Maybe 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.
The physics aren't bad; the fuel requirements for the same payload for point to point suborbital travel are about the same as a full tank for a 747 from Sydney to Istanbul. You spend a lot of energy getting up to speed, but you have much less drag.
The challenge is making it safe enough / rapidly reusable enough. If you're at just suborbital speeds, the temperature from the adiabatic compression on reentry is intense, and it's a technical challenge to handle the heating either non-ablatively, or ablatively but with cheap, safe rapidly re-applicable ablative material.
I'm signed up for Virgin Galactic and have talked to Richard Branson about this. While they haven't been very public about it, they are absolutely focused on this use case and others beyond space tourism.
This 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.
That route would make a lot of sense since both London and Tokyo are major financial centers.
Tokyo - Frankfurt would be great as well since (a) Germany and Japan have a lot of ties in their manufacturing industries (ex: autos) and (b) since Frankfurt is the international air-travel hub of Europe.
The 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:
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.
I 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.
I'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.
It'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.
Branson 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.
I 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.
In 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?
If 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.
Not really a legitimate comparison. Pegasus is Orbital Science's unmanned cargo vehicle. Virgin Galactic is building a space tourism company. Very different.
[+] [-] carbocation|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DaniFong|13 years ago|reply
The challenge is making it safe enough / rapidly reusable enough. If you're at just suborbital speeds, the temperature from the adiabatic compression on reentry is intense, and it's a technical challenge to handle the heating either non-ablatively, or ablatively but with cheap, safe rapidly re-applicable ablative material.
[+] [-] drusenko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arjunnarayan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|13 years ago|reply
Tokyo - Frankfurt would be great as well since (a) Germany and Japan have a lot of ties in their manufacturing industries (ex: autos) and (b) since Frankfurt is the international air-travel hub of Europe.
[+] [-] rquantz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spartango|13 years ago|reply
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-rock...
[+] [-] stonemetal|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] VLM|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PetrolMan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] youngtaff|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] salimmadjd|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] akie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xanadohnt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gravityloss|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiritplumber|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rpmcb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] porterhaney|13 years ago|reply