On Friday SpaceShipTwo completed another test flight, this time a glide test to for pilot training.
The competition heats up: Scaled Composites did an engine test today in Mojave of an alternative engine for SpaceShipTwo.
In this case, the company is even competing with itself, in that its first engine design is now in competition with another engine design. Considering the rumors about problems with that first design, I suspect the new design is probably winning.
The competition heats up: SpaceShipTwo successfully completed its third powered test flight today.
On release, SS2’s rocket motor was ignited, powering the spaceship to a planned altitude of 71,000 ft. – SS2’s highest altitude to date – and a maximum speed of Mach 1.4. SS2’s unique feather re-entry system was also tested during today’s flight. Two important SS2 systems, the RCS [reaction control system] and thermal protection coating, were tested during today’s flight in preparation for upcoming full space flights. The spaceship’s RCS will allow its pilots to maneuver the vehicle in space, permitting an optimal viewing experience for those on board and aiding the positioning process for spacecraft re-entry. The new reflective protection coating on SS2’s inner tail boom surfaces is being evaluated to help maintain vehicle skin temperatures while the rocket motor is firing.
Virgin Galactic has released video of SpaceShipTwo’s second powered flight.
Messier notes how strained the pilot’s voices are, indicating that this test flight was “one wild ride.” I have put the video below the fold.
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Bad weather scrubbed a SpaceShipTwo test flight yesterday.
It was unclear whether this would have been a powered flight. The scrub also ends any chance of another test flight before the end of the year.
SpaceShipTwo flew another glide test today.
Not a powered flight however. See Doug Messier’s comments here about the slow pace of these powered tests, and how it raises questions about the company’s claim that it will be flying commercially next year.
In an interview Richard Branson says that Virgin Galactic is working to replace SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid engine.
So for instance, the initial rocket which I’ll be flying on to space will be thrown away afterward. Within six to nine months, we will be using rockets that will have capability of being used maybe up to 1,000 times, but definitely up to 100 times. That will bring the cost of space travel down dramatically.
This timing fits with their new schedule for the first commercial flights of SpaceShipTwo sometime late in 2014. I suspect they are hoping to fly the ship a few more times with the troublesome hybrid engine, partly for engineering research and partly to keep interest up in the company, and then switch over to a new engine.
The competition heats up: In the past three months Scaled Composites has conducted nine tests of SpaceShipTwo engines.
It also appears that one test was of an alternative engine to the one they have been planning to use. All told this suggests they are accelerating their effort to finish SpaceShipTwo.
Virgin Galactic has signed a deal with NBC to televise the first commercial flight of SpaceShipTwo.
I note that with this announcement Virgin Galactic has backed off from its previous schedule for launching this flight this year. They now say it will happen in 2014.
The competition heats up? Beyonce might beat Lada Gaga into space.
And in related news, TV actor Ashton Kutcher had some serious stomach issues during a zero-G practice flight on the vomit comet.
The competition heats up? According to People magazine, Lady Gaga will take a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight in 2015 and thus beat Sarah Brightman into space.
At the same time announcing that a third powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo will occur in about a month, Virgin Galactic has now admitted that commercial flights will not occur in 2013.
The test pilots who have been flying SpaceShipTwo report on their work at a test pilot symposium.
Lots of interesting engineering details about the ship’s flight capabilities, including one near disaster that was saved by SpaceShipTwo’s robust design. No details, however, on the state of the ship’s engine, or when further test flights at higher and higher altitudes will be attempted.
Posted from home, Tucson, Arizona.
In a newspaper interview Richard Branson today claimed that Virgin Galactic is “just three months away from having a fully-functioning rocket that is capable of taking passengers into orbit.”
At this moment I am sadly very skeptical. The company has only done two powered flights of SpaceShipTwo, and the highest it has gone is about 70,000 feet. To make it fully-functioning, they need to fly it 70 miles high. And the rumors about their engine problems suggest they won’t be able to do this until next year, at the soonest.
Virgin Galactic has signed a television deal for a reality show where the winner would get a flight into space on SpaceShipTwo.
This sounds great, but the company first has to solve the very serious engineering problems it has with SpaceShipTwo’s engine, which apparently is going to cause a delay of at least one year in the ship’s development. Thus, this announcement is really nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to distract the public from those problems.
Due to problems developing SpaceShipTwo’s engine, it appears that its first flight into space will not occur sooner than February 2014, and that commercial operations will likely not begin before the end of 2014.
The problem is that despite public claims to the contrary, the nitrous oxide-rubber hybrid has never been hot fired on the ground at full duration, sources indicate. And the engine is not powerful enough even when fully fired to get SpaceShipTwo into space with any actual payloads (i.e., six wealthy passengers). Even as Scaled Composites has pursued the flight test program and Virgin Galactic has issued optimistic flight predictions that commercial flights are only months away, the two companies have been secretly working on alternatives to the nitrous oxide-rubber engine they have been using to explore SpaceShipTwo’s flight envelope. Sources report that the development of alternative hybrid designs has been running into trouble. An engine that used nitrous oxide and nylon exploded on Scaled Composites test stand on May 17. The nozzle and rocket casing were thrown clear and the test stand was wrecked. The composite tank holding the nitrous oxide did not explode, but it was damaged to the point where it could not be reused.
This is very bad news. To develop a new engine at this late stage of development will be quite difficult. The spaceship itself was designed specifically with the first engine in mind. Any replacement will likely be different in power and design and require some changes to the ship.
A test flight of SpaceShipTwo was scrubbed today because of weather.
What made this particular test flight interesting is that about three hundred of Virgin Galactic’s space tourist customers had been invited to Mohave to watch it. More info here.
A lot of famous people have bought tickets to fly on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo but not William Shatner: He’s apparently afraid of flying!
That’s according to Richard Branson. Shatner says instead that it’s the price of the ticket. “He wanted me to go up and pay for it and I said, ‘Hey, you pay me and I’ll go. I’ll risk my life for a large sum of money’. But he didn’t pick me up on my offer.”
The competition heats up: Virgin Galactic held a job fair this weekend and almost 600 applicants showed up.
They want to hire a 100 new engineers to help build additional spaceships like SpaceShipTwo.
Update: This report says that more than 1300 people showed up for these 100 jobs.
The competition heats up: SpaceShipTwo is expected to make its second powered test flight today.
Update: The flight was a success. More details from Virgin Galactic here.
Video of the flight below the fold.
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A detailed look at the questions and rumors that continue to swirl around the engineering status of SpaceShipTwo.
If you want to get an idea why Virgin Galactic has not done any powered flights of SpaceShipTwo so far this summer you must read this article.
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.
The competition heats up: Virgin Galactic has sold its 600th ticket to fly on SpaceShipTwo.
At $200K per ticket, that’s $120 million in sales, which I suspect will easily produce a tidy profit for the company. It will also allow them to begin lowering the price, once they have become operational.
Some hints about SpaceShipTwo’s next powered test flight, as well as details about the first.
Richard Branson has revealed that Justin Bieber has signed on to fly on SpaceShipTwo.
The competition is now really heating up. Bieber probably doesn’t want to be left behind, considering the publicity Sarah Brightman has been getting for her planned space flight to ISS.
A Russian paid 1.2 million euros to fly on SpaceShipTwo with actor Leonardo DiCaprio at a charity auction at the Cannes film festival on Thursday.
The competiton heats up: In a speech in Dubai last week Richard Branson revealed that his company is aiming for a 2013 Christmas day inaugural space tourism flight of SpaceShipTwo.
The competition heats up: In new and apparently successfully ground tests of the SpaceShipTwo engine, Scaled Composites even destroyed one this week to test the operation of different components.
The competition heats up: Richard Branson recently told an audience in Dubai that the first commercial flight of SpaceShipTwo will occur before the end of 2013, and that commercial flights from Dubai will occur two years later.
The competition heats up: Better buy your tickets now because in a week the price for a flight on SpaceShipTwo is going up 25%.
