable vehicle with a serious payload.
LOL!
Good point, imho. Getting to orbit requires a little more pop than the current and recent designs can deliver, but that will change. I was going to try a little prank — editing the Spaceship Two graphic above to add two more fuselages and call it Spaceship Three. :’)
“All three forward fuselages are exactly identical.”
As long as they get straight which one uncouples...
Gaming pushes the leading edge of computer development forward. Rutan is pushing private space travel forward in the same way, by turning it into “fun”.
perhaps that’s why they have four? if one fails, maybe they shut or throttle down its pair on the other side...
all this hoopla for a 68 mile trip. Heck, I’ll drive farther than that today.
As one who sees little chance that humanity will develop any useful long distance space flight capability in the next few generations (or ever), I often see people who have faith that some “breakthrough” will occur which makes it possible to travel easily among the planets and even to the stars.
They often cite the Wright Brothers as a example of human ability to solve difficult problems. But we know a lot more today as to what is possible and what is not than we have known in the past.
Alchemists in the dark ages had all kinds of faith that if they were just clever enough, they’d be able to turn lead into gold. Today, we realize it’s not a reasonable thing to aspire to. They were just wasting their time, kind of like the research being done on the space station.
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