| Author | Message | ||
     Slaughter |
One step at a time... | ||
| Crusty |
The Future is coming! The spirit of Delos D. Harriman is alive in Richard Branson. Our children will reach out to the stars! | ||
| Cyclone8u |
Nice to see someone pick up the ball that NASA fumbled... | ||
| Pwnzor |
Questions: Without having researched this spacecraft, where does it fit in? Is it purely for tourists to joyride into orbit? Will it serve the ISS? Does it compete somehow with SpaceX? It's definitely very cool, and I need to read more about it. | ||
| Aesquire |
Tourist flights. Up, black sky, free fall, big thrill. Back down. The passenger version of Rutan's Spaceship One, that won the "get into space, repeatedly" Prize. Same hybrid engine ( very safe for a ticket ) same "shuttlecock" high drag low speed reentry system. Not orbital. Only mach 23 too slow. Not competitors to Space X. Likewise, Space X isn't competing with Branson on tourist thrill flights. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Well I think it's pretty damned cool... to have two different civilian space programs that are not in competition. Regular schmucks can experience the rush of low orbital flight, and profits can be had as a result. Sciencey dudes can go get a Mars colony started and profits can be had as a result.  | ||
| Hootowl |
Virgin Galactic does have competition, in the form of Blue Origin, though Blue Origin is going with a more traditional path to space. Dropping a rocket powered plane from another aircraft is a tried and true method, however. Think Bell X1. Although the X1 only ever made it to about 90K feet. http://spacenews.com/suborbital-space-race/ | ||
| Crusty |
How high did the X-15 get? | ||
| Hootowl |
Seems Blue Origin is developing an orbital class booster as well. That'll put them in competition with SpaceX. Though, SpaceX says they're just doing this to get experience so they can go to Mars, and aren't really interested in Earth orbit missions long term. | ||
| Aesquire |
How high did the X-15 get? 67 miles. Top speed, 4,520mph. Longest flight? Neil Armstrong. Turbulence on the mother plane flight up to drop threw off the inertial guidance system, so when Neil pulled out of the dive after peak, the plane "bounced off" the atmosphere, and was in air too thin to turn. Armstrong flew all the way to LA, on his side, pulling on the stick, until it finally got enough "bite" to turn around, laying a sonic boom over Orange county. Made it all the way back to the dry lake, and just made the flat surface, flying below tree top level the last few miles. Longest duration and distance record. The Mothership system may be the ideal way to orbit, as well. One plan ( Larry Niven & Mathew Joseph Harrington, in the novel The Goliath Stone. Recommended ) is to produce the liquid oxygen for the orbiter in the mother plane on the way up to launch altitude. That way the landing gear & wings for the mother plane don't need to be that big and strong, and take off works on a "normal" b-52 runway. Also see Black Horse, where the orbiter takes off with a partial load of fuel & is refueled by another plane on the way up to rocket only altitude. SSTO is the most elegant, but after NASA crashed the DC-X proof of concept vehicle, it's been taboo, for political reasons. | ||
| Natexlh1000 |
Goliath stone was most excellent. | ||
| Slaughter |
Have friends working both Blue Origin and SpaceX. All 3 companies have very different visions. The Spaceship Company is rapidly evolving beyond the spaceship seen in the news. Virgin Orbit will be launching off their 747 while TSC will be doing new/different/fun stuff. It'll keep me from retiring a few more years. | ||
| Zac4mac |
Congrats Steve, rocket science indeed. I'm a light shade of green. Z | ||
| Hootowl |
Darker, here. I missed my calling. | ||
| Crusty |
I know one tramp who would give his... well, you know, to set foot on either the Moon or Mars. I was born too soon, though. However, our children will have the opportunity to. That's a Magnificent thing! | ||
| Aesquire |
You could have stayed at the Luna Hilton in 1999, but they nationalized space. Like the Soviet Union nationalized agriculture, and proceeded to have a century of crop failures, the Space Race of the 1960's deeply harmed and delayed the human race's expansion into the universe. The 1970's on creation of the bureaucracy of NASA, nailed the door shut on your hopes of an orbital honeymoon night on the Big Wheel from the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey. Remember we were supposed to have commercial travel by that then distant future? On TWA, no less.... Also gone with your hopes of tourist moon walks. I know that's not a popular view and in no way disparage the bravery of the astronauts and the support crews that put men on the Moon and established a space station..... But I HAVE to point out that the only way to get there with our bureaucracy is to take a Russian rocket. | ||
| Crusty |
Ah, yes. The Space Shuttle was the direct result of good old Senator Proxmire who decimated the budget for NASA. NASA had plans for something much better, but without funding, they did the best they could with what little was handed to them. I think the spirit of Proxmire lives on at Harley - Davidson in the form of their bean counters who nixed the "Trap Door" cassette transmission in the Sportster as well as implementing several other cost cutting measures. And they did it all without lowering the MSRP one cent for changes that made the resultant bike inferior in quality. Like NASA, the MoFoCo is now reaping the results of such financial "Savings" (Message edited by Crusty on June 05, 2018) | ||
| Tootal |
Crusty! I couldn't have said it better myself! | ||
| Aesquire |
Read " The Return Of William Proxmire" by Larry Niven. Short story nominated for a Hugo award. There's a Wikipedia page, but it spoils the pleasure of reading it. Buy the books! But there is a ruskie bootleg. http://bookre.org/reader?file=263895 | ||
| Zac4mac |
Cliff's Notes™ |
