Spaceship 2 Mishap

It did indeed...at a cost of $400-500 million per mission.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
but that humungous hydrogen tank thingy on the bottom was....:yes:
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Yep, but it needed the SRBs to do what it did, so it was still a deficient platform in those regards, not to say the SRBs couldn't be replaced with cleaner rockets. Right now if we tried to launch the materials for a major orbital construction mission, we would exacerbate the pollution problem greatly.
 
Henning said:
Yep, but it needed the SRBs to do what it did, so it was still a deficient platform in those regards, not to say the SRBs couldn't be replaced with cleaner rockets. Right now if we tried to launch the materials for a major orbital construction mission, we would exacerbate the pollution problem greatly.
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I seriously doubt polution is an issue with launch vehicles...maybe for ground handling, but not for launch.:rolleyes2:
 
N801BH said:
Remember... Spaceship2 is NOT starting from a standing start at ground level... They are hurled into the party at 50,000 feet and 600 mph.... The first 50,000 feet from ground level and a dead start eats up ALOT of fuel..:yes:......:rolleyes: IMHO
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Well... the air-launch system is great for sub-orbital missions. When you think about it, only TWO of the US's sub-orbital missions were ground-rocket launches.

Unfortunately, it's not as big of an advantage when you're going into orbit. Getting up to orbital velocity is more important than mere altitude.

Getting to LEO (low Earth orbit) has a "Characteristic Velocity" of about 27,000 feet per second (fps). That's the total amount of velocity you have to add to your vehicle to achieve orbit. Only about 2,000 of that is due to the need to overcome drag and climb outside the atmosphere.

Now, mind you, that air drag, etc. occurs early in flight, which much more effort must be made to accelerate. So air launch does help more than just that ~8% of the total velocity; it doesn't have to carry oxidizer to 50,000 feet.

But that's still a lot of additional velocity that must be added. If you're trying to put any sort of weight into LEO, the total weight of your vehicle becomes such that designing an aircraft to carry it to 50,000 feet/Mach 0.8 is impractical.

The interesting thing about LEO Characteristic Velocity is that once you've "paid" it, the whole solar system opens up. The additional CV to go to the moon or the other planets is minor, in comparison.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Well... the air-launch system is great for sub-orbital missions. When you think about it, only TWO of the US's sub-orbital missions were ground-rocket launches.

Unfortunately, it's not as big of an advantage when you're going into orbit. Getting up to orbital velocity is more important than mere altitude.

Getting to LEO (low Earth orbit) has a "Characteristic Velocity" of about 27,000 feet per second (fps). That's the total amount of velocity you have to add to your vehicle to achieve orbit. Only about 2,000 of that is due to the need to overcome drag and climb outside the atmosphere.

Now, mind you, that air drag, etc. occurs early in flight, which much more effort must be made to accelerate. So air launch does help more than just that ~8% of the total velocity; it doesn't have to carry oxidizer to 50,000 feet.

But that's still a lot of additional velocity that must be added. If you're trying to put any sort of weight into LEO, the total weight of your vehicle becomes such that designing an aircraft to carry it to 50,000 feet/Mach 0.8 is impractical.

The interesting thing about LEO Characteristic Velocity is that once you've "paid" it, the whole solar system opens up. The additional CV to go to the moon or the other planets is minor, in comparison.

Ron Wanttaja
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Physics, no getting around it, great explanations.
 
What about balloon launching? Using stratospheric balloons? Yeah, I know the hassles, but those gas envelopes are cheap as chips compared to anything else.
 
Henning said:
What about balloon launching? Using stratospheric balloons? Yeah, I know the hassles, but those gas envelopes are cheap as chips compared to anything else.
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Total lift capacity is the bugaboo. How heavy is your rocket/payload, and how big of a balloon would be required.

Here's a data point. Orbital makes the Pegasus XL launch vehicle, dropped from a Lockheed L1011. It weighs ~23,000 kg, and launches a payload weighing ~1,000 kg.

If you had a 1000 kg payload...how big of a balloon would be required? Felix Baumgartner's capsule weighed about 1300 kg, but of course, that's the weight available for the entire launch system, not just the payload. This means that the actual payload that could get to orbit would be on the order of 50-100 kg. It'd REALLY take a big balloon to match Pegasus' capability.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Well... the air-launch system is great for sub-orbital missions. When you think about it, only TWO of the US's sub-orbital missions were ground-rocket launches.

Unfortunately, it's not as big of an advantage when you're going into orbit. Getting up to orbital velocity is more important than mere altitude.

Getting to LEO (low Earth orbit) has a "Characteristic Velocity" of about 27,000 feet per second (fps). That's the total amount of velocity you have to add to your vehicle to achieve orbit. Only about 2,000 of that is due to the need to overcome drag and climb outside the atmosphere.

Now, mind you, that air drag, etc. occurs early in flight, which much more effort must be made to accelerate. So air launch does help more than just that ~8% of the total velocity; it doesn't have to carry oxidizer to 50,000 feet.

But that's still a lot of additional velocity that must be added. If you're trying to put any sort of weight into LEO, the total weight of your vehicle becomes such that designing an aircraft to carry it to 50,000 feet/Mach 0.8 is impractical.

The interesting thing about LEO Characteristic Velocity is that once you've "paid" it, the whole solar system opens up. The additional CV to go to the moon or the other planets is minor, in comparison.

Ron Wanttaja
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Learned a ton about orbital mechanics and rockets from kerbal space program :p
 
3393RP said:
It did indeed...at a cost of $400-500 million per mission.
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I remember back in the mid-late70's when NASA went before congress, asking for funding and stated..... Each orbitor will cost 90-100 million, turn around time will be 10 days - 2 weeks and turn around costs will be less then 5 million.........

They were SO WRONG......:mad2::mad2::mad2:.:mad:.........:rolleyes2:
 
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N801BH said:
I remember back in the mid-late70's when NASA went before congress, asking for funding and stated..... Each orbitor will cost 90-100 million, turn around time will be 10 days - 2 weeks and turn around costs will be less then 5 million.........

They we SO WRONG......:mad2::mad2::mad2:.:mad:.........:rolleyes2:
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Despite that, NASA's budget is really small in the scheme of things and in my opinion returns on investments :yes:
 
overdrive148 said:
Despite that, NASA's budget is really small in the scheme of things and in my opinion returns on investments :yes:
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Hey what do NASA and a walrus have in common? They are both looking for a tight seal..... :rofl: I'm here all week.
 
But that's still a lot of additional velocity that must be added. If you're trying to put any sort of weight into LEO, the total weight of your vehicle becomes such that designing an aircraft to carry it to 50,000 feet/Mach 0.8 is impractical.
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Maybe Not.

Stratolaunch
 
wanttaja said:
The interesting thing about LEO Characteristic Velocity is that once you've "paid" it, the whole solar system opens up. The additional CV to go to the moon or the other planets is minor, in comparison.
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That is only true if you're willing to spend months and years in transit.
 
zaitcev said:
That is only true if you're willing to spend months and years in transit.
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What does it matter? It will be generations getting anywhere regardless until we make some major advances in understanding and manipulating gravity. Right now we have to build a long term space ecosystem. When you have a self sustaining ecosystem, at this point it doesn't make much sense to go past the asteroid belt to harvest more resources and build more long range, long term, ecosystems to take on more population.

The viability of this lies in creating a fusion reactor. Once you can make your own little Sun, now your survival options in space become infinite. Since we don't have the technology at the moment to travel to other planets over vast distances, getting people off Earth and into the nearby solar system would suffice to serve our current needs of getting people off the planet to ensure survival of the species.

That is the neat part of evolution on the macro/universal scale, especially with regards to technical ability. It's set up to limit damage. We get no more technology than we show ourselves safe with. Right now we are limited to destroying our planet, but we're actually doing ok. We haven't blown each other up yet with it. To take the next step though, that will require more than that. To get off the planet will require planetary cooperation and commitment and resource, both mineral and human, on unprecedented scale. In order to achieve this we have to stop wasting our most valuable resources on war. Only when we quit fighting and cooperate can we afford to leave the planet and survive. By the time we achieve that ability and have a way to live off the planet, we may find some other inhabitable planets. If we have learned to conduct ourselves peacefully, we may get the technology to fold SpaceTime with a localized gravitational source to allow for 'teleportation' direct to the other site. If not we will have a bunch more generations of of living at high population densities to evolve that trait, or not.

In the argument over Intelligent Design, you can chalk up us being a "Self Quarantining Pathogen" in the 'pro' column.
 
Henning said:
That's what I thought. I'm not all that up on it, but I thought these were a hybrid process of exposing a solid hydrocarbon to a liquid oxidizer? Am I wrong? If it is that, it is far from a "solid rocket" where the fuel carries its own oxidizer.
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A little late to the party, but thought I'd chime in. The original SS2 motor was HTPB (ie rubber) that then had nitrous injected through the core and ignited. There has been substantial difficulty in getting the internal geometry of the fuel correct so that the thrust is even as the HTPB burns away. This led to severe vibration issues. The system worked in SS1, but when they tried to scale it up for SS2, well they spent years working on different geometries before finally switching over to nylon.
 
wanttaja said:
Interesting article about concerns about the Spaceship Two engine:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/1...ing-signs-ahead-of-deadly-spaceshiptwo-crash/

"The Sunday Telegraph has seen emails and other documents in the public domain — dating back several years, and as recently as last year — in which the engineers warned of the dangers of Virgin Galactic’s rocket engine system.

"It also emerged that three senior Virgin Galactic executives — the vice-president in charge of propulsion, the vice-president in charge of safety, and the chief aerodynamics engineer — had all quit the company in recent months."


Ron Wanttaja
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What a crock this article is.
 
Henning said:
Maybe, but not if they want commercial certification. They already had a "procedural solution" in place, it failed, it caused a total loss. Certification will require it to be "Pilot Proofed".
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These vehicles will not be certified for the foreseeable future. They are not considered aircraft in a regulatory sense, and their operation is not considered an aviation operation. I have spent much of the last two years licensing airports to accommodate these kinds of operations, and the FAA's space branch (FAA/AST) operates with a completely different mindset from most of the rest of FAA.
 
Ken Ibold said:
These vehicles will not be certified for the foreseeable future. They are not considered aircraft in a regulatory sense, and their operation is not considered an aviation operation. I have spent much of the last two years licensing airports to accommodate these kinds of operations, and the FAA's space branch (FAA/AST) operates with a completely different mindset from most of the rest of FAA.
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Are you saying that those 800 $250,000 passengers will be flying on craft with no FAA certification?
 
Of course now we know that the engine almost certainly was NOT the problem.
 
Henning said:
Are you saying that those 800 $250,000 passengers will be flying on craft with no FAA certification?
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SS1 was iirc registered as an experimental glider. Just declare the meatbag$ glider students, make sure the pilots are CFI-Gs and light the fuse.:lol:
 
wanttaja said:
Ummmm.... ARE there standards for commercial certification of privately-owned man-carrying spacecraft? If there aren't, then no one can force Galactic to add an interlock. It's my understanding that the FAA has waived all the normal certification rules. Without a regulatory basis, the FAA can't tell Virgin to modify their design.

But maybe the FAA has put something in place. Anybody got a link?

Ron Wanttaja
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There is no certification in place for the aircraft, nor is it planned.

The vehicle operator has to get an operator license for each location at which they plan to fly, and it will include everything from environmental assessments to concept of operations to letters of agreement with air traffic control to reserve airspace. Some of these issues are covered by the "spaceport", which needs its own license, but many are not. During the application process, FAA oversees testing etc and will either decide that vehicle is safe operating at that location or it's not. Developmental vehicles are held to a slightly different standard than the vehicles operating in commercial circumstances, but it's nowhere near what you would consider akin to Part 23 certification or anything like that.

An interesting revelation is that FAA never EVER calls the folks going on the spaceship joyrides "passengers." They are "space flight participants."
 
Henning said:
Before they can launch with Passengers for Hire, they have to have an Operating Certificate from the FAA, the way they launch there is no way around it.
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Nope. No certificate. FAA does not consider this an aviation operation and does not consider the vehicle an aircraft.

As you say, these are entirely different rules. Check out 14 CFR Part 417 - Part 420
 
Ken Ibold said:
Nope. No certificate. FAA does not consider this an aviation operation and does not consider the vehicle an aircraft.

As you say, these are entirely different rules. Check out 14 CFR Part 417 - Part 420
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Still, the FAA signs off on the operation before it launches. This will all change with the first billionaire that gets blown up. How is insurance handling the industry? Is it going to operate naked on a 'known hazardous activity' exemption? Is life insurance going to start writing in the exclusion of space travel? That would put a serious dent in the space tourism business. An uninsurable tourism activity is not one that is going to prosper, especially when it is aimed at high net worth individuals.
 
Henning said:
Is it going to operate naked on a 'known hazardous activity' exemption?
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Ken told you about location for a reason. New Mexico has passed a special law that establishes the same liability prevention regime for VG that skiing operators enjoy in the state.
 
Henning said:
Still, the FAA signs off on the operation before it launches. This will all change with the first billionaire that gets blown up. How is insurance handling the industry? Is it going to operate naked on a 'known hazardous activity' exemption? Is life insurance going to start writing in the exclusion of space travel? That would put a serious dent in the space tourism business. An uninsurable tourism activity is not one that is going to prosper, especially when it is aimed at high net worth individuals.
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I think high net-worth individuals might use insurance differently than you expect. And even high-risk operations are insurable, the premiums are just higher. In some situations, the insurance amounts to a finance arrangement.
 
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