Virgin Galactic!

[SiHart]

The first test flight for Virgin's potential new Space Flight Service was carried out yesterday...

Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceship, Enterprise, has made its first solo test flight, in California.

The spaceship was carried to an altitude of 45,000ft (13,700m) by an aeroplane and then dropped to glide back to the Mojave Air and Space Port.

Enterprise will soon be taking people prepared to pay $200,000 (£126,000) on short hops above the atmosphere.

The British billionaire behind the project, Sir Richard Branson, was on hand to witness the drop test.

"This was one of the most exciting days in the whole history of Virgin," the entrepreneur said.

"For the first time since we seriously began the project in 2004, I watched the world's first manned commercial spaceship landing on the runway at Mojave Air and Space Port and it was a great moment."

Virgin Galactic is aiming to become the world's first commercial space line, and has already taken deposits from 370 customers who want to experience a few minutes of weightlessness on a suborbital flight.

"We're not far off booking out our first year of operations," said Stephen Attenborough, head of astronaut relations at Galactic.
Drop test (Virgin Galactic) Enterprise will soon start rocket motor testing

"We'll see exactly how many we decide to fly in year one, but the intention has always been around 500. We're well on our way to that," he told BBC News.

The Enterprise ship is based on the X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne vehicle, which made history in 2004 by successfully flying to 100km (60 miles) in altitude twice in a two-week period.

The new ship, built by Mojave's Scaled Composites company, is bigger and will be capable of carrying eight people - two crew and six passengers.

When it eventually enters service, Enterprise will be carried to its launch altitude by the "Eve" carrier plane before being released in mid-air. Enterprise will then ignite its single hybrid rocket engine to make the ascent to space.

Although Eve and Enterprise have made several test flights together, Sunday was the first time the spaceplane had been released at altitude.

Two pilots were at the controls, Pete Siebold and Mike Alsbury. They guided the ship back to the Mojave runway.

The entire flight took about 25 minutes. On later test flights, Enterprise will fire its rocket engine.

Only when engineers are satisfied all systems are functioning properly will passengers be allowed to climb aboard.

"We are focused on safety and making sure we know everything about this vehicle before we put it into commercial operations. There is a timetable in terms of what we're going to do, but as we've said many times before, 'it takes as long as it takes', Mr Attenborough said.

"The next big milestone will be when we start the rocket motor propulsion tests."

Exciting stuff! I wonder how many of us will be able to afford to go?

Si xx

[WhiteCrowNZ]

It is exciting - but I'm not very sure how "close" it is. I remember they ran similar tests with the Space Shuttle in 1977/8 ... but it was 1980 before it was actually ready to fly.

This was just an aerodynamic worthiness test.

It actually comes on the same day as a real kick in the nuts for space travel, as NASA have kind of dropped their plans to return to the Moon. I was about 2 years old when we last walked on the Moon. I'll be lucky if we're back before I'm 60 ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11518049

The legislation also signals a formal end to the Constellation programme begun under President George Bush that sought to return humans to the Moon with a new spaceship called Orion and two new rockets called Ares 1 and Ares 5.

[SiHart]

It is exciting - but I'm not very sure how "close" it is. I remember they ran similar tests with the Space Shuttle in 1977/8 ... but it was 1980 before it was actually ready to fly.

I think being three or four years away from commercial Space Flight is pretty exciting anyway. That's closer than we've ever been before!

Si xx

[Jason Thompson]

Except we could be three or four years from commercial spaceflight for another three or four years, and even once commercial space flight becomes a reality, there's a long way to go before it is viable for the common man, so to speak.

Yes, they've tested a space plane for gliding back to Earth. Now they need to make sure sticking a rocket in the back and won't blow it up or tear it to pieces. What's more, they need to show that it is reliable enough for paying customers. 'We've tested it twice and it didn't blow up' won't cut it.

At the moment it seems to be being touted as a way to experience space flight and zero gravity for a few minutes. In other words, a toy for those who can afford it. A far better way of drumming up lasting revenue from it (i.e. getting customers who want to do more than go into space just to say they did) would be to focus on getting it to go somewhere. Sent out on a ballistic arc and gliding back down to Earth, the Virgin Galactic plane could cover huge distances in minutes due to the huge speeds it would need to get up to to get into space.

So I'm not excited yet. I'll be excited when we are weeks away from a situation where space travel is viable and practical for all, not just a fun novelty for the very well off.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I'll be lucky if we're back before I'm 60 ...

Might need to retract that statement a little. It's likely man will walk on the Moon again before I'm 60, as a Superpower sends a man to the Moon.

It's just unlikely it'll be American ...

[Stuart Wallis]

Except we could be three or four years from commercial spaceflight for another three or four years, and even once commercial space flight becomes a reality, there's a long way to go before it is viable for the common man, so to speak.

Yes, they've tested a space plane for gliding back to Earth. Now they need to make sure sticking a rocket in the back and won't blow it up or tear it to pieces. What's more, they need to show that it is reliable enough for paying customers. 'We've tested it twice and it didn't blow up' won't cut it.

At the moment it seems to be being touted as a way to experience space flight and zero gravity for a few minutes. In other words, a toy for those who can afford it. A far better way of drumming up lasting revenue from it (i.e. getting customers who want to do more than go into space just to say they did) would be to focus on getting it to go somewhere. Sent out on a ballistic arc and gliding back down to Earth, the Virgin Galactic plane could cover huge distances in minutes due to the huge speeds it would need to get up to to get into space.

So I'm not excited yet. I'll be excited when we are weeks away from a situation where space travel is viable and practical for all, not just a fun novelty for the very well off.

If Virgin could do a deal with the owners of the ISS to take supplies up - well, it might just get some test flights in, get a reputation for the company and get in a revenue that might make the ticket prices for the individual punters down...? One possibility.

[Jason Thompson]

If Virgin could do a deal with the owners of the ISS to take supplies up - well, it might just get some test flights in, get a reputation for the company and get in a revenue that might make the ticket prices for the individual punters down...? One possibility.

Impossible, I'm afraid. Virgin Galactic is a suborbital hop. It essentially gets into space on a technicality of altitude. It does not have the power to get into orbit, nor does it have a thermal protection system that will shield it against re-entry from orbital speed, nor (most likely) a structure that would withstand that. If Virgin Galactic is indeed 3-4 years from commercial flight as it is, it is far longer from commercial orbital flight.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

If Virgin could do a deal with the owners of the ISS to take supplies up - well, it might just get some test flights in, get a reputation for the company and get in a revenue that might make the ticket prices for the individual punters down...? One possibility.

Sorry Stuart ... but as Virgin trains can't get them running properly, I'd be shitting myself about the idea they'd be supplying me with breathable oxygen!

Although that's the avenue the American government wants to go down with more private contractors taking on roles instead of all spaceflight being tied up in one giant Government funded organisation like NASA.

[Jason Thompson]

That is indeed the avenue they want to go down. It's a shame really that it means throwing away their manned space flight capability in favour of some private industry that really is in its infancy. The fact is that no private enterprise is anywhere near NASA's capability, and so their decision to scrap the shuttle without having a replacement really moves them from a pre-eminent position in space flight to a back seat.

I have no doubt that private enterprise could one day make some truly practical commercial space flight, but not for many years yet. In many ways it will have advantages over NASA, since the private enterprise won't have to convince congress and the taxpayers to allocate public money to their project. It just seems unfortunate that, in order to stimulate the growth of that area of work, it is necessary to stop the use and maintenance of a system that works and works well. The same thing happened when the space shuttle was first designed and built, and NASA had to stop making their most successful and capable launcher ever (the Saturn V) because it would otherwise compete with the shuttle.

I bet no-one in the 60s, when there were plans for lunar coloines and men on Mars by the 80s, could ever have forseen that decades later NASA would shut down manned space flight and send their men up in Russian Soyuz spacecraft!

[Stuart Wallis]

I daresay JFK would have been spitting venom.

And also, bearing in mind that velcro, teflon etc. wouldn't have been in existance without NASA, I don't know whether it would be too presumpuous to assume that when the private firms do catch up with them in the acual space/aeronautical tech standards, there may be some cribbing from somebody else's exam papers at any rate.

[Jason Thompson]

And also, bearing in mind that velcro, teflon etc. wouldn't have been in existance without NASA,

Sorry to disappoint you, but this is another common misconception regarding the space age. Velcro and Teflon were used extensively in the space programs, but neither of them were invented by NASA or even with space applications in mind. Vecro has been around since the 40s, and Teflon was invented in 1938 (though not called Teflon until 1945).

[Stuart Wallis]

Really? Nobody tells you anything important til you embarrass yourself.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Any fool knows that Teflon and velcro were reverse engineered from alien tech found at Roswell!

Everyone knows Kennedy faked the Moon landings as an excuse to trickle all that tech through to the public via NASA.

[Jason Thompson]

Really? Nobody tells you anything important til you embarrass yourself.

Better to be told than allowed to continue in blissful ignorance.

[Jason Thompson]

Any fool knows that Teflon and velcro were reverse engineered from alien tech found at Roswell!

And don't even get me started on the effort needed to keep that time technology secret so they could manage to appear to invent teflon nine years before the event they reverse-engineered it from actually happened....

[Stuart Wallis]

I won't tell you what I was up to at the copyright office last night then. All I'll say is, teflon, velcro and grandfather paradoxes were mentioned...

[shada pavlova]

So, your average GB thread then.

[Stuart Wallis]

Nothing average about the sums in front of me now...