SpaceShip Two

[nyarlathotep]

>"SpaceShip Three, which depends on the success of SS2, will supposedly be orbital."<br /><br />It rests more on Quickreach winning the Falcon program than the success SS2.

 

[radarredux]

>> <i>"SpaceShip Three, which depends on the success of SS2, will supposedly be orbital."</i><br /><br /> /> <i><font color="yellow">It rests more on Quickreach winning the Falcon program than the success SS2.</font>/i><br /><br />I would say "SpaceShip Three depends on the <b><i>commercial</i></b> success of SS2." In other words, if SS2 fails commercially (or perhaps more precisely, if none of the tourist-driven suborbital ventures succeed commercially), I doubt we will see the investment made for SS3 (or other orbital efforts).<br /><br />A challenge to the above statement, however, is the wild card of Bigelow and its use by foreign governments and or industries. If the tourists fail to show up in large enough numbers, but non-spacefaring nations want an astronaut corps and space station to call their own, or if a suitably profitable commercial application can be found for micro-gravity operations, then orbital access to an appropriate habitat may be successful even without tourists.</i>

 

[arobie]

Freaking Sweet!<br /><br />I remember in 04, my freshmen year of high school I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life: between planning on working for NASA or whether I wanted to try and work for private space companies. The private space companies seemed pretty far-feteched at the time. I told myself that a major deciding factor was going to be whether space tourism would be existing or looking very possibly by the time I graduate high school in 07. Well, I love the looks of SS2. And I love the efforts of the rest of the companies right now. Also Bigelow makes things mighty interesting with their inflatable habitats.<br /><br />I enter college in fall 07. If things have progressed this far since my freshman year of high school, I wonder where things will be at by the time I graduate college.

 

[holmec]

Cool and huge.<br /><br />Wow did yall see the videos. Very nice.<br /><br />The interior does remind me of 2001 Space Odessey. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[halman]

PistolPete,<br /><br />All that the Brit did was act as a conduit for money to reach the man who lives out in the Mojave in a pyramid. Burt Rutan has had the vision for a long time, I think, but getting someone to ante up the cash was the problem. Paul Allen acted as a catalyst, setting many new reactions in motion.<br /><br />Burt Rutan was the visionary who could conceive of the White Knight, which is probably one of the most unique aircraft ever flown, and a rocket propelled bad mitten birdie, designed so that it cannot tumble on re-entering the atmosphere. That was a stroke of genius, I would say, because improper attitude will turn into a big problem very fast for a conventional aircraft. It is not so much the velocity of the fall back towards Earth that is the problem, it is the turbulence experienced when something is in a non-aerodynamic configuration. But SpaceShip One can turn itself into a birdie, which, no matter which way it is going, it will come back to a nose-first trajectory. Brilliant! We need to laud Burt Rutan as the pioneer of the 21st century, an engineer pioneer. Build statutes, pyramids, flying wings in his honor!<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[halman]

docm,<br /><br />It doesn't seem like that long ago when having CO2 as the primary waste product of a reaction meant that it was pretty 'clean.' Those days are gone, as the weight of CO2 emissions will be the standard by which environmental damage is judged. Nowadays, we need a fuel which produces ozone as its primary waste product, especially if the fuel is only used in the upper atmosphere. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[rocketman5000]

now if we can just find this Cochrane fellow...

 

[halman]

RadarRedux,<br /><br />One aspect of global warming that is not being looked at very hard right now is the rapidly rising costs of producing CO2 inside our atmosphere. What was once a very cheap process will become much more expensive in a short period of time as the effects of global warming become more widespread and deeply felt. Smelting ores to produce steel and aluminum is going to become prohibitively expensive at some point, and I think that point is a lot closer than most people imagine.<br /><br />We can use all the energy that we want, as long as we do it off planet. If we make our steel from iron ore mined on the Moon, using solar power, we can import energy into our ecosystem, in the form of processed materials. Another good candidate is aluminum, which requires fantastic amounts of electricity to refine from bauxite. Aluminum is relatively plentiful on the Moon, if the extrapolations based on a couple of hundred pounds of rock samples are correct, and could be refined there, or in high Earth orbit. Eventually, a platform will be built for materials processing where sunlight is uninterrupted, I believe, because that area promises the earliest financial returns.<br /><br />Foamed metals, annealed for several weeks, will be stronger than solid castings made on Earth. And we have barely scratched the surface in exploring alloying in microgravity, which would allow almost any two metals to be mixed together and cooled. For instance, a copper/aluminum mix, which would have high conductivity, but would not oxidize easily. Or, aluminum and steel, mixed in proper proportions, could be stronger and lighter than titanium. Who knows? But whoever finds out is likely to make some money. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[dreada5]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>All that the Brit did was act as a conduit for money to reach the man who lives out in the Mojave in a pyramid. Burt Rutan has had the vision for a long time, I think, but getting someone to ante up the cash was the problem. Paul Allen acted as a catalyst, setting many new reactions in motion. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br /><br />Does it really matter? <br /><br />Burt Rutan, as great as he and his work is, wouldn't be much without $$$ to make it happen.<br /><br />I'm not saying this is you halman, but too many times these days people go on about those big conferences with space visionaries getting together to show off their whizzy schematics n slides 'til they're blue in their face, year after year. And what gets done? NOTHING! There's a lot of folk out there who've "had the vision for a long time" but it don't mean squat if it can't get off of a powerpoint projector!<br /><br />It takes unique people like Rutan to dream up revolutionary concepts, but you'd better believe, it takes unique people like Branson to make paper drawings into viable mass businesses with <b>real</b> put-your-hands-on hardware!<br /><br />So "that brit" and <b>HIS</b> <i>vision</i> for space suddenly becomes a quite a CRITICAL <i>conduit</i> in the Scaled/VG team.

 

[PistolPete]

Exactly! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><em>So, again we are defeated. This victory belongs to the farmers, not us.</em></p><p><strong>-Kambei Shimada from the movie Seven Samurai</strong></p> </div>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">show off their whizzy schematics n slides 'til they're blue in their face, year after year. And what gets done? NOTHING! There's a lot of folk out there who've "had the vision for a long time" but it don't mean squat if it can't get off of a powerpoint projector!</font>/i><br /><br />We used to call these people "viewgraph engineers"... back when people used viewgraphs.</i>

 

[holmec]

I think the really big thing that separates Rutan from the viewgraph engineers is that Rutan is working in Areospace for a long time for many clients, including the US gov.<br /><br />So Rutan is a pragmatic. <br /><br />Also, a little side note, Scaled Composites designed the main wing for the Pegasus launch rocket. I bet Rutan got a boost in terms of practical work and data from that project and applied it to SpaceShipOne.<br /><br />Rutan's vision is not unique. Many have had the same vision, in fact, its probably more derived from Von Braun's visions than anything. In the documetary Dark Sky Rutan mentions Von Braun as a person of influence for him. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[holmec]

The WhiteKnight....alas...<br />Its funny that Burt mentions that plane as something conceived out of need, and when they first rolled it out of the hangar and got to look at it in the light, he kind of questioned how much risk they were taking.<br /><br />I agree that the WhiteKnight is a stroke of genius but its conceived out of need. Its the first of its kind and the first of its configuration. DARPA used it for the X-37 drop tests. And I am kind of surprised that Orbital don't one built to launch the Pegasus rocket.<br /><br />This is the beginning of air launch space systems, and I can only see it expand because you do not need anything more than an airport and a hangar to support it. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[j05h]

<i>>I agree that the WhiteKnight is a stroke of genius but its conceived out of need. Its the first of its kind and the first of its configuration. DARPA used it for the X-37 drop tests. And I am kind of surprised that Orbital don't one built to launch the Pegasus rocket.<br /><br />This is the beginning of air launch space systems, and I can only see it expand because you do not need anything more than an airport and a hangar to support it.</i><br /><br />The White Knight is the first custom air-launching plane, but not the first to do that. The B-52 dropped the X-15, plus as you mentioned there is Pegasus. For Mr. Rutan, he has an earlier high-altitude plane that the WK is based on: the Proteus. Proteus is interesting as it is designed to be multi-platform, a research craft, modular payload bay and extreme loiter times. It is the direct basis for White Knight, with some differences. When he originally announced entering the New Space Race, Mr. Rutan showed a graphic of a Buck-Rogers rocket launched from Proteus. 5 years later he rolled out WhiteKnight/SS1. He is our Von Braun and our Howard Hughes.<br /><br />I agree that we are on the verge of smaller, airlaunched rockets that can operate flexibly. Jon Goff is discussing this as "The Road Not Taken" on Selenian Boondocks. http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.com/<br /><br />Mr. Rutan has done a lot of work for many clients over the years. Pegasus' wing is only one of the space projects he participated in.<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[dreada5]

I'm a fan of air-launch systems, mainly because it seems such a relatively simple method to access LEO and it reduces risk to crew associated with ground launched vehicles, cuts infrastructure costs and provides quick-turnaround, safer access.<br /><br />I had hoped NASA would have provided more funding to t/space's CXV concept. Rutan would have designed their large carrier aircraft.<br /><br />http://www.transformspace.com/<br />

 

[holmec]

Yeah. AirLaunch LLC seems to keep working with the Air Force.<br /><br />http://www.airlaunchllc.com/ <br /><br />Did you read the t/Space news dated first of February? sounds encouraging. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[dreada5]

Yes, think so, but its unfunded work isn't it? <br /><br />"Everyone" does unfunded work... but it rarely leads to flyable hardware.

 

[holmec]

"Yes, think so, but its unfunded work isn't it? "<br /><br />So the workers don't eat for several year? <br />I don't know where they get their money from, but at least they are pressing on. Yeah the agreement with NASA is just info exchange, at least that is what it seems. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#0000ff"><em>"SCE to AUX" - John Aaron, curiosity pays off</em></font></p> </div>

 

[docm]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>dreada5 said;<br /><br />I had hoped NASA would have provided more funding to t/space's CXV concept. Rutan would have designed their large carrier aircraft.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> <br />I believe they already have. It's called "EVE" and is SS2's mothership and twice the size of White Knight. IIRC it was designed to also be t/Space's carrier. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[dreada5]

Verrrrry cool! (two birds, one stone) <img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" />

 

[radarredux]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p> it reduces risk to crew associated with ground launched vehicles, cuts infrastructure costs and provides quick-turnaround, safer access.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />SeaLaunch probably wishes it didn't have to worry about repairing damage from a failed launch right now.

 

[soyuztma]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>I believe they already have. It's called "EVE" and is SS2's mothership and twice the size of White Knight. IIRC it was designed to also be t/Space's carrier. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />That White Knight 2 will also be capable of taking the CXV +booster up has been claimed alot. But i still have to see some evidence for this claim. It would mean WK2 would be 747 size while it has been reported that WK2 will be 757 size. SS2 doesn't need a 747 size airplane and if it used such a large airplane it wouldn't be very economical. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[dreada5]

Well I can think of at least one way to economize going through the trouble of flying up a 747 size carrier.... <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />

 

[rocketman5000]

TSTO?

 

[docm]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>It would mean WK2 would be 747 size while it has been reported that WK2 will be 757 size. SS2 doesn't need a 747 size airplane and if it used such a large airplane it wouldn't be very economical.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />It's not the raw "size"; once you have a workable payload rack it's the strength of the structure, size of the wings and the power to weight ratio. Classic Rutan; skinny where it can be, light and much stronger than it looks. <br /><br />With the right numbers a 757 "size" carrier just might do it, especially since the rather spindly Scaled Proteus managed a test drop of a 24% scale CXV/booster in 2005. I'm betting those results went into designing EVE. <br /><br />Another factor is that Scaled was to build both EVE and the t/Space VLA. Does anyone <i><b>really</b></i> think Rutan would design/build 2 planes to do essentially the same job? I don't. IMO he'd build to the higher spec and use it for both missions. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>