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Virgin Galactic Unity 22 Spaceflight Livestream [video]
- _Microft 5y agoThe launch of the plane with the attached rocketship is still one hour away but here is a reminder already so that you don't miss it if you would like to watch. If you want to read a short article about it in the meantime, here is one by Eric Berger of Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/jeff-bezos-says-its-totally-not-space-but-watch-virgin-galactic-fly-anyway/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/jeff-bezos-says-its-...
- ddmma 5y agoTechnically we’re about to officially launch the commercial space travel service that is not even in space. Anyhow, what was the name of the second guy to stepped on the Moon ?
- _Microft 5y agoBuzz Aldrin but I guess you knew that already ;)
- ddmma 5y agoThat will be Jeff’s position as well ;)
- _Microft 5y agoJeff Who? ^^ After the recent tweets of Blue Origin [0], I would have answered "Salty Jeff" but they turned the corner with [1]. [0] https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1413521631717122059 https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1413521631717122059 [1] https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1413942794943598594 https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1413942794943598594
- ianai 5y agoThis meme of "not even in space" seems less of a practical definition and more of an egotistical point. My understanding of the company's intention is to go far enough to realize the benefits of dramatically reduced drag. Something like a classic 80/20 flex.
- ddmma 5y agoSpace might loose that virginity status regardless the size.
- imglorp 5y agoThe 80km line can actually be measured objectively by physical properties and the FAI is considering making that their definition. https://www.fai.org/news/statement-about-karman-line https://www.fai.org/news/statement-about-karman-line https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576518308221?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457651... etc
- ianai 5y agoJust for reference, the news just said they’re going a little over 90km up.
- imglorp 5y agoSpecifically for VG, it might be trivial to add a little extra thrust--some external drop tanks or small SRB's for example--and hit that line just to match Bezos.
- mannykannot 5y agoAs your 2nd. reference shows, there are many objective facts to base a decision on, but drawing any particular line ultimately has an irreducible arbitrary element. Also, when defining spaceflight, one could add an orbital velocity requirement - after all, a falling brick is not normally considered to be flying (even the phrase 'flying debris' implies some lateral motion.) What counts is being able to persuade other people. It looks like the 80km faction is succeeding with the FAI.
- jbverschoor 5y agoWhat a load of drama and fakeness jeez
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- Diggsey 5y ago"Astronaut 001, licence to thrill" This is comically cringeworthy :)
- MilnerRoute 5y agoA former space shuttle manager at NASA (now president at Virgin) told CBS: "It's a small community. I know dozens of people who work at Blue Origin, I know dozens and dozens of people at SpaceX, and we all used to work together at NASA. And I wish every single one of them the best.... Because all of us together is what's going to get humans into space and our culture to recognize that space travel is the foundation for the future for everyone..." He also described Branson as "happy, excited... But that excitement is really infectious. And so the whole crew is feeling it." Saturday Jeff Bezos posted a picture of Richard Branson on Instagram, with the message "Wishing you and the whole team a successful and safe flight tomorrow. Best of luck!" (And Elon Musk tweeted out a video of Branson too.) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/branson-flight-signals-confidence-in-commercial-spaceflight/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/branson-flight-signals-confiden... https://www.instagram.com/p/CRKHsLENB-n/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CRKHsLENB-n/ https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1413736778658459649 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1413736778658459649
- aaron695 5y agoThe oldest person to venture into space was John Glenn who went into space at the age of 77 in 1998. Brandon will be the second-oldest person who turns 71 next Sunday. Wally Funk, A Lifelong Aspiring Astronaut, Will Finally Head To Space At 82. On July 20, she'll join the crew on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (Based on 80km being space for Virgin, New Shepard seems to make the 100km mark)
- lisper 5y agoLink to track the flight live: https://www.flightradar24.com/VGX01/285e221f https://www.flightradar24.com/VGX01/285e221f
- markx2 5y agoI am sure this is the longest ad I have ever watched. 45 mins (and counting) of massaging RB's ego and promoting his company.
- mabbo 5y agoAfter the first 10 minutes, my wife said "Can we just mute this? I'm getting nauseous from all this stroking of RB's ego".
- fuzzfactor 5y agoBefore they launched all I could do was wish them godspeed and hope it brings him down to earth like nothing has ever done before.
- MarcScott 5y agoWith some subtle product placement for Land Rover as well.
- vsareto 5y agoI don't think the guy who is going to space really cares about getting his ego massaged by commercials.
- borkt 5y agoWrong
- iso1210 5y agoEverything Branson does is related to his ego. Unlike Musk though, his companies accomplish very little other than marketing.
- verbify 5y agoHis companies are marketing/branding companies. They lease the name Virgin and in exchange they handle the branding. Virgin Management doesn't actually own the hotels or planes.
- sys_64738 5y agoGiven that Branson sunk his boat and crashed his balloon during those challenges, this doesn't bode well and that altitude doesn't leave room for error.
- nodesocket 5y agoMheww, completely underwhelming. Didn't even see Richard when they reached apogee or "space". I really wanted this to be like a mind blowing space X moment, but it felt like a high altitude flight.
- rvz 5y agoWho cares. You still watched them 'successfully go into space' in the livestream and you are here commenting about it. It's not everyday a company risks money, lives and time into this and executes it safely. That in itself is an engineering success, no matter whoever it is. I congratulate Virgin Galactic for this successful flight and will be also looking a Blue Origin's launch.
- tailspin2019 5y agoWell said
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoHopefully they'll get the footage off the GoPro's SD cards, transmitting video is not easy. Although I wonder if analog TV broadcast would've been easier.
- rexreed 5y agoI posted that as a comment / question earlier. Why is transmitting high quality video from at / near space so difficult when we've been doing live satellite broadcasts at broadcast TV quality for decades? The current responses are non-sequitir as they don't explain the seeming contrast.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoDo you mean like you can later today watch the Euro Soccer finals in HD? Hmm, that footage will be beamed into space by a giant dish, to a stationery (or at least easily trackable) target that weighs several tonnes and large solar panels, and they can beam the stuff down with a lot of power. Meanwhile the Virgin spaceship is a glider...
- mchusma 5y agoGreat flight! Quite a milestone. Congratulations to the team
- devindotcom 5y agoFYI the flight has been delayed 1.5 hours due to weather early this morning delaying the rollout. New takeoff time is 8:30 local, 7:30 pacific. (I'm here)
- _Microft 5y agoThanks for the heads-up, I had factored that into the UTC launch time already. Enjoy the show!
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- Tepix 5y agoI'm a big space nerd. Regardless, these supersonic flights are just not very exciting. The only exciting thing would be a tragedy and i don't want that.
- imglorp 5y agoYeah these tourism flights have limited utility on their own beyond rich people games. They're also years from competing with the big guys, if ever. BUT these B teams things advance tech anyway, cross pollinate, help with public awareness and motivation for new students. Some of this stuff will be garage startup level soon. The BE4 engine is in a deal to be used by ULA, if they ever get their business figured out. SS1 was a Scaled Composites design by Burt Rutan, pioneering carbon fiber construction, now in wide use for space applications. It's telling that neither Boeing nor Lockheed can make their own engines. It seems like their problem is their business model is hindering their engineering accomplishing anything and they depend on the B teams to absorb the risk. SLS is using RS-25's from inventory, will they all go home when those are depleted? edit, correction: They CAN make new RS-25's and in 2020, NASA signed up AR to make 18 more.
- f00zz 5y agoLots of cynical takes on HN whenever there's a post on Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin. Personally I'm super excited about pieces of actual physical hardware that can fly really fast. Definitely beats reading a blog post on microservice best practices or JS frameworks or what have you. Looking forward to the livestream!
- rvz 5y ago> Lots of cynical takes on HN whenever there's a post on Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin. Probably the Musketeers are waiting for SpaceX to write a blogpost about how they use X language in their software stack to literally blast Dogecoin to the moon. I don't care if it is Virgin Galactic, SpaceX or Blue Origin. I'll watch either of them going to space. > Definitely beats reading a blog post on microservice best practices or JS frameworks or what have you. Indeed. Add Rust to that list as well. A change for once. Downvoters: So this is not true? [0] [0] https://www.space.com/spacex-dogecoin-moon-mission https://www.space.com/spacex-dogecoin-moon-mission
- rexreed 5y agoCan someone also post non-YouTube streams? The ads on the platform are getting positively insane.
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- trollied 5y agoDas Valdez (part of NASA Spaceflight - https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/ https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/ ) is streaming it on Twitch. https://www.twitch.tv/dasvaldez https://www.twitch.tv/dasvaldez
- drivers99 5y agoTwitch has ads too which you can remove by subscribing for about $6 a month per channel. YouTube has Premium for $12 a month which remove all ads from every channel. I think it’s worth it.
- trollied 5y agoYou're not telling the whole story. Twitch Turbo ($8.99/month) removes ads from every channel.
- drivers99 5y agoIt wasn't intentional. I didn't know that existed, and I've been paying for multiple subscriptions (mostly to support the streamers, but also due to ads). Wish I knew about that sooner.
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- bamboozled 5y agoIt would be cool if the live broadcast screen was showing UTC time rather than all the other random times.
- qwertox 5y agoI'm always glad when I see SpaceX's stats in SI, whereas Blue Origin doesn't care at all about it. It's not like there's limited screen real estate which prevents to show the stats in both units.
- _Microft 5y agoI never understood why people thought that not showing UTC might be a good idea. With UTC anyone in the world only needs to know their own timezone (and DST status) to convert it to local time instead of having to know their own plus whatever timezone the event is referencing (which is the actually tricky part).
- rbanffy 5y agoUTC is the only civilised timezone. That’s what server internal clocks should use.
- Someone 5y ago(Pedantic) UTC isn’t a time zone, it’s a time standard (https://www.timeanddate.com/time/gmt-utc-time.html https://www.timeanddate.com/time/gmt-utc-time.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time) Also, time zones were invented in Italy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone#Worldwide_time_zones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone#Worldwide_time_zones)
- ionwake 5y agoI disagree, the British created time. GMT it is.
- neom 5y ago
- ToFab123 5y agoAre they actually going into space? I have read that they fly up to an altitude of 80 km. Doesn't space first start at 100 km?
- hsnewman 5y agoYes, everywhere except in the USA.
- fiftyacorn 5y agoIt will be interesting what is most commercially successful in the short term. I've a feeling Bransons option will be and he'll develop the option to 100km Then again might get bought out
- jrmg 5y agoTrying to find this, but google results are just full of the controversy about this flight rather than information: _can_ SpaceShipTwo reach the Karman line?
- runlevel1 5y agoNASA defines space as starting at 50 miles (~80 km), FAI defines it as 100 km (~62 miles). Scott Manley gave a nice summary a few days ago: https://youtu.be/0b1VgtyIQN0?t=627 https://youtu.be/0b1VgtyIQN0?t=627 Here's the article he references: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.4599 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.459... EDIT: Added links.
- AgentK20 5y agoStream "live" for 10 minutes now with just a static image. Definitely should take some things from SpaceX's book, re: making a dynamic "We'll be live soon" screen. Edit: Youtube stream is properly live now. 12 minutes of "dead air".
- servercobra 5y agoThere's been a bunch of small miscues on the broadcast (weird delays, music coming in too loud and at weird times, etc). We've been spoiled by SpaceX's experience broadcasting. Regardless, so awesome that everyone is broadcasting these flights for the world to see!
- waitwhatt 5y agoHaha they clearly screwed up with hundreds of thousands of people watching a blank page. On Bloomberg they are already streaming it and it just took off.
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- rvz 5y agoIs this you? [0] > Please sir, only Elon Musk is allowed to declare people pedo guys. No need to tell us that you're not a fan of Virgin Galactic. They still went to space and you're still hate-watching the event. So what is your point? I bet you will also sit down and hate-watch Blue Origin's launch. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22355491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22355491
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- ColinWright 5y agoLink?
- robtaylor 5y ago
- rexreed 5y agoCan someone explain why it's so technically challenging to get a good quality audio and video feed to / from a suborbital vehicle? Is it just a matter of a long physical distance between transmitter and receiver? How is it that I can stream HD quality audio from satellites (XM Radio) in near-realtime but near-realtime audio and video from spacecraft seems to be extremely low quality and high latency? Is it just a matter of transmitter power?
- mempko 5y agobluetooth has always been pretty bad.
- nerdbaggy 5y agoHere is a manual to the Falcon9 which talks about how they do it. It’s all digital S Band https://www.spacex.com/media/Falcon_Users_Guide_082020.pdf https://www.spacex.com/media/Falcon_Users_Guide_082020.pdf
- rexreed 5y agoAnd yet the live video from the Moon was higher quality using analog: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2993/how-did-nasa-achieve-their-live-tv-broadcast-in-1969 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2993/how-did-nasa-... I feel like we have made negative progress in this particular area.
- candiodari 5y agoOn the way down it's easy: because the air compresses and heats up to the point it becomes a plasma. And despite that we associate it with a glow, it's actually perfectly dark (there are free electron bands in it). In other words: it blocks every frequency, and lasers, if you want to go line of sight. Now you can get better quality with better receivers/transmitters, but I guess it takes a lot of engineering they didn't do yet.