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Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

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Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#31

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.

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#32

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.

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.

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how the in-flight wifi would/could be. The sort of customer you are talking about is probably rather accustomed to being constantly connected.

I highly doubt that 13 hours of wifi-connected travel is preferable to 3 hours offline. With a 3-hour suborbital flight you can fly out to Beijing to finalize a deal and be back in time for a late dinner. If you fly out with your lawyers and team, you could spend the 3 hours prepping, and the 3 hours back drinking the celebratory champagne.

Hmm, champagne. I wonder what the characteristics of such a ride would be. After the initial 2-3 minute burn I imagine they would spend most of their time in free-fall right? Maybe they could serve champagne in those "capri sun" bags: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capri_Sun_Apple_1.jpg

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt that 13 hours of wifi-connected travel is preferable to 3 hours offline. With a 3-hour suborbital flight you can fly out to Beijing to finalize a deal and be back in time for a late dinner. If you fly out with your lawyers and team, you could spend the 3 hours prepping, and the 3 hours back drinking the celebratory champagne.

Assuming you could determine the flight schedule personally, which you probably can't.

Considering that the first ship had 6 spaces advertised, you might be able to determine the schedule by book all the spots.

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#35
post #2

Can anyone speak to the significance of this achievement, considering that reaching low earth orbit requires something like Mach 24?

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.

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#36

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.

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.

That's awesome, any hint on what kind of price range that might entail. I'm just wondering if it will only be available to the super-rich or if it's something a middle class person could splurge on. For instance, I'd easily pay 5x for a near space flight to Switzerland from SFO that got me there 3 times faster (so say $5000 USD instead of $1000 USD) but I couldn't imagine paying space tourism type prices.

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#37
post #2

Can anyone speak to the significance of this achievement, considering that reaching low earth orbit requires something like Mach 24?

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.

X-15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#38
post #19
post #2

Can anyone speak to the significance of this achievement, considering that reaching low earth orbit requires something like Mach 24?

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…

SST is not designed for orbital flights, nor will it used for that, so I don't know how it's that relevant to talk about how much close it is to orbital speeds.

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#39
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

X-15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Sorry, add: "passenger carrying".

Re: Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test

#40

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.

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