Virgin Galactic

[Eric Mc]

Some recent developments -

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1401/11spaceshiptw...

[Eric Mc]

Not sure. It's designed for speeds up to about Mach 4 I think.

[Eric Mc]

Life is risky.

It's up to the individuals to decide whether they want to take that risk - as long as the risks are properly explained to them.

The Shuttle was deemed operational after only four flights - and Virgin Galactic is a far simpler and less complex machine than the Shuttle.

[Eric Mc]

Alapeno said:

Surely a huge risk for a private company to go up with little testing over a government body. What if Justin Bieber dies on it!?

Is that an expression of fear or hope?

[Eric Mc]

ash73 said:

The development seems to be going well, but I'd be interested to know why they didn't push the envelope a bit further; 5 mins weightlessness may seem a bit underwhelming for $250K, albeit with a spectacular view out the window.

To prolong the weightlessness, you need to go faster and higher.

Any faster and you would run into serious aerodynamic heating problems.

Also, higher speeds results in fairly unknown territory for control and stability issues - especially for a relatively small company like Scaled Projects to overcome.

[Eric Mc]

Not may fare paying passengers get to fly at Mach 4.

[Eric Mc]

A bit difficult given that the whole operation is based at Mojave Airport and has been for 40 plus years.

[Eric Mc]

They'll be OK.

[Eric Mc]

Wow - great "spot".

I'm sure Burt Rutan knows what he's doing.

[Eric Mc]

Dragon has not carried a single human being yet. And it won't be carrying "paying passengers". It's going to be a functional, working orbital craft taking astronauts and cargo (not tourists) to the ISS and other orbital facilities that may emerge over the next decade or so.
It's a different kind of vehicle designed for a completely different purpose.

I am totally convinced that Virgin Galactic will work. And that is nothing to do with Richard Branson but everything to do with Burt Rutan.

[Eric Mc]

And I would expect a bigger craft would be more prone to aerodynamic break up if it deviated from its optimal flight patch compared to smaller more compact vehicle.

[Eric Mc]

To be fair, it can't have been traveling THAT fast when it broke up. Apparently the engine fired for about 6 seconds so what airspeed would it have been at at the moment of disintegration?

Spaceship 1 had the same configuration and worked fine. It was smaller though.

[Eric Mc]

RobDickinson said:

Its all abouy getting 6 people to 85k at suborbital velocities as nastily as possible.

Exactly - which is a useful end in itself. If more "non-professional" are exposed to the wonder of high altitude flight, it helps further the "cause" of spaceflight.

To me, it's no different to the very early passenger flights offered by the post World War 1 airlines. In 1919 you could fly from London to Paris in a De Havilland DH4. It was uncomfortable, dangerous and slower than train and ferry - but people still wanted to pay to do it. It was another 20 years before carrying passengers in an aeroplane began to be a properly economic enterprise.

[Eric Mc]

The actual number of people who will be able to fly in space as paying passengers will remain small for many, many years and even 50 years from now I doubt if the total number of commercial people carrying spacecraft in the world will be less than 100 actual vehicles. So - I doubt very much if space tourism will have even a smidgin of impact on the earth's environment.

So, calling for a stop to this aspect of space flight on environmental grounds is laughable.

As for the "only the rich" argument, up until the mid 1960s, flying as a passenger on a commercial airliner was pretty much only for the rich. Would you have been making the same arguments about Boeing 707s and De Havilland Comets in 1960?

Would you prefer that mankind calls a halt to technical developments in transport?

[Eric Mc]

Toaster said:

Eric Mc said:

Would you prefer that mankind calls a halt to technical developments in transport?

No but there has to be a step change to technology, and a reason to travel, space travel in its self has no point, there has to be a destination and a reason to travel to that destination.

Of course there is a point. Getting that high viewpoint is what people are willing to pay for. And when getting into orbit commercially becomes feasible, there will be even more takers.

Space IS the destination.

[Eric Mc]

Toaster said:

As talking heads sang, "this is the road to nowhere"

We can't even get a man back to the moon let alone a whole plane full, you may as well just roll out the old mercury capsule and fire people up one at a time for a sub orbital fix.

The energy's involved are huge and highly dangerous people will be killed just look at the space industry's probability statistics I really do not think you would want to go, these are just the launch statistics.

USSR - 2589 successful, 181 failed, 93.5% success rate
USA - 1152 successful, 164 failed, 87.5% success rate
EU - 117 sucessful, 12 failed, 90.7% success rate
China - 56 successful, 11 failed, 83.6% success rate
Japan - 52 successful, 9 failed, 85.2% success rate
India - 7 successful, 6 failed, 53.8% success rate

You sound like the MP who, when asked in the 1890s "When will the House of Commons get their first telephone system?" replied. "Oh, we don't need telephones. We have excellent messenger boys".

[Eric Mc]

Yes - it is YOUR opinion.

And, so what if it is. If someone has the cash and the desire and indeed the ego - that's their business and good luck to them.

If I was a multi-millionaire with an interest in spaceflight, I would have been on the list too - and I wouldn't be rushing to have my name removed either.

[Eric Mc]

So?

I'm not sure of the point you are making.

Are you suggesting that those who have spare money should only spend it in a way that meets with your approval?

[Eric Mc]

100% agree.

[Eric Mc]

jingars said:

scubadude said:

The press are now reporting widely that the NTSB are saying this wasn't a fuel tank failure as per the initial reactions of the weekend but a premature activation of the feathering descent mode at just over Mach 1 causing failure of the structure and that this was either pilot error or a control failure.

No they are not. Please see my second attempt at raising this in my post above.

At this time they state that the feathering system was unlocked by crew, but not deployed - a fine but important distinction.

If the feathering system was unlocked, I would guess that the wing was then not properly secured to the fuselage. That could lead to flutter and almost instantaneous break up. Or the transonic pressure movements could have cause the unsecured wing to start being drawn upwards or even downwards - again putting too high a load on the structure.

The key question seems to be, why was the feathering system unlocked at this point in the flight?