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Space Technology

SpaceShipThree to be Orbital Spacecraft 311

Posted by samzenpus from the space-class-flight dept.
FleaPlus writes "The president of spaceflight company Virgin Galactic has recently stated that if the upcoming suborbital service with SpaceShipTwo is successful, the follow-up SpaceShipThree will be an orbital craft. Although orbital spaceflights would be much longer and could potentially dock with orbital space stations, they are also considerably more difficult than suborbital spaceflights. Other private firms working on orbital spaceflight (and potentially in the running for Robert Bigelow's $50 million America's Space Prize for orbital flight) include t/Space and SpaceX."
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SpaceShipThree to be Orbital Spacecraft More

SpaceShipThree to be Orbital Spacecraft

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  • $100.000 for flying from LA to Sydney in approx 4 hours?

  • Why SpaceShip[One|Two|Three] will not reach orbit (Score:4, Interesting)

    by timecop ( 16217 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:10AM (#13395994) Homepage
    There's a very interesting writeup about the potential problems related to trying to reach orbit in these "scaled composites" "spaceships" at http://www.daughtersoftiresias.org/misc/ss1.html [daughtersoftiresias.org].

    Basically, the biggest problem is that due to the simplicity of the engine design (the are examples of space shuttle engine and the SS1 engine on the page above), the design would never scale enough to reach velocities needed to get into orbit.

    • Only assuming thye use the same design (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arevos ( 659374 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:28AM (#13396021) Homepage
      I suspect that the engineers involved in Vigin Galactic are not complete morons, and might possibly know a little bit about high altitude flight and rocket engines. Perhaps even more than you do, surprising as that may seem.

      If they set about designing an orbital craft, I'd hazard a guess and say that they wouldn't use an engine design that is known not to work. Likely as not, they'd use a different engine design that is known to work.
      • I suspect that the engineers involved in Vigin Galactic are not complete morons

        I doubt it. In a cost-saving move I doubt the engineers even have college degrees. After all, it's not like it's rocket science ;)

      • I am interested on how he gets back down (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @06:49AM (#13396178) Homepage Journal
        Getting the craft back down to earth in one piece is going to be the capability I am most interested in seeing them solve. Will it be ablative or something reusuable like the tile system but more robust? Being Rutan I full expect it to land like a plane on return so that alone will limit some of the choices he can make.

        Unless he revolutionizes rocket propulsion I don't see how they are going to get anyone into orbit at reasonable costs, by reasonable I mean in the $1,000,000 range.

        If space tourism would generate a good return on investment I am pretty sure the Russians would be all over it. They already have the technology to get there and have proven they would take paying customers. Since they haven't moved more aggressively I have seriously doubts if it is doable on todays technology. Look at the Kliper, the estimated costs are nearly $3 billion just to develop it! It can take 6 people and 750kg of cargo to LEV. The other issue that stands out with Kliper is that the module may only be used 25 times before retirement.

        If the Russians are having such issues with LEV on that budget it will take a miracle for anyone else.

        Wiki link to Kliper
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kliper [wikipedia.org]
        • Given current rates of launches per year, 25 launches before scrapheap is quite reasonable. You'd get a vehicule you could use years on end w/o expensive overhauls (read:shuttle) and simply scrap it after a predetermined # of launches or age, whichever comes first.

          Of course, the temptation to keep using it beyond its designed lifetime will be there, esp. if that could save you a serious wad of roubles...
        • I agree. We really do need a revolutionary development in rocket design. That would make single-stage-to-orbit craft really doable, and significantly lower the cost of getting into LEO.

          I too am curious to see what sort of heat shield he uses. I suspect it will be elegant and to the point, like many of his designs.

          Time will tell!
        • is that it will be the ones from the X-33. [space.com] It was designed to be inexpensive and work better than the shuttles.

          As to propulsion, he is first launching horizontally from an aircraft some 90-100K km up there and with sub sonic speed. He will probably have a simple H2/LOX rocket for boosting it from there. It will almost certainly be a standard engine rather than something new and innovative.

          Keep in mind, that he is not going to be launching a shuttle. He is looking to send 3-6 ppl into space. Very little
          • SS-3 has fewer engineering problems to solve than a space elevator. Even once you have a magical material that would allow the cable to weigh only 1 kg/km (which isn't quite on the horizon yet), there's still a ton of actual engineering to do to turn that into something useful.

      • Re:Only assuming thye use the same design (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @07:20AM (#13396239)
        The grandparent has a point though. A scalable SSTO (single stage to orbit) engine is a holy grail of sorts because it must provide lift in various situations while being near maximally efficient the whole time. Nasa (and everybody else) solved this by using multiple engines: liquid main engines, solid boosters for the shuttle). Now perhaps SC has found an engine that will get them to orbit, who knows, but it's a bigger problem than you might think. Fuel is an issue:

        Fuels that are used in space must carry their own oxygen, but when going at high speeds in the earth's atmosphere, why not make like a jet engine and get oxygen from the atmosphere? Perhaps there could be two fuels, one for use in the atmosphere and one for use in space. The engine would start using one, then as pressure dropped would slowly switch to the other. But of course with an air intake that must work from zero to hypersonic speeds, you run into some pretty nasty physics in designing the thing. End result is you end up with a non-constant flow of oxygen to your engine, no matter how well you design your system. Thus the engine must be designed with this tolerance in mind.

        So, anyone trying this: good luck!

        • Re:Only assuming thye use the same design (Score:4, Informative)

          by 0123456 ( 636235 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @07:59AM (#13396339)
          "Fuels that are used in space must carry their own oxygen, but when going at high speeds in the earth's atmosphere, why not make like a jet engine and get oxygen from the atmosphere?"

          Because rockets generally don't 'go at high speeds in the earth's atmosphere'. Typically the job of the first stage is to lob the second stage pretty much out of the atmosphere so it can accelerate to orbital velocity with very low drag and vacuum-optimised engines.

          You really don't want to be flying at Mach 20 in an atmosphere thick enough to provide oxygen to your engines: I believe the NASP design would have required active cooling with liquid hydrogen to keep the skin from melting. Developing such a system is a lot more expensive than throwing some more liquid oxygen in the tanks, and fatal if the cooling fails.

        • Re:Only assuming thye use the same design (Score:4, Informative)

          by jadel ( 746203 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @08:12AM (#13396384)
          First off the standard disclaimer - I am not a rocket scientist....
          Now perhaps SC has found an engine that will get them to orbit, who knows, but it's a bigger problem than you might think. Fuel is an issue:
          the problem is not the engine - it's the nozzle. Due to the large pressure difference between the earths surface and space an engine that is optimized for one regime operates poorly in another.
          There are ways around it - raise the chamber pressure [yarchive.net] like in the shuttle or use an altitude compensating nozzle like an aerospike [yarchive.net] or plug nozzle [wikipedia.org] but the kinks are yet to be worked out of these approaches.
          Fuels that are used in space must carry their own oxygen, but when going at high speeds in the earth's atmosphere, why not make like a jet engine and get oxygen from the atmosphere?
          There are problems with using air-breathing launchers. [yarchive.net] That said the most interesting idea I've seen for a cheap launcher includes them [yarchive.net].
        • Except it isn't possible to reach space using only one stage, unless you make absolutely massive sacrifices on all other fronts. I can't remember how, but we had to prove it in one of our finals (MPhys).

          Further reading [wikipedia.org] - it's always going to be more efficient to go multistage.
          • "Except it isn't possible to reach space using only one stage, unless you make absolutely massive sacrifices on all other fronts."

            _Reaching_ space with a single stage isn't that hard: the Atlas could do so, though it did drop two engines along the way, and in theory the SII stage of the Saturn V could do so, though it would have needed major changes to be able to launch itself.

            It's reaching space with a worthwhile payload and getting back in a single stage which is hard :).

        • Re:Only assuming thye use the same design (Score:5, Interesting)

          by zippthorne ( 748122 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @10:06AM (#13397041) Journal
          SSTO may be the holy grail, but it's wasteful from an efficiency standpoint. Multiple staging allows lower fuel mass fractions with weaker engines. It does not matter whether the stages are similar or not (though dissimilar stages could potentially take advantages of conditions in various regimes) multiple similar staging provides enough benefit to be worthwhile.

          It is probably more effective, from a mass-fraction standpoint to use multiple rocket stages rather than using an airbreathing stage over a small fraction of the trip.

          IMO, the real "holy grail" is not reducing the stages to 1, but increasing the stages to infinity: a rocket that consumes its own structural mass as its usefulness is spent. No piece of structural mass should be lofted higher than it needs to be. Continuous staging would be the ultimate extension of that principle. In fact, I believe I have seen engines for sounding rockets that are designed to do just that.
      • The feather won't work. It needs an atmosphere to orient the vehicle, it won't have that until about 100,000 feet or so. And at very high mach numbers it will rip off instead of working. I think Burt knows that. At the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference (addressing a bunch of aerospace engineers) he said it would be awhile before anyone could do orbital, and his suborbital craft obviously couldn't be upgraded to do the job.

        So parent is obviously talking out of his ass when the man who designed the craft sai

    • Re:Why SpaceShip[One|Two|Three] will not reach orb (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:35AM (#13396034) Homepage
      And assuming that they start on the ground. The lift they get by the "white knight" is a very big saver on fuel and engine weight since they do not have to go through the first layers of the atmosphere.

      • Is that few km up really such a big saver? Most of the energy for orbital flight is needed for getting the tremendous sideways speed needed to stay in orbit. I'm not having much luck with Google, but can you point at some stuff that shows the gains aren't more than a few percent?

        • Re:Why SpaceShip[One|Two|Three] will not reach orb (Score:5, Interesting)

          by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @06:42AM (#13396161) Journal
          I'm under the impression that the direct speed/altitude benefits are fairly small. Rather, the main benefits are from safer abort methods (you can parachute back down if your engines fail) and being able to build an engine optimized for the upper atmosphere and space. You also don't have to pay launch site fees, and liability insurance becomes easier to deal with. Here's a relevant quote from t/Space's site:

          http://www.transformspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction =projects.view&workid=CCD3097A-96B6-175C-97F15F270 F2B83AA [transformspace.com]

          The major benefits of air launch come in safety, simplicity and flexibility. Crew safety is enhanced because abort-at-ignition is easier when the capsule already is high enough for parachute deployment, vs. the on-the-pad challenge of releasing sufficient energy in the correct direction to send the capsule high enough for the parachutes to deploy. Public safety is enhanced because the launch takes place over open ocean, well away from any populated areas.

          Air launch also allows simpler engines, which don't need to be designed to operate at both sea-level air pressure and at altitude. The "all-airborne" operation also reduces the performance penalty of using inexpensive low-pressure tanks and engines.

          Flexibility and responsiveness is greatly enhanced by air launch. Most winds and precipitation at the airport runway -- launch site -- don't delay a launch; the carrier aircraft simply flies to clear weather. In addition, responsive launch often requires matching a particular inclination and orbit phasing. The carrier aircraft over open ocean can launch the CXV to any azimuth, and by flying across longitudes, can quickly match a desired orbit phasing.

          The t/Space version of air launch provides only modest performance gains, in the 10-25% range, compared to a ground launch. It does not attempt technically difficult challenges such as accelerating the launch aircraft to supersonic speeds, or reaching very high altitudes.

        • Re:Why SpaceShip[One|Two|Three] will not reach orb (Score:4, Informative)

          by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @07:57AM (#13396336) Homepage
          It is a big fuel saver. The use of the fuel is non-linear, So when you can save some fuel by having a higher starting point with less drag, it also has a non-linear saving as result.
          Just calculate the needed potential energy to lift the crafts total mass for 10km up in the air, and you know what basic savings you get.

          I also can not seem to find an image of a rocket trajectory, so a description will have to suffice: The first few kilometer the trajectory is as straight up as possible. The trajectory in the densist air layers is the shortest possible. Since speeding up in that part is costly (drag=speed^2), the speed is kept down, in multistage rockets by coasting, or with solid fuel rockets by designing the thrust in such a way that you do not spend to much fuel on speed. Once the air density is low enough (less drag), you will speed up again, and adjust the trajectoy to get to escape velocity. For a decaying orbital trajectory, you do not necessarily need escape velocity, you just need to be able to make it around the earth like one time. So going orbital is also still pretty free in interpretation and goal.
          New designs for suborbital planes with ramjets almost all use this design principle for this reason (and they need to get up to speed to make the ramjet work).

          The main problem stays though that the design is complex, the take-off of a combined craft like this is slow, and the payload the combined craft can take is low, not higher than current rocket techniques if you really want to get into orbit (Imagine the shuttle+fueltank minus thrusters being lifted to sufficient height)

    • Re:Why SpaceShip[One|Two|Three] will not reach orb (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, the changes aren't that hard to make. The problem with the current engine design is that the hybrid rocket`s isp isn't high enough. Simply changing to another type of rocket doesn't help much though, the spacecraft needs to be an egg-shell filled with fuel in order to get to orbit, if there is no staging.

      The problem is that the exhaust gases from a rocket are moving at the speed of sound. You can get much more thrust from the same fuel if only that exhaust were moving faster. It turns out that
    • I take issue with the tone of this article, not the content. I do not doubt the accuracy of the information in the article at all, but there's a prevailing sense of: "NASA Knows Best".

      Just because an organisation employs thousands of the brightest people it can find doesn't make their end product the best, it simply does not follow.

      Beurocracy, design constraints, budgetary constraints and pure "can't think out the box" attitudes in large organisations tend to quash innovation. Not that NASA don't innnovate,
      • Again, the article is probably right in it's facts, but claiming that "Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth" (the article title) is like saying that linux would never be more popular on desktops than windows, or that desktop pc's would never outperform mainframes, or any other flippant claims about how the current way of doing things is the best.

        I don't think the issue is whether the current way of doing things is the best or not in those i
      • Also NASA's goal has never been to bring spaceflight to the common man (nor "common multimillionaire" for that matter). I'm sure they are quite content with their astronauts being considered heroes just for doing their job. The sooner astronaut is equivalent to bus or truck driver, the better.
    • The writeup you quote compares the Shuttle engines with the Scaled Composites engine, and says the former are complex enough to do the job, whilst the latter is too simple. But don't the Shuttle's two strap-on solid fuel boosters supply 75% of the thrust at launch? In other words, the Shuttle has three wildly complex engines and a whopping external fuel tank supplying 25% of the thrust, and two relatively simple solid boosters supplying the other 75%. So, in that context, the Shuttle's engines can't do the
    • An interesting article, but it seems to make a fundamental mistake in comparing Rutan's task to building a Space Shuttle, when reaching orbit will merely require building something that can do the job of Vostok 1, which was early 60s Russian technology.

      The shuttle is big, expensive and hugely complex, with a very compact engine, but that's because it's a 10-seater spaceshiip, and has a *huge* payload bay. If all you want to do is get a small crew up there, and not take a 60ft by 15 ft 28,800kg satellite alo
      • SS1 performs worse than the V-2 (V2 had roughly twice the payload (counting SS1's cockpit as payload as well as its passengers, and assuming a combined mass around 500kg), and twice the delta-V), let alone Vostok. Yet, the V-2 was at the birth of modern rocketry, and was pumped out in huge numbers. Not that a determined small private company can't reach orbit (determined large private companies reach orbit all the time :) ). SpaceX is pretty darn close at this point, for example (although they don't hav

    • Re:Why SpaceShip[One|Two|Three] will not reach orb (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nmg196 ( 184961 ) * on Thursday August 25, 2005 @07:37AM (#13396280)
      Hopefully the engineers at Scaled and Virgin know more than you (and the author of the linked page) do. Who's to say that a direct descendant of SS1 wil not (gasp!) change engine technologies?!

      This as got to be one of the most stupid posts/pages that I've seen so far this year.

    • This article implies a non-sequitur conclusion - that since Spacecship 1 didn't go into orbit, it's not possible to do it better or ceahper than NASA has done with the Shuttle. Yes, it will cost much more than $26M to develop SS3, but I can't see how anyone could have built a "reusable" vehicle less efficiently. BAsed on blindly optimistic and untested assumptions (wich many knew were spurious), NASA went from drawing board to operational system in one jump, so we are stuck with 1970s technology and massi

    • I think you forget that Scaled Composites did a lot of the research and engineering work for the McDonnell-Douglas Delta Clipper and Lockheed-Martin VentureStar programs.

      While of course these projects were not completely successful, it did teach Scaled Composites a lot about spacecraft design; I think Burt Rutan's company has the engineering knowledge to eventually build their own private spacecraft that could reach even the International Space Station at substantially less cost than the proposed Kliper spa

  • premature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:11AM (#13395995)
    Before discussion about SpaceShipThree occurs, perhaps we should wait until SpaceShipTwo is actually constructed and tested

    • Re:premature (Score:2, Insightful)

      by stupid_is ( 716292 )
      You forget this is PR-speak (the author is a media relations type) - you'll never whip up good publicity/funding by saying that you can't promise the world (or a good view of it!). You never know, they might even be able to do it.

      I'd love for accessible space-flight within my lifetime - I doubt it'll happen (unless accessible = "I win a big lottery") but these are good steps in the right direction.

  • Doesn't make much sense to me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:21AM (#13396013)
    Why would anyone pay for a suborbital flight when they expect the next version to be orbital? There will be a few no doubt who think its worthwhile to spend a hundred grand on an e-ticket to nowhere, but probably not enough to cover costs.
    Seems to me the whole idea of suborbital flight as a stepping stone to bigger things is a bad one. Its like expecting DOS to scale up to a multi-threaded multi-user graphical operating system. Maybe it can be done, but is the final product safe to use? Starting with technology designed from the ground up to do the mission makes a lot more sense to me.

    • Re:Doesn't make much sense to me (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Or expecting a user developed OS to scale from phones to mainframes....hold on a second...
    • Maybe in the same way that several wealthy people could spend 50'000$ in one night of partying. There many rich people to go around...

    • Here's why (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RoverDaddy ( 869116 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @06:14AM (#13396110) Homepage
      1. Because I know the orbital flight will cost 10x the suborbital and I'm not quite rich enough for that.

      2. Because I'll be dead before they get the orbital vehicle ready for commercial passengers.

      • Re:Here's why (Score:3, Funny)

        by Taladar ( 717494 )
        2. Because I'll be dead before they get the orbital vehicle ready for commercial passengers.
        ...because I booked a flight in the beta version of the suborbital vehicle...
      • And you want to say that you are an astronaut. 60 miles. Besides, I am guessing that the next version will probably go higher for a longer time.
    • Its like expecting DOS to scale up to a multi-threaded multi-user graphical operating system.

      DOS
      DOS with a GUI (Win 3.x)
      GUI running on DOS (Win 9x)
      GUI OS (Win 2K)

      You see; it DID scale using stepping stones.
      • A) Win2k is built on WinNT, which was developed completely separate from the DOS line. XP was based on 2k. The last DOS based OS was WinMe.

        B) Windows sucks. One of the reason for this is legacy cruft. (This was the point the original poster was getting at, but you seem to have missed it.)
        • A) Win2k is built on WinNT, which was developed completely separate from the DOS line. XP was based on 2k. The last DOS based OS was WinMe.
          It still remains true that the transition from DOS to Win2K was done gradually. Actually I should have said WinXP, where the Win9x and WinNT codebases merged together.

          B) Windows sucks. One of the reason for this is legacy cruft. (This was the point the original poster was getting at, but you seem to have missed it.)
          Ah yes, good factual point.
    • Why would anyone pay for a suborbital flight when they expect the next version to be orbital?

      Yeah. Because it's not, you know, riding in a freaking spaceship into honest-to-God SPACE. You'll take whatever chance you get.
    • You're assuming that the buyers have limited funds (like us ordinary mortals.) There are a great number of people in this world for whom, $100,000 is an acceptable entertainment budget. For those persons, it's not a choice between two types of flight. They can easily choose both.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @05:22AM (#13396015)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re-entry?
      I thought SS3 was going to be the one way journey?
      We have to cull the super rich somehow.

    • Re:Interesting.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jurt1235 ( 834677 )
      Well, orbital does not by definition be in space. For his spacehotel ideas: Yes, you have to go in space, but for just fly around the globe in a rapidly decaying orbit, you do not have to go very high and reach super high speeds. And lower speed is lower heat. So hopefully that will save him from having to use tiles.
      • That is false. To get around the globe just once requires practically the same velocity as a stable orbit. Doing it while you're in the atmosphere would require even more speed, because you need to have extra speed to make up for atmospheric grag.

    • Re:Interesting.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by QuantumG ( 50515 )
      Well ya know, if we were truely talking about revolutionary designs it'd be an Inflatable Re-Entry and Descent Technology (IRDT) heat shield. Such technology has flown in space and proven it is effective, despite actually being damaged by the deployment system. If you have an IRDT you can cut a lot of mass off your launch vehicle.

  • news at eleven (Score:4, Funny)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @06:32AM (#13396137) Homepage
    we are building a spacecraft which should be better then our current one, and if we find out it actually works, then we will try to build one which is even better!!! seesh, talk about vapourware...

  • On private spaceflight... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @07:14AM (#13396229)
    Not really related to the articl, but... I'm getting pretty annoyed by this "look at what this small company is capable of doing, while NASA wastes billions of dollars!". Hell, Rutan himself made some similar comments (was it on 60 Minutes?).

    Yes, What Rutan/Scaled Composites did is great, no denying that. But comparing their budget to NASA's is ludicrous. Does Scaled Composites maintain orbiting space-stations? Does Scaled Composites build orbiting space-stations? Do they conduct scientific experiments on other planets and in space? Do they send probes to comets and Mars? Rutan and Co managed to put a spacecraft for a short amount of time in to edge of space. NASA did that in 1961.

    Rutan and Co have the advantage of having the knowledge that NASA and others have accumulated over the years at great expense. They use that knowledge, and then make remarks how NASA is "wasting money". Well, without that "waste of money", SS1 would still be nothing but a glimmer in Burt Rutans eye.

    • Re:On private spaceflight... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @08:47AM (#13396532) Homepage
      Well, without that "waste of money", SS1 would still be nothing but a glimmer in Burt Rutans eye.

      Agreed. NASA has blazed the trail that private space entrepreneurs are walking now. None of this would have been possible without the knowledge that NASA had to learn the hard way using lots of taxpayer dollars.

      But virtually all the atmospheric, space and rocket propulsion knowledge which was required for the design and construction of SpaceShip1, the SpaceX Falcon 1, the t/Space launcher and other private space vehicles in the works was acquired before 1965.
      • NASA blazed a trail while holding a US monopoly on spaceflight and government funding into spaceflight research. Not to diminish what they have achieved, but there are reasons why they are the only ones who did it.

    • NASA vs Scaled Composites (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @09:49AM (#13396903)
      "Yes, What Rutan/Scaled Composites did is great, no denying that. But comparing their budget to NASA's is ludicrous."

      Not really. I heard Burt and Mike speek at Airventure in 2004. Burt breifly mentioned one of their prototype aircraft built for NASA. It was a very high altitude plane, and required a pressure suit for the pilot. The NASA team to support the "spacesuit" was larger than the Scaled team who designed, built, and supported the aircraft.

      And while others here are bashing Scaled for simply repeating what NASA did back in the 60's I have a few words to say:
      1) I don't see anyone else making real progress getting the public into space. NASA won't take you suborbital for 200K. Sure, only the rich can afford it now, but it is progress, and it is supposed to get cheaper.
      2) Rutan does innovate: Carefree Reentry was never done before - in fact, the X-15 crashed because it reentered with improper attitude.
      3) Scaled is making significant progress in a short time. Yes, they are on the shoulders of giants, but did you expect them to start with a moon shot or what?
      4) If I ever get to space in my lifetime, even briefly, it's more likely to be in a vehicle designed by Scaled Composites than NASA. NASA can't afford it the way they operate.
      5) When did NASA ever express any intention of taking ordinary people into space for fun? Oh right, never.

      I still respect the research that NASA does, but someone has to put that to practical use and that's where they fall down.

      • It seems to me that you think that purpose of NASA is to get Joe Sixpack in to space. Well, it's not.

        2) Rutan does innovate: Carefree Reentry was never done before - in fact, the X-15 crashed because it reentered with improper attitude.

        I would sure hope that Scaled does it better than X-15 did! Considering that X-15 flew something like 40 years ago! So SS1 is an somewhat improved version of 40 years old technology and concept? Isn't it a good thing that NASA "wasted money" on things like X-15, so Scaled can

      • While there *is* genius in the Rutan design, you have to see that as an owner of a company, he HAS to hype it's fiscal performance to the press, to prop up stock prices. It's going to be years before Scaled Composites space ventures will be profitable. Maybe even decades. He's not technically lying, of course, but he's "spinning" things in a dishonest way. He has to do that. As an engineer, he has to design planes and spacecraft. As a CEO, he has to "sell" his company to investors. That requires hype,
    • "comparing their budget to NASA's is ludicrous" -- not so. NASA has a bigger budget now. NASA's budget is finite and bounded by politics. NASA's actions do not affect its budget (except very indirectly) and cannot grow the budget.

      By contrast Virgin Galactic will be operating for profit. That is, for every N they spend, they will get N+M back. Their initial budget is bounded by the initial N (startup capital), but it grows rather than decreasing with each thing they do. That means that given enough time and

  • No money in Space Tourism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SoupIsGood Food ( 1179 ) * on Thursday August 25, 2005 @07:24AM (#13396253)
    The business plans of these companies... to fund billion-dollar operations with the wallets of monied space geeks... is nothing more than Heinlein-addled wishful thinking. Most of the bazillionaires would much rather spend their spare time at the French Riviera, or their private Greek island or shopping in Hong Kong. There just aren't enough people willing to shell out megabucks to fund the R&D and operating costs of space tourism.

    I mean, the Renaissance-era European explorers weren't wealthy sightseers who wedged themselves into tiny wooden deathtraps to sight-see. They were businessmen after profitable trade routes. Money lauched the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria, not tourism. Explorers werre invested in with the expectation that the money spent would return with a huge profit, not a nice story about the local food and colorful customs.

    But! Sending techs up to deploy, retrieve or even fix sattelites in orbit... now that's real money.

    That sort of work requires an orbital spacecraft with a decent payload capacity. So, this is a very good step in the right direction to making private space enterprise possible.

    SoupIsGood Food
    • The business plans of these companies... to fund billion-dollar operations with the wallets of monied space geeks... is nothing more than Heinlein-addled wishful thinking.

      I'd be surprised if the people running these private space companies really think that they're going to make all their money off of space tourism.

      Space tourism is just a revenue stream. This revenue stream, along with rewards like the X-Prize, are right now the only "direct" revenue streams available to the private space industry.

      (They mi
    • Given that Paul Allen spends 30 million a year just on maintenance of his yachts, I think there's an excellent chance that billionaires will spend tens of thousands of dollars on suborbitals flights, and orbital flights as well.

      The important thing about suborbital flights are that they provide Scaled Composites with the revenue stream they need to fund their orbital craft development.

      Jon Acheson
    • Money lauched the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria, not tourism.

      The fallacy in that statement is that there was no tourism during that period. Of course they didn't launch to "sight see" because there was no such thing and thus no money in it.

      There is now. There's a potentially huge amount. How much money does the human race spend on "entertainment" now? And how much of that is spent just on trips to go see places you haven't been to yet? Look at Alaskan or Antarctic cruises (the latter is probably far m

  • SS1 and the x-15 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pease1 ( 134187 ) <bbunge@ladyandtr ... m minus language> on Thursday August 25, 2005 @07:32AM (#13396267)
    I recently read Milt Thompson's At the Edge of Space: The X-15 Flight Program [amazon.com] and then read up on the technology and flight program of SS1. Thompson's book is a excellent read, BTW.

    It's amazing how easy the SS1 folks make the achivement appear. Clearly the SS1 team had done their homework and benefited from what was learned in the X-15 program. Whereas the X-15 program built up speed and altitude flights slowly, with each pilot getting experience at every point, the SS1 made large jumps on each flight, often trading off pilots along the way. No doubt Mike Adams was smiling down on the SS1 flights.

    It's great to see the private sector advancing technologies like this; what was so hard in the 1950/60's is easier with 21st century materials, engine technology and computer controls (BTW the X-15 was one of the first air/spacecraft to depend on 1st generation flight controls).

  • Here's a suggestion (Score:4, Funny)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @09:02AM (#13396596) Journal
    How to make money with space tourism:

    Don't charge much up front. People could ride for beans on one condition. Their life insurance policies get made out to you.

  • As I understand it the third working design in the series was always intended to be an orbital craft. First an X-Prize winner, then a larger passenger version for sub-orbital tourism, and then an orbital design. I've been hearing this pretty much from the beginning. So how is this in any way recent?

  • One thing I *NEVER* see ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by notpaul ( 181662 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @11:29AM (#13397667) Homepage
    Okay ... every freaking time this subject comes up (which you all know is fairly often) at least part of the thread gets hijacked into a detour on re-entry heating and "how in the heck is Rutan going to solve that problem", etc.

    IANARS, but I do know a thing or two about aerospace principles and technology due to the education I *do* have. What I always find amusing about this particular area of the discussion (re-entry heating) is that everyone posting seems to take for granted that re-entry heating is an axiomatic phenomenon that MUST be faced head-on. (Pun not intended but noticed.)

    THIS IS NOT TRUE!

    The only reason re-entry heating is an issue for us (NASA, et al) is more a matter of ECONOMICS than technology.

    The simple fact is that you can re-enter the atmosphere with little or no heating ... all you have to do is SLOW DOWN!

    The reason we don't slow down is we can't afford to carry enough fuel to get into orbit and still have enough to slow the craft down for a cool re-entry. (Think about it ... "every action", etc. ... it takes as much energy to slow down as it took to speed up in the first place ... so it would take a LOT of fuel.) An ablative coating (on the Apollo Command Module) or the tile system (on the Shuttles) is a heckuva lot cheaper and easier than managing to get enough fuel on-orbit to slow the dang thing back down to near-zero.

    In a nutshell - if I can slow my craft down enough (think "retro-rockets" here) then I can practically "float back down" into the atmosphere with minimal heating.

    There *are* possible solutions, such as *sending* fuel to orbit in a separate un-manned craft, and then re-fueling the manned craft on-station. Or *manufacturing* fuel outside Earth's gravity well so craft can re-fuel. Or having some other means of power to use for "retro-thrust" in orbit.

    Now, I am going to cap the preceding comments with a BIG disclaimer:

    *Of course* I realize that this opens a different set of problems and perhaps presumes technology developments in other areas ... but that doesn't make it any less true!

    I am just tired of people assuming that no matter what you do you have to have a craft capable of withstanding all of that horrible heat ... it just isn't so. As is the case with many science problems, there is more than one way to skin the cat.

    Me out!

  • FYI - SpaceShipOne update (Score:3, Informative)

    by cyberElvis ( 309765 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @12:19PM (#13398272)
    SpaceShipOne is currently at the Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles airport. I went there a couple of days ago and recognized it under a blue tarp by the hangar doors near the Concorde. It's a shame they don't uncover it, you can get pretty close to it. I guess they want to have a big unveiling when they move it downtown. http://www.spacealumni.com/index.php?option=com_co ntent&task=view&id=218&Itemid=9 [spacealumni.com]

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