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Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test
- rquantz 13y agoCan anyone speak to the significance of this achievement, considering that reaching low earth orbit requires something like Mach 24?
- PetrolMan 13y agoI'm also quite curious. I wasn't really aware of this project but all in all this seems a lot less interesting than what SpaceX is working on. I know the two have very different goals but this seems like the touristy equivalent of the Mercury program.
- dalke 13y agoFYI, "Virgin Galactic is a company within Richard Branson's Virgin Group which plans to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to space tourists, suborbital launches for space science missions and orbital launches of small satellites. Further in the future Virgin Galactic hopes to offer orbital human spaceflights as well." So, yes, this is the touristy equivalent of the Mercury program. Then comes the touristy equivalent of the Gemini program. Then perhaps the touristy equivalent of the Apollo program. I can see how that might not be exciting. There's plenty of people who are excited about supersonic military aircraft than 737s, even though 737s fly a lot more passengers. As to this flight, it's an integration test. Going through the sound barrier is a crucial requirement for the overall flight mission.
- rayiner 13y agoVirgin Galactic is essentially the commercialization of the Spaceship One technology, which won the Ansari X-Prize. The two companies are focused on different by IMHO equally interesting areas. Space X is focused on heavy launch vehicles for commercial payloads while Virgin Galactic is focused on manned suborbital (and hopefully eventually orbital) travel.
- btilly 13y agoIf you think that Space X is only about heavy launch for commercial payloads, you misunderstand what Space X is trying to do. True, Space X has only been rated for delivering commercial cargo. But from the start their Dragon has had a crew configuration that holds 7 people. That's not just for show - they have plans to be human rated soon, and will start delivering passengers to the ISS. Farther down the road, Elon in interviews has said that his road map includes transporting 80,000 people from Earth to Mars to start a colony. I do not know what time frame he intends this to happen in, but he's said repeatedly that he intends to be a passenger. For Space X, delivering commercial payloads is a necessary first step similar to how Tesla needed to deliver sports cars on its way to proving the technology that they intend for a mass consumer car. According to people that I know who have worked at Space X, they ignored the Ansari X-Prize because the important engineering challenges aren't getting into space - that part is relatively easy - it is getting into space in a vehicle that will survive reentry at orbital speeds. I don't know if this belief is right, but if it is then Virgin Galactic is potentially headed down a technological dead end.
- youngtaff 13y agoBranson is very good at 'blowing his own trumpet'. All he seems to doing on this project is providing money and grabbing as much publicity as he can, Burt Rutan's people seem to be the ones doing the real work.
- sixothree 13y agoI thought the pairing was a nice fit. They both have their place and it seems to work to their mutual benefit quite well.
- rayiner 13y agoTo be fair, Paul Allen and Richard Branson are bankrolling Rutan's party.
- melling 13y agoYes, fortunately most of us understand the importance of publicity when trying to build a new business, especially one where your clients aren't going on a ride at Disney World. I'm sure Richard Branson understands Burt Rutan's contributions. He, however, needs to sell tickets.
- kibibu 13y ago> All he seems to doing on this project is providing money How do you propose this would happen without Branson's investment? Space tourism seems like a pretty risky business proposition to me, and I think he deserves credit for backing it with actual money, rather than words.
- stonemetal 13y agohttp://www.space.com/20870-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-rocket-test-flight.html http://www.space.com/20870-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-rock... They hit mach 1.2 and climbed about 10K feet under their own power(46 to 56 thousand feet). So yeah a little underwhelming in what was accomplished. However it was the first test flight of the whole package so it is unsurprising they kept the goals modest.
- spartango 13y agoThe headline here is less about achieving that particular speed, and more about the ongoing process of flight testing for SpaceShipTwo: Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites have demonstrated the ability to air-launch a manned vehicle into space (SpaceShipOne) using this airframe and engine tech. From that prototype, Virgin Galactic is developing a craft for commercial, space-tourism use--SpaceShipTwo. This flight test demonstrates that the first SpaceShipTwo is airworthy and has engine function. The plan is that after more flight testing, that vehicle will actually carry paying passengers. More tests will need to be done, as the craft will need to fly faster and higher, and decelerate safely as well to reach its targets. Also, it's important to note that Virgin Galactic's vehicles will not be achieving orbit in the near future. Instead they will bring tourists to the "edge of space" where they can experience zero gravity and look down at the globe. Wired has a more detailed report that's worth peeking at if you're curious: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/spaceshiptwo-first-rocket-powered-flight/ http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/spaceshiptwo-first-rock...
- VLM 13y agoI think you're looking for the 666 rule which I can't find a link to, but its an engineering rough estimate that mach 6 at 60 kft is 6% of the way to orbit (from an energy perspective). It comes up a lot in back of the envelope type debates about overall system / stage design and performance. Note that 6% of the way to orbit sounds pitiful for a first stage but it actually has a pretty big effect on available payload and nozzle design of the second stage and reusability of the first stage and all that. SSTO is tough, but sticking something close to a SSTO on top of a 666 booster helps a surprising amount. On the other hand in aerospace its unusual to bolt the first prototype together then just punch it and see what happens, like a drag racer driver. Smallest reasonable steps and all that.
- sp332 13y agoIt could be an aerodynamics and materials test. Getting in-the-field data about stability above the sound barrier, and analyzing stress patterns etc.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoIt's a reusable, manned sub-orbital rocket. That's a new thing. It'll allow low-cost sub-orbital tourist flights. If there's demand for it then it'll be a great way to fund development for reusable, manned rockets.
- aidenn0 13y agoX-15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
- InclinedPlane 13y agoSorry, add: "passenger carrying".
- spiritplumber 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket) This is arguably cooler.
- rpmcb 13y agoNot really a legitimate comparison. Pegasus is Orbital Science's unmanned cargo vehicle. Virgin Galactic is building a space tourism company. Very different.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- salimmadjd 13y agoI noticed the youtube video was removed? I wonder if it was a PR decision. Any ideas? Also, I agree hitting speed of sound is not that of an achievement, but it' something given it wasn't bankrolled by limitless government funding. If they have any mishaps, their program is crashed. Where as government program can have many mishaps and it doesn't have the same impact as a consumer-oriented business.
- carbocation 13y agoMaybe the physics or the finances aren't there, but I would imagine that an excellent use for sub-orbital near-spaceflight would be to get between two distant cities (Tokyo and London) extremely quickly. Virgin Galactic would seem to be poised to execute on this, if there is a market for it.
- arjunnarayan 13y agoThis is one of the end uses of suborbital flights: New York to Beijing in 3 hours. The cost is high, but there are people who would pay a lot of money to make that trip in that short a time.
- jlgreco 13y agoI wonder how the in-flight wifi would/could be. The sort of customer you are talking about is probably rather accustomed to being constantly connected.
- arjunnarayan 13y agoI highly doubt that 13 hours of wifi-connected travel is preferable to 3 hours offline. With a 3-hour suborbital flight you can fly out to Beijing to finalize a deal and be back in time for a late dinner. If you fly out with your lawyers and team, you could spend the 3 hours prepping, and the 3 hours back drinking the celebratory champagne.
- ars 13y agoAssuming you could determine the flight schedule personally, which you probably can't.
- the_french 13y agoConsidering that the first ship had 6 spaces advertised, you might be able to determine the schedule by book all the spots.
- porterhaney 13y agoMeh. I saw a guy break the sound barrier just by falling.
- xanadohnt 13y agoIn the grand scheme of things, this isn't a very big deal? Actual "space" flight requires many multiples of this speed. And isn't the main goal of Virgin Galactic to ferry tourists into space?
- Gravityloss 13y agoIf suborbital tourist and scientific flights to 100 km happen every day, they could conceivably use some technologies and operations approaches that are also relevant to orbital launch. Think of how you attack a complex problem - you can't solve everything at once, but you try to break it into smaller ones. If you build a complex piece of software, you try various concepts on a proof level, then rewrite them until you have something workable, then integrate that to your big software. If you are smart, you also use libraries that were first started for projects that did something totally different but had to create libraries on the side. Same here too. In my opinion, hybrid rockets will not be relevant for cheap space launch in the long term, but commercial construction and operations of carrier airdrop, the shuttle cock re-entry and gliding return are something that probably will be fine tuned a lot by Virgin Galactic (operator) and The Spaceship Company (builder). They have picked a path with a high dry mass penalty (glider wings) and quite a lot of complication (a whole extra aircraft) but they certainly are in a very exclusive club, having flown safely to 100 km, twice, with a human pilot. Their approach makes sense for an airplane company. A rocket company would build a normal liquid rocket engine that could do it from the ground and come back and land vertically again.
- sidcool 13y agoI almost read 'faster than speed of light', my jaw dropped...But then it was sound. A great feat, nevertheless.