Richard Branson gets nod to strap rocket on SpaceShipTwo Virgin Galactic has finally got the green light to attempt supersonic rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo flights at the end of the year. The SpaceShipTwo craft takes to the air carried by its WhiteKnightTwo mothership. Credit: Virgin Galactic The SpaceShipTwo craft takes to the air carried by its WhiteKnightTwo mothership The …
A toy for rich people.
Imagine a scenario where astronauts manning the space station ore all celebrities, instead of being the best minds and the most highly trained astronauts conducting experiments of immense importance, you'll get you place if you endorse a particular lipstick, nail varnish or make of pants.
And you think I'm joking!
"Actually, Musk has plans to "drop launch" his Falcon 1 from a high flying aircraft, which increases ifs lift capacity by an order of magnitude."
Nope its a new rocket derived from the Falcon 9, with 4 engines instead of 9.
And it's Paul Allen, not Musk that wants to do it.
Called Stratolaunch Systems.
The payload is also intended to be lower 6.1t vs 16t for the Falcon 9 (v1.1).
Take off mass is intended to be around 220t (plane + rocket + payload), payload fraction is 2.77% vs 3.33% for the Falcon 9 v1.1.
Although effectively stage 0 is reusable.
There are other benefits to this method. Orbital Sciences already uses a similar system (called Pegasus), but it is only used for LEO-based payloads. Pegasus launches off a modified Lockheed L-1011 (Tristar) in a similar fashion as SS2 does off White Knight.
The only (and perhaps significant) difference is that SS2 now carries 6 passengers. Once that system is proven to work well, I wouldn't be surprised if Virgin Galactic got into the ISS resupply business too. To put less payload into SS2 and then boost it to the 200 mile orbit of ISS is not that much more of a stretch.
SS2 uses aerodynamics for manoeuvring and attitude control etc... not much good out near the ISS.
It's really just a glorified aeroplane - it can no more fly in space than a stone can float - you may be able to send it skipping once, twice, three times if you're good, but that's not the same thing.
Errr not so sure about your tinking there.
Spaceship 2 is predicted to fly at a maximum of 2500mph and reach 68 miles altitude. To go into orbit, not just space, you need to be able to go about 18,000mph AROUND the Earth not straight up, even at that speed you would come straight back down if you went straight up. To go into orbit is much more difficult than what they are proposing with spaceship 2.
Sure a few of thousand miles an hour straight up will take you into space for a few minutes but you will come straight back down.
Oh and losing 1/2 a tonne of cargo ie the passengers will make not a lot of difference to the max altitude maybe 100 miles up and then straight back down.
escape velocity is approximately mach 5 and the further you go the less gravity earth will have and the idea is once in space you can keep accelerating till you reach orbit.
orbit is just a free fall toward the earth at an angle that keeps you form falling TO EARTH
its actually easier then you think its why we was doing it in the 60's , like 50 years back.....and technically low earth orbits (safest as your no where near the van alen radiation belts ) are not really space ...you need to get a bit further ....and actual space travel now thats tricky stuff.
and i'd like to hear anyone say they solved radiation shielding as currently i know of no none way to do it.
According to Newton F=(GM1M2)/r2.
r is the distance between centres of mass of the two objects in this case SS2 and the centre of the Earth so about 6000km or 6 million metres when the SS2 is on the ground.
So on the ground r2=36000000000000 at 200km ie r= 6200km then r2=38440000000000 so the effect of gravity 200km up would be a about 5% per cent less 200km up than it is here.
Not a lot of difference there, you would need to go a lot higher than a few hundred miles to have appreciably less effect of gravity.
"orbit is just a free fall toward the earth at an angle that keeps you form falling TO EARTH"
No it is a free fall towards earth at an ANGULAR velocity that ensure that you keep missing ;-)
As to escape velocity being mach 5 if you can do that I bet NASA would like to talk to you as they thought that they needed to make the Saturn V go at 27000mph or about mach 38 in order to reach escape velocity.
TBH I think it is harder than you think and I take my at off to the pioneers in the 50's and 60's for making it happen.
The only (and perhaps significant) difference is that SS2 now carries 6 passengers. Once that system is proven to work well, I wouldn't be surprised if Virgin Galactic got into the ISS resupply business too. To put less payload into SS2 and then boost it to the 200 mile orbit of ISS is not that much more of a stretch.
SS2 is a sub-orbital platform. It is not capable of high re-entry speeds without burning up. Getting it into orbit will require a lot more than it's got.
"To combine Lovelock and Hawking on the same phrase is an offence to science."
I completely agree, and am ashamed to see such an affilliation in the Reg, without even a hint of sarcasm or a mention of the frivolous use of the earth's resources. This almost looks like copy-and-paste from a press release! Shame on both the "author" and the editorial staff (if such even exist anymore, which I have my doubts over considerring the number of mistakes I have seen over the last few months)!
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