Virgin Galactic did another glide test of SpaceShipTwo today.Virgin Galactic did another glide test of SpaceShipTwo today.
I wonder, however, why there have been no powered flight tests so far this summer. After their first powered flight in May, it was expected they would begin a series of such flights, leading up to the first passenger flights at the end of the year. Instead, nothing.
This lack of flights feeds the long standing rumors that there are problems with SpaceShipTwo’s engine.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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
Virgin Galactic did another glide test of SpaceShipTwo today.
I wonder, however, why there have been no powered flight tests so far this summer. After their first powered flight in May, it was expected they would begin a series of such flights, leading up to the first passenger flights at the end of the year. Instead, nothing.
This lack of flights feeds the long standing rumors that there are problems with SpaceShipTwo’s engine.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
I suspect the hybrid engine is not able to provide consistent combustion quality and thrust. Even the allegedly successful powered test flight back in May had a pretty obvious hiccup shortly after initial ignition. The video shows the engine’s exhaust flame disappearing for a fraction of a second after being lit and then reappearing after what might have been a second ignition sequence. Then there’s the ground-based engine test that exploded shortly after the flight test. That failure was supposedly deliberately induced, but one’s skepticism about this official story only increases as each additional day passes with no second powered flight test.
The problems with this engine are probably traceable to the synthetic rubber fuel grain employed. This grain doesn’t seem to burn very evenly, producing a lot of smoke and spitting out sizable chunks of the grain as it runs. I would think that smoother, cleaner operation might be had by switching to a paraffin wax-based grain. Maybe all of this delay is owing to Scaled/Virgin having bitten the bullet and abandoned the trouble-plagued rubber grain for something else. If this is so, I wouldn’t anticipate either any further powered flight tests in 2013 or revenue service starting sooner than 2015.