Virgin Galactic Lit The Candle
Virgin Galactic VSS Unity Completes First Supersonic Rocket-Powered Flight
“SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity has safely and successfully completed her first supersonic, rocket-powered flight. After two years of extensive ground and atmospheric testing, the passing of this milestone marks the start of the final portion of Unity’s flight test program. The flight was also significant for Virgin Galactic’s Mojave based, sister manufacturing organization, The Spaceship Company. Unity is the first vehicle to be built from scratch for Virgin Galactic by The Spaceship Company’s talented team of aerospace engineers and technicians. They were justifiably proud today to be a part of this compelling demonstration of their capabilities in action.”
“the pilots aimed the spaceship upwards into an 80 degree climb, accelerating to Mach 1.87 during the 30 seconds of rocket burn”
Yikes! That’s a helluva ride.
I wonder though exctly what the end game might be? Is it still offering plastic astronaut badges after rides to 100km? Many companies learned that achieving orbit isn’t for lightweights. And similarly, creating an easily repeatable sub-orbital machine suitable for those with the funds is, as well, turning out to be very difficult.
And for what? Unless the eventual flight rate is spectacular, it will be possible to burn through the entire population of folks with the inclination and the bucks to ride one of those broncos.
I wonder if this could work for rapid point-to-point travel? Any idea how far this architecture could travel horizontally? That could provide the kind of high-quantity business needed to keep per-flight costs down.
The motor burns for only just over a minute. Then a long, long glide of over twenty minutes. I would guess maybe 200 mile range. X-15 flights using the high-speed profile (as opposed to its high-altitude profile flights) went about 300 miles, but X-15 flew at about 4,000 mph on those flights, SpaceShipTwo just over half that. Although SpaceShipTwo probably can glide farther than X-15 did.
Also there would be time spent getting to altitude on White Knight Two, which presumably would be in the direction of travel and thus add to the overall range.
However SpaceShipTwo would generate a sonic boom during the supersonic portion of the flight which would not be allowed over populated areas, putting a limitation on where it could fly from.
They now have Saudi funding, starting with a $1B injection and a visit from the Crown Prince this week. Previously, at an event in the ME, they displayed a P2P vehicle concept image which had XB-70-like features.
SpaceShipTwo is really more airplane than spaceship. A fast little airplane that’s for sure, but only for a very brief spurt. Point-to-point travel however of any meaningful distance requires getting out of the atmosphere for the majority of the distance, basically a manned version of IRBM or ICBM depending on what distance we are talking about. The launch velocities and rentry speeds start to get into the ballpark of orbital vehicles. It actually makes more sense to develop a P2P version of an existing orbital spacecraft than to try and push suborbital spaceplane technology beyond what it is realistically capable of. That’s why SpaceX can probably do P2P if they choose to, VG most likely not. The Saudi money most likely will go almost exclusively into the current space tourist and small satellite programs.
Just for the record, attached is the image from the Saudi event last fall….
https://twitter.com/CICSaud…
Everytime you fill the gas tank, just recall the $500 million yacht this born-to-rule character bought.
On a whim.
The entire aparatus operates in the 99th percentile, figuratively speaking, which describes at least in some sense the difficulty of reaching the desired altitude with airplanes.
And even so the whole thing elicits a big yawn from yours truly. Ignorance no doubt.
One possibility is launching small satellites, effectively using the aircraft as a first stage. That would be similar to a Pegasus launch, but with a slightly smaller rocket drop launched at a higher altitude.
There are also some uses for it as a scientific observing platform. I liked the Lynx Mark III concept better, but XCOR gave up on it. This would basically be an improved platform instruments which currently fly on sounding rockets. But that’s not nearly enough of a market to pay the bills.
Experiments would return for a soft landing which might be important for some samples or equipment, compared to returning by parachute. Also SpaceShipTwo would provide a pressurized, temperature controlled environment for the entire flight. And if any operations or direct observations are needed during the few minutes of weightlessness or immediately afterwards, the experimenter can ride on board with the equipment.
I was actually thinking of studies of the D region in the ionosphere (too high for normal aircraft and too low for orbital spacecraft) and ultraviolet astronomy (which will almost, but not quite, die with Hubble.) That’s why I liked Lynx III concept; it seemed to be a better platform for those sorts of measurements.
Do you think TSC could do something similar with SpaceShipTwo?
Yes, but possibly not as well. Ionospheric measurements are sensitive to things like static electricity charge on the spacecraft (even a few volts can be a problem) and reducing the isn’t exactly a design requirement for the reusable suborbital concepts/prototypes. I know someone who had funding to look into this, and I think he said Lynx would have been cleaner that SpaceShipTwo. For UV astronomy, having to look through a window isn’t great. It’s like having a filter which blocks some of the wavelengths you want to see. The Lynx III concept had an external cargo pod, so that would have eliminated the window problem. But you could definitely do some of the science I was thinking of from SpaceShipTwo. But, again, there isn’t enough money there for a business plan.
I expect that’s how it’ll end. Branson is an honourable fellow, so those now holding tickets will get their rides, and then it’ll fold.
If they can maintain a perfect safety record over time then I think there is potentially a very sizable market. Besides the thrill of the ride, I think the allure of even briefly travelling in space, especially the bragging rights, will be very appealing to a large number of people. Very few participants, or their friends, relatives and coworkers that they tell about it afterwards, will know or care about the fact that skirting the Karman line for a few minutes is not anything close to orbiting the Earth at 250 miles. All they know is they went to space and floated around and looked outside at the blackness of space and looked down at the Earth (well as much of the Earth as you can see from 350,000 feet) and that will be a huge deal for people. There are a lot more people with $250,000 to burn than you might think, especially since we are talking worldwide.
However a fatal accident would put a huge dent in the number of participants and it would then only appeal to adventure seekers, as opposed to mere thrill seekers which is not the same level of risk acceptance. Think BASE jumping vs. bungee jumping.
man I would have been sweatin’ bullets .. congrats to the pilots and to the virgin team ..
That sure looked like a kick in the pants at engine ignition! Must have been one heck of a ride. Curious, SS2 appears to be inverted during the coast, looking forward to hearing more about that. Congratulations to the Virgin team for the successful flight and best wishes to them for a very safe and problem free powered test program.
I was there in 2014 and management insisted to me that the supersonic flight would be within the year.
I’m really surprised they are still around, for a while I suspected that it was just moving forward on momentum
Maybe Branson doesn’t want to hurt Burt Rutan’s feelings :_>