Virgin Galactic’s Unity makes second powered flight
Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic’s Unity suborbital spaceship made its second powered flight yesterday, reaching Mach 1.9 and firing its engine for about 30 seconds.
The official company video of the flight is below the fold.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic’s Unity suborbital spaceship made its second powered flight yesterday, reaching Mach 1.9 and firing its engine for about 30 seconds.
The official company video of the flight is below the fold.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
So, they’ve gotten to where the Bell X-2 was in the mid Fifties (and, to be fair, credit to Boeing for the B-50 carrier aircraft)
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Bell+X-2+for+FSX&&view=detail&mid=6CA44ABAF027800F52BC6CA44ABAF027800F52BC&&FORM=VDRVRV
To use an expression from my dad’s home state, “Richard Branson, more hat than cattle”)
Col Beausabre wrote: “Richard Branson, more hat than cattle”
Hopefully Branson’s herd will grow larger than his hat.
Watch the craft under power/
It does not look stable. It was wiggling all over the place.
So, they’ve gotten to where the Bell X-2 was in the mid Fifties (and, to be fair, credit to Boeing for the B-50 carrier aircraft)
But are they doing it now?
I understand what you are getting at but just because something was done in the past doesn’t mean doing it now is no big deal.
For example: what about when we land on the Moon again? Sure we did it in the past but we haven’t in decades and the technology that will allow us to do so now, will be far more advanced that what we used before.
I suspect that Col Beausabre understands that this is a developmental test that is a step in the direction of what SpaceShipOne already has done. They are checking out SpaceShipTwo’s performance and are working their way to a full mission profile. The wiggle that pzatchok noticed could be part of the test plan (testing out control), or it could be an unexpected performance issue. SpaceShipOne had a worse case of unexpected spinning roll on one of its flights.
Second flight to space, first of two X-Prize flights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXNkUNP75-Q (10 minutes, unexpected roll begins at 1 minute into powered flight)