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Virgin Galactic launched 17 years ago with the goal of putting people over 100km up, based on a previously successful flight by spaceshipone They failed misera

Virgin Galactic launched 17 years ago with the goal of putting people over 100km up, based on a previously successful flight by spaceshipone They failed miserably. Meanwhile spacex has been founded and got to the point commercial customers are about to go up, not just to 100km, but to orbital speeds.

mongol 6y ago
Yes, why? I think there was a fatal accident?
- jonsen 6y ago
  Two clowns at the stick in a craft designed by a cartoonist.
  - MobileVet 6y ago
    This is disrespectful of both the pilots’ careers and loss of life. They both had thousands of hours of flight time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSS_Enterprise_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSS_Enterprise_crash
    - jonsen 6y ago
      I’m sorry but that was my sincere conclusion at the time.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  SpaceShipOne was designed around winning the X-Prize and it was never meant to go beyond a simple suborbital flight that just barely reaches the edge of space. It's a capable spacecraft for that specific mission but the design is quite limited. It requires a carrier aircraft and it also utilizes a very complicated descent mechanism (flairing wings rather than parachutes). SpaceX started with orbital launch capability and then designed a manned vehicle afterwards. This was the critical difference.
tppiotrowski 6y ago
I watched Burt Rutan’s team claiming the X-Prize in early 2000s. Maybe scaling from single person to multiple crew had unexpected complexity? “The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.” [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule
- midasuni 6y ago
  SSO could take a pilot and two passengers. Always felt it was a mistake not to commercialise that in 2004.
rtkwe 6y ago
SpaceX has the benefit of the Commercial Resupply contract and other launches as a revenue stream to support R&D where Virgin Galactic only ever had the suborbital hop which didn’t really have any government grants or bids to fund it. SpaceX’s overall design is also very traditional so to just get launches going there were a lot less completely novel problems to solve where Space Ship One is a pretty complex design.

mongol 6y ago

Yes, why? I think there was a fatal accident?

jonsen 6y ago
Two clowns at the stick in a craft designed by a cartoonist.
- MobileVet 6y ago
  This is disrespectful of both the pilots’ careers and loss of life. They both had thousands of hours of flight time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSS_Enterprise_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSS_Enterprise_crash
  - jonsen 6y ago
    I’m sorry but that was my sincere conclusion at the time.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
SpaceShipOne was designed around winning the X-Prize and it was never meant to go beyond a simple suborbital flight that just barely reaches the edge of space. It's a capable spacecraft for that specific mission but the design is quite limited. It requires a carrier aircraft and it also utilizes a very complicated descent mechanism (flairing wings rather than parachutes). SpaceX started with orbital launch capability and then designed a manned vehicle afterwards. This was the critical difference.

tppiotrowski 6y ago

I watched Burt Rutan’s team claiming the X-Prize in early 2000s. Maybe scaling from single person to multiple crew had unexpected complexity? “The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.” [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

midasuni 6y ago
SSO could take a pilot and two passengers. Always felt it was a mistake not to commercialise that in 2004.

rtkwe 6y ago

SpaceX has the benefit of the Commercial Resupply contract and other launches as a revenue stream to support R&D where Virgin Galactic only ever had the suborbital hop which didn’t really have any government grants or bids to fund it. SpaceX’s overall design is also very traditional so to just get launches going there were a lot less completely novel problems to solve where Space Ship One is a pretty complex design.