Posted on 01/29/2008 10:44:28 AM PST by Freeport
Virgin Galactic expects Scaled Composites to roll out its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) carrier aircraft White Knight II (WK2) in early May for ground tests.
Construction of the four-engine, twin-fuselage prototype is 80% complete at Scaled's Mojave, California facility, said Virgin Galactic at the New York unveiling of SS2 and WK2 on 23 January.
The WK2 will have an all-carbonfibre airframe with a 42.7m (140ft) wingspan, 23.7m overall length and a tail height of 4.5m. Powered by four Pratt & Whitney Canada PW308 turbofans, the aircraft will have a range, carrying its SS2 payload, of more than 4,200km (2,270nm).
"First flight will be during the summer", and will follow a period of ground-testing, says the space tourism company's commercial director Stephen Attenborough.
Scaled's engineers had been hoping to make WK2 ready to fly at the AirVenture show in Oshkosh in July, but that is now "unlikely", says Attenborough.
Because the WK2's two fuselages will share a common cabin design with the SS2 suborbital vehicle, the carrier aircraft will be used for pilot and passenger training for the spaceship's flights.
Don’t mention the accident no matter how many threads appear.
How long before they have a 90-mile high club?
Since that’s still ongoing, though it does look like the DA’s going to get involved, and not what this threads about, I won’t mention it...
What are you referring to? And why is a triple-cabin aircraft a spaceship? And why, on Earth, have a triple cabin?
Or is that middle cabin the space ship?
60 miles will have to do. Maybe a future version will have the ability to go to 90.
Does it have three bathrooms or do you have to move to the center pod ?
Sixty miles altitutde is not bad at all for a private craft. Excelsior!
You’re looking at the carrier aircraft. The spaceship is the smaller, separate piece.
I’ll bite, what accident?
I’m sorry, what a ridiculous waste of talent and resources. All this to make a human-cannonball thrillride stunt for rich people. If it leads somewhere, like a cheap, safe manned orbital transfer vehicle, that’s great. But this is not even close to that. I admire the engineering, but I just have to roll my eyes at the purpose.
It detaches at 50,000 ft., ignites it’s rocket after separation. Then it’s see ya in space!
The reason for the twin boom layout of White Knight II is the mission; to lift SS II to 50,000 ft. via the most economical means given the launch method.
The twin booms are an ideal carrier configuration. Making the booms identical means two designs do not have to be carried into production; one set of plans, procedures and production tooling for both booms.
The pilot sits in the right hand boom.
Quite an elegant solution.
Roll your eyes at $40 million in advance reservations, and counting.
Yeah, and that light-bulb contraption is just for citifolk, too. Next, I bet you’ll tell me we’ll have machines that chipher numbers without using your toes.
To date, know one knows why (publicly) there was a detonation of the NO2 since no fuel was present.
I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, or that it’s not a great business idea - or that it wouldn’t be fun. I just personally find it worthy of eye-rolling.
Go be a good mud hugger somewhere else please.
The rest of use are thrilled to have an opportunity, some day, to take serious ride off this rock!
Up here in Alaska we don’t roll our eyes all that much. We simply ignore each other unless somebody is actually in trouble.
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