Virgin Galactic's Satellite Launcher
Virgin Galactic Reveals Privately Funded Satellite Launcher and Confirms SpaceShipTwo Poised for Powered Flight
“Today during the Farnborough International Air Show 2012, Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline, announced “LauncherOne”, a new air-launched rocket specifically designed to deliver small satellites intoorbit. With substantial funding already raised from Virgin Galactic’s partner aabar Investments PJS, and with commercial flights of this new orbital launch vehicle expected to begin by 2016, Virgin Galactic aims to offerfrequent and dedicated launches at the world’s lowest prices.”
Pegasus, having provided air launches 11 times in the last 10 years, now has another emerging competitor along with StratoLaunch.
Folks:
Hybrid motor on the first stage?
tinker
AvWeeks article says a liquid engine is in dev, and that it’ll eventually replace RM2.
http://www.aviationweek.com…
From the article, the price / kg of this appears to be really high, i.e. 50 k or so. So the only point is the flexibility and responsiveness compared to piggyback or shared launch. Mh. To be demonstrated that this is enough to “disrupt” the small satellite market. It seems to me until this goes down to ONE M$ this won’t change the market significantly. Famous last words, of course.
Noone,
The one significant difference I see is that this launcher doesn’t require a military aircraft to carry it, like Pegasus does, which makes it available to a much larger market.
Steve
Mr. Steve,
Pegasus uses Lockheed L-1011, obsolete passenger jet, very civilian, from the same vintage as DC10’s and 747’s.
An obscure design feature of this jet makes it ideal for the purpose, according to Dr. Antonio Elias of Orbital.
It’s very likely this vehicle also falls under ITAR as well, which is a function of where the LV/SC come from (national laws governing technology application), not the air drop vehicle itself.
For anyone that’s interested (and I was) here is Dr. Elias on those design features which happened to make the L1011 nearly the perfect platform for his new bird:
http://forum.nasaspacefligh…
Mr. C,
Thanks for the correction. Actually , I did know that, but at the time I was typing, I was thinking about the X-15 and how canceling it changed so much. I’m guessing it was because we had been talking X-20 and McNamara earlier, and I typed without stopping to think it through.
The ITAR business bothers me. For something like this, presumably intended for commercial satellites, I feel strongly that it should not be under ITAR if it uses no classified and/or military hardware or software. I think they should be able to classifiy any item as usable for military or not. Paranoia has its place, but at some point it strangles you. In my opinion, no system should exist without planned, defined limits.
Steve
I wholeheartedly agree. ITAR went way to far in restricting our space launch business. Other countries just decided that dealing with ITAR and U.S. Launch providers was just too much of a hassle so they went elsewhere. Another problem with ITAR was that it just FORCED countries that did not have the technology to develop it themselves. So now instead of selling our high tech hardware to other countries, they just learned to make their own.
A good example was the F-14s that we sold to Iran. They had our technology and were allowed to use it until they pissed us off. Before our engineers left Iran, they disabled the ability of the planes to launch missiles and it took years of reverse engineering to fix that.So what will ITAR be able to say if Virgin Galactic wants to fly one of their own (US designed) launch vehicles to another country for launch???? I suspect they will need an export license. ( oh but wait, even the pegasus can leave the continental US 😉
500lb for $10M?? that’s half the payload of pegasus and 1/3 of Falcon1. I know that they already have customers, but in this business, don’t you usually go big or go home?
$20K per pound? That’s double the normal $10K per pound to LEO.
This link says two stage keroLOX.
Don’t get the “SS2” tech linkage, other than WK2.
Seems like ORS market. Only one with a premium in that size.
If keroLOX, there’s only two sources of engines that would suit (Russia, SpaceX). So what if Branson … buys Falcon 1 from SpaceX?
Note that the same work to fly a “Falcon 5” air launched by another Rutan related effort. With both, you need to change to accommodate load from side mount, drop and ignition dynamics. Too similar to be an accident.
Note also the deflection of the gimbal in the photos, and the size of the nozzle. Both are consistent with Merlin, although suggestive of the ablative cooled early version. You might be able to refine Merlin/Kestrel for weight reduction too, given SpaceX’s accumulated experience with Merlin.
add:
Looked at the video again – if you can trust its veracity – the second stage engine, tankage, and fairing – look like Kestrel and Falcon 1’s.
Perhaps there’s only so far launghing gas and rubber can take them?
Perhaps payload limit is due to GLOW limit of WK2 carryage? Thus smaller tanks, with more to the second stage.
You’d get an evolution path to a human rated orbital technology.
Remember with Virgin, its all in the marketing. He’s claiming to be able to do imaging/sensor/”spy” sats on the cheap and fast.
Perhaps he needs for booking suborbital tourists … a legit orbital future story to mature in the indefinite “soon” … so that they don’t wait off for Dragon flights longer term.
If so, next step is a orbital TPS for an SS3?
Still pretty expensive. Need to see the specs on the payload accommodation.
This launcher, like the rest of Virgin’s stable, is geared to the low-mass payload market, relatively speaking. To me, this means that Virgin will solely have markets that are limited in size and duration. They’re going to have to do everything they can think of with this hardware in order to survive (let alone make a profit). But even if they succeed in finding lots of applications, I think the technologies being developed (and already developed) by other companies are going to leave Virgin without any sustained markets much quicker than they expect. So, I can’t really figure out their strategy, unless Branson is simply planning on selling it off all when he retires, making it someone else’s problem.
Steve
What if
whiteknight 2 second generation could fly has high and as fast as spaceship2 because it had merlins on board instead of pilots. increasing the payload size of this thing? Seems like we maybe on the incremental path to cheaper launch maybe???
🙂
Can’t recoverable tech be added this easily once spacex gets there with falcon 9 v1.1 Once you have souped up whiteknight 2 second generation drone a little bit?
Add
Looking the picture of the whiteknight carrying the boosters and wondering why you couldn’t design a bird where the the first stage never leaves the whiteknight, So it gets carried home. One stage to orbit after that.
I was also wondering if you could retrieve the first stage booster as it returned to Earth…
If a second whit knight 2 were staged downrange could the first stage approach the carrier from behind and connect to a drouge just like the drones that autonomously connect to the KC-135 tankers?
Once hookup is complete, the white knight-2 would reel it in and reconnect.
Tricky aerodynamics, but seems possible
Cool 🙂
That first stage is going to be absolutely awful at slow-speed (WK2 speed) maneuvering. At WK2 speeds it will drop like a rock. Besides, it’s going to be very hard to keep the stage from burning up in the atmosphere before it can slow down to sub-sonic speeds.
I really don’t see any way that trying to have the stage captured by a second WK2 is easier than just landing the stage on the ground.
Chris,
Could they reduce the “drop like a rock” any by reuse of their feathering concept on WK2? I’m wondering if it could give them some extra attitude control at the start of the drop to optimize the reentry angle for the changed mass/shape with the booster added. It seems like too little, too soon to me, but I thought more experienced heads might see a possibility there.
Steve
Dare taken Mr C moving this Spacex thread.
Go for it Virgin!!!
Here’s another example of commercialization’s advancement over the government’s program.
Kooks
Watch them as they work! 🙂
http://nextbigfuture.com/20…
More specifics of the announcement available here-
http://arstechnica.com/scie…
Includes a good deal of info about Planetary Resources as well as several other logical customers.
When talking about Launcher 1, Branson said in Farnborough, “As you can imagine, that immediately gets me thinking about LauncherTwo, SpaceShipThree, and who knows… Space Station Alpha. But one step at a time, LauncherOne is exciting enough for today.”
Space Station Alpha? Wasn’t that the informal name of the ISS way back when? Does he mean to go to the existing Alpha/ISS… or build/(Bigelow) his own?