While the "bloon" from zero2infinity will take people to altitudes of up to 36 kilometers, it shouldn't be confused with space tourism. (credit: zero2infinity)
“Space tourism doesn’t have to be rocket science,” reads the subheading of a New Scientist article about a proposed high-altitude passenger balloon concept that would take people to the edge of space. The “bloon” concept, by Spanish company zero2infinity, features a six-person pressurized capsule carried to an altitude of 36 kilometers (118,000 feet) by a giant balloon. Four passengers, paying €110,000 (US$142,000) each, will spend two hours at that altitude, gazing down on the Earth, before gently descending to a landing.
It sounds like an interesting experience: an opportunity to gaze down on the Earth at altitudes three times higher than a commercial jetliner in what appears to be a luxurious setting (according to a brochure describing the overall experience). It may turn out to be a profitable niche for zero2infinity. However, contrary to New Scientist, it is certainly not space tourism.
And why isn’t it? For obvious reasons, the balloon is not going into space: while doesn’t have a sharp boundary like a national border, 36 kilometers is well below the altitudes commonly considered space, including the widely-accepted 100-kilometer the Kármán line. While there is some dispute about what altitude constitutes space (the US government, for example, awards astronaut wings at an altitude of 80 kilometers), the bloon flights still appear to fall far below those alternatives. Even zero2infinity markets its flights as “near-space”, using the term that emerged in the last decade for aerospace activities above altitudes commonly used by planes but below the Kármán line and other space boundary definitions.
Moreover, the bloon flights provide only part of the experience of space. While they will offer a high-altitude view of the Earth—albeit well below what suborbital and orbital space tourists would get—the bloon flights do not provide another essential aspect of spaceflight: extended weightlessness. (The company’s brochures do suggest that the bloon flights would allow “up to 25 seconds of zero, lunar and martian gravity”, comparable to a single parabola on a ZERO G or similar aircraft flight.) The New Scientist article is dismissive of the weightlessness experience: “But is the point of space travel to get funfair thrills that you could experience far more cheaply by taking a plane ride on a weightlessness-producing ‘vomit comet’?”
Well, perhaps: the “funfair thrills” of weightlessness (of much greater duration than possible on an aircraft) is widely cited as one of the primary reasons people are interested in space flight. There’s also the intangible benefits of the full experience: the view from space plus the sensation of weightlessness plus the other attributes of the flight. Suggesting one could save money by separating out the experiences (a balloon flight plus a zero-g flight, for example) is somewhat like arguing that one can save money on a trip to Hawaii or the Caribbean by staying home and going to an indoor pool and then a tanning salon. It’s not really the same.
There’s also the environmental angle: the article argues that while zero2infinity claims that its flight can be (eventually) zero-emission, suborbital vehicles flown at high flight rates could have polluting effects comparable to all of commercial aviation. However, the 2010 study cited in the article as evidence of suborbital spaceflight’s polluting effects has been questioned by some in industry, who take issue with some of the assumptions that went into that model, including the amount of propellant used on those flights and the amount of soot produced. (For what it’s worth, the New Scientist article was written by the magazine’s biology and environment features editor, and not one of its space reporters.)
There’s another important difference between suborbital spaceflight and high-altitude ballooning. The former is arguably a means to a greater end: more frequent, less expensive, and safer spaceflight for a wide range of other applications. By leveraging the large potential customer base of thousands of spaceflight participants per year versus the roughly 100 satellites launched annually, it’s possible to support development of suborbital and eventually orbital vehicles that can open up new markets and applications that would otherwise be inaccessible with current vehicles. High-altitude ballooning, on the other hand, seems unlikely to be a stepping stone to either low-cost spaceflight or even broader terrestrial applications, other than scientific research that zero2infinity mentions in its literature.
“So if you’ve always longed to travel into space but don’t want to trash the planet doing so, space ballooning is the way to go,” the New Scientist article concludes. Sadly, that conclusion is inaccurate: there’s limited, disputed evidence that commercial spaceflight will “trash the planet”, and a high-altitude balloon flight is not “travel into space”, something I’ve railed against in the past. High-altitude ballooning and suborbital (and orbital) spaceflight can coexist; the former can serve as something of an appetizer for the latter, even. But ballooning is not a substitute for spaceflight.
Tuesday’s announcement of the plans by startup Stratolaunch Systems to develop an air launch system attracted considerable attention and excitement, and understandably so. The world’s biggest airplane! A “dream team” that reunited Paul Allen and Burt Rutan for the first time since SpaceShipOne! An industry team that includes Scaled Composites and SpaceX! A board that includes not just Rutan and SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, but also former NASA administrator Mike Griffin! And did I mention the world’s biggest airplane?
However, the more I thought about it later Tuesday and into yesterday, the more questions developed in my mind about this venture. From a technical standpoint, I don’t doubt that the Stratolaunch team has the ability to develop what they’re proposing, particularly given the experience of Scaled and SpaceX. Yes, there will be complications along the way, but these companies are as well positioned as any to deal with them.
Instead, I’ve been pondering this question: what problem does this system solve? That’s the key question for any business venture, not just a launch vehicle company. What can Stratolaunch do that others can’t do, or do as well or as cheaply? Air launch has its advantages, but also carries with it some disadvantages and other issues. That, coupled with what the company has released about its technical capabilities, leads me to wonder if the Stratolaunch system will really be that competitive over more conventional launch systems in service or under active development today.
Here are a few issues to consider:
Big plane, bigger pricetag. It’s likely the single most expensive element of the Stratolaunch system will be the aircraft. The rocket will be derived from the Falcon 9, with only four or five engines and a shorter first stage (perhaps equipped with some kind of delta wing, like on the Pegasus, according to the animation), which will reduce its development costs compared to a clean-sheet design. Developing the plane the size of what they’re planning will likely cost much more, even with their plans make use of existing 747 components, from the landing gear to its jet engines.
How expensive? The company hasn’t disclosed its development costs, beyond a statement by Paul Allen at Tuesday’s press conference where he said he expected to spent “an order of magnitude more” on this than he did on SpaceShipOne. Given that he spent $28 million on SS1, according to his memoir published earlier this year, that suggests spending around $300 million or more on Stratolaunch. And that may be still too low, as $300 million is in the ballpark for what it has cost to develop WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, a much smaller carrier aircraft and suborbital vehicle, respectively.
The Stratolaunch aircraft will be on a scale similar to the largest jetliners, like the 787 and A380, whose development each cost over $10 billion. Of course, those are passenger jetliners with significant certification costs, as well as upfront costs for construction of potentially thousands of such planes, while only one or two Stratolaunch planes, not intended (presumably) for passenger service, might ever be built.
The Airframe Cost Model provides an extremely basic cost model for aircraft development based on empty weight and speed. Those details aren’t available for this plane (only the gross takeoff weight, 1.2 million pounds or 540,000 kilograms, is given), but assuming a modest empty weight of 250,000 pounds—about the same as the considerably smaller 787—and a top speed of 300 knots, the model yields, for one test aircraft and one production model, a total cost of $4.7 billion (in 2004 dollars). That is almost certainly far too high: the model is based on the production of older military aircraft, including the giant C-5 cargo plane, and Scaled is likely more efficient and able to make use of more advanced technologies to reduce costs. The question, though, is the model is off by a factor of ten, or only a factor of five or less?
How flexible is air launch? One of the advantages touted by air launch proponents is the flexibility to launch from a wide range of locations. You don’t need the fixed infrastructure of a launch pad; instead, just take off from your desired airport, point the plane in the right direction, and fire off the rocket. No worries about coordinating range availability with other rockets or maintaining expensive launch pad equipment. Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Pegasus, the most successful orbital air launch system, has demonstrated that flexibility by flying from several airports from the US and overseas.
However, the sheer size of Stratolaunch—far larger than Pegasus, which uses a converted L-1011 jumbo jet—will limit that flexibility. The aircraft requires a 12,000-foot (3,650-meter) runway, sharply limiting the number of airports in the US or elsewhere it can take off from. In addition, unless the first stage is reusable and designed to fly back (which it does not appear to be from the animation), the launch will have to take place over open water or very remote unpopulated areas, further limiting the airports to those in range of those drop zones. It’s no wonder, then, that the press release identified Kennedy Space Center as one possible launch site, given its five-kilometer-long Shuttle Landing Facility runway and access to the Eastern Range.
Moreover, any airport that Stratolaunch operates from will need some infrastructure that may be unique to that system. That will include a hangar large enough to accommodate the plane’s 385-foot (117-meter) wingspan, as well as propellant storage (RP-1 and LOX for the rocket) and equipment to integrate the payload onto the launch vehicle, and the launch vehicle onto the aircraft. That suggests that the plane will likely operate from only a handful of sites unless the company can find a way to scale back those equipment requirements.
A limited market. Stratolaunch advertises that the rocket can place up to 13,500 pounds (6,100 kilograms) into orbit. The specific orbit isn’t mentioned, but it’s most likely a favorable low-inclination due-east orbit, with decreased capacities for polar and sun-synchronous orbits as well as geosynchronous orbit. That makes it comparable to the Delta 2 Heavy, the most powerful versions of that vehicle that is on the verge of retirement. While Allen and others at Tuesday’s press conference brought up the idea of eventually flying crewed spacecraft, initially their focus is on launching satellites.
The problem is that this may well be a limited market. “There is a thriving communications satellite market for small to medium-class communications satellites,” Mike Griffin said at the press conference. However, a vehicle with this stated LEO capacity can likely carry satellites weighing no more than about 2 tons to GEO; the communications satellite market today is dominated by much larger satellites, with virtually nothing that small being built today. See, for example, the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Forecasts report for more data, in particular Figure 5 and Table 5, which shows only about 1 commercial GEO satellite a year with a mass less than 2,500 kilograms projected for launch through 2020.
A more likely market is for civil and military government satellites, of which Griffin estimates that there are about a half-dozen a year that previously flew on Delta 2. However, by the time Stratolaunch enters service, no earlier than 2016, Orbital’s Antares (née Taurus 2) rocket will have been in service for some time, serving that market; even SpaceX’s Falcon 9, while more capable, may attract customers with such satellites at its currently-advertised launch costs. There are also international options for non-US Government customers, like the Soyuz (now launching from French Guiana in addition to Russia and Kazakhstan), Land Launch’s Zenit-3SLB, and the Angara that is still under development in Russia.
It may turn out that Stratolaunch can beat out those other vehicles on price when it is introduced. (Company officials haven’t disclosed a target launch price for the vehicle.) However, given the inelastic nature of many of these existing markets, a lower-priced alternative may not stimulate much, if any, additional demand. This would force Stratolaunch to compete head-to-head with other companies (including potentially SpaceX) for the limited number of launch opportunities in this portion of the market.
This analysis is incomplete, primarily because it’s based on the limited technical and business information provided by Stratolaunch so far—a luxury it has thanks to the financial backing of Allen. There may be missing pieces to its business plan that make this system far less expensive to develop and operate and far more competitive in the global launch market than this analysis suggests, particularly if it can move into human spaceflight markets. Otherwise, despite being an interesting technical concept backed by an impressive team, Stratolaunch may not be that compelling in the long run.
Late last week members of the media received a notice of a press conference at 2 pm EST (1900 GMT) Tuesday about a new space travel venture backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. No other details were provided until a short time ago, when Allen announced via Twitter that “I have an exciting space related announcement shortly” with a link to the video above.
The video is for a relatively new venture called Stratolaunch Systems. (Relatively new since the web site apparently has been public for some time, with a couple of older press releases available.) The company is pursuring an air-launch system, but on a scale never before attempted: a modified Falcon rocket, built by SpaceX, launched from a six-engine dual-fuselage aircraft that the company says “will be the largest aircraft ever flown.” The aircraft will be built by Scaled Composites, with Dynetics providing a “state-of-the-art mating and integration system”. The system will focus initially on launching satellites, but doesn’t rule out human missions as well.
The full press release from the company’s site is below, with more details to follow after today’s press conference:
PAUL G. ALLEN ANNOUNCES REVOLUTION IN SPACE TRANSPORTATION STRATOLAUNCH SYSTEM TO BRING SAFER, LESS EXPENSIVE, MISSIONS
SEATTLE, WA, Dec 13, 2011 – Entrepreneur and philanthropist Paul G. Allen announced today that he and aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan have reunited to develop the next generation of space travel. Allen and Rutan, whose SpaceShipOne was the first privately-funded, manned rocket ship to fly beyond earth’s atmosphere, are developing a revolutionary approach to space transportation: an air-launch system to provide orbital access to space with greater safety, cost-effectiveness and flexibility.
The space flight revolution Allen and Rutan pioneered in 2004 with SpaceShipOne now enters a new era. Only months after the last shuttle flight closed an important chapter in spaceflight, Allen is stepping in with an ambitious effort to continue America’s drive for space.
“I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private space flight after the success of SpaceShipOne – to offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system,” Allen said. “We are at the dawn of radical change in the space launch industry. Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering an innovative solution that will revolutionize space travel.”
Allen’s new company, Stratolaunch Systems, will build a mobile launch system with three primary components:
A carrier aircraft, developed by Scaled Composites, the aircraft manufacturer and assembler founded by Rutan. It will be the largest aircraft ever flown.
A multi-stage booster, manufactured by Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies;
A state-of-the-art mating and integration system allowing the carrier aircraft to safely carry a booster weighing up to 490,000 pounds. It will be built by Dynetics, a leader in the field of aerospace engineering.
Stratolaunch Systems will bring airport-like operations to the launch of commercial and government payloads and, eventually, human missions. Plans call for a first flight within five years. The air-launch-to-orbit system will mean lower costs, greater safety, and more flexibility and responsiveness than is possible today with ground-based systems. Stratolaunch’s quick turnaround between launches will enable new orbital missions as well as break the logjam of missions queued up for launch facilities and a chance at space. Rutan, who has joined Stratolaunch Systems as a board member, said he was thrilled to be back working with Allen. “Paul and I pioneered private space travel with SpaceShipOne, which led to Virgin Galactic’s commercial suborbital SpaceShipTwo Program. Now, we will have the opportunity to extend that capability to orbit and beyond. Paul has proven himself a visionary with the will, commitment and courage to continue pushing the boundaries of space technology. We are well aware of the challenges ahead, but we have put together an incredible research team that will draw inspiration from Paul’s vision.”
To lead the Stratolaunch Systems team, Allen picked a veteran NASA official with years of experience in engineering, management and human spaceflight. Stratolaunch Systems CEO and President Gary Wentz, a former chief engineer at NASA, said the system’s design will revolutionize space travel.
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, also a Stratolaunch board member, joined Allen and Rutan at a press conference in Seattle to announce the project. “We believe this technology has the potential to someday make spaceflight routine by removing many of the constraints associated with ground launched rockets,” Griffin said. “Our system will also provide the flexibility to launch from a large variety of locations.”
The Stratolaunch system will eventually have the capability of launching people into low earth orbit. But the company is taking a building block approach in development of the launch aircraft and booster, with initial efforts focused on unmanned payloads. Human flights will follow, after safety, reliability and operability are demonstrated.
The carrier aircraft will operate from a large airport/spaceport, such as Kennedy Space Center, and will be able to fly up to 1,300 nautical miles to the payload’s launch point.
It will use six 747 engines, have a gross weight of more than 1.2 million pounds and a wingspan of more than 380 feet. For takeoff and landing, it will require a runway 12,000 feet long. Systems onboard the launch aircraft will conduct the countdown and firing of the booster and will monitor the health of the orbital payload.
The plane will be built in a Stratolaunch hangar which will soon be under construction at the Mojave Air and Space Port. It will be near where Scaled Composites built SpaceShipOne which won Allen and Scaled Composites the $10-million Ansari X Prize in 2004 after three successful sub-orbital flights. Scaled Composites is a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman.
“Scaled is all about achieving milestones and pursuing breakthroughs, and this project offers both – building the largest airplane in the world, and achieving the manufacturing breakthroughs that will enable Scaled to accomplish it. We are thrilled to be a part of this development program,” said Scaled Composites President Doug Shane. “We anticipate significant hiring of engineering, manufacturing, and support staff in the near and medium term.”
The multi-stage booster will be manufactured by California-based Space Exploration Technologies, one of the world’s pre-eminent space transportation companies. “Paul Allen and Burt Rutan helped generate enormous interest in space with White Knight and SpaceShipOne,” said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. “There was no way we weren’t going to be involved in their next great endeavor. We are very excited.”
Dynetics will provide the mating and integration system and the systems engineering, integration, test and operations support for the entire air-launch system. The mating and integration system will be manufactured in Huntsville, Alabama in Dynetics’ new 226,500 square foot prototyping facility. Dynetics has been a leader in aerospace engineering since 1974. “We are excited to play such a major role on this system. This is an ambitious project unlike any that has been undertaken and I am confident the Stratolaunch team has the experience and capabilities to accomplish the mission,” said Dynetics Executive Vice President and Stratolaunch Board Member David King.
Stratolaunch Systems’ corporate headquarters is located in Huntsville, Alabama. Today’s announcement was the first public word that Allen and Rutan were back in the space business. But space has long been on Allen’s mind. In the close of his memoir, Idea Man, published earlier this year, he hinted at his plans, writing that he was “considering a new initiative with that magical contraption I never wearied of sketching as a boy: the rocket ship.”
Illustration of Orbital's Antares (formerly Taurus 2) rocket lifting off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) in Virginia. (Credit: OSC)
Orbital Sciences Corporation announced Monday that it has renamed the Taurus 2 rocket it’s been developing as part of its commercial cargo system. Henceforth, the rocket will now be called Antares. “We are transitioning to the Antares identity primarily because a launch vehicle of this scale and significance deserves its own name, just like Orbital’s Pegasus, Taurus and Minotaur rocket programs that have come before it,” Orbital president and CEO David Thompson explained in a press release.
The name keeps with the company’s tradition of “Greek-derived celestial names” for its launch vehicles, which have included Pegasus, Taurus, and Minotaur. Antares, the company adds in “microsite” for the launch vehicle, is one of the brightest stars in the night sky and “we expect the Antares rocket to be one of the brightest stars in the space launch vehicle market.” (Antares, though, is a supergiant star, whereas the rocket is designed for medium-class payloads.) Antares also has a bit of space history: it was the name of the lunar module for Apollo 14. However, it was also the name of a fictional starship in an episode of the original Star Trek series that met its demise at the hands (or, rather, mind) of a teenager with psychokinetic powers. (Is there anyone named Charlie Evans working on the Antares program?)
Orbital adds that the name change will “clear up any marketplace confusion and provide clear differentiation between this new launch vehicle and our Taurus XL rocket.” That’s important, because the Antares is a very different rocket from the smaller, all-solid-fuel Taurus XL. Companies in the past have kept names even after major—even complete—design changes: for example, the Delta 2 has little in common with the Delta 4 beyond the name. However, given that the Taurus XL suffered failures in its last two launches, a rebranding avoids any potentially uncomfortable comparisons for Orbital as it prepares for the first launch of the new Antares.
Exactly 366 days—one year and one day—after SpaceX flew its first Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration mission, NASA announced it had agreed to a date for the second flight. Speaking at the NASA Future Forum in Seattle Friday, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver announced that NASA had agreed to a launch date of February 7th for SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, to be launched on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral. “Pending all the final safety reviews and testing, SpaceX will send its Dragon spacecraft to rendezvous with the International Space Station in less than two months,” Garver said in her speech in Seattle. “It’s great news for NASA and SpaceX together.”
As the press release announcing the launch date indicates, this will be, as SpaceX long desired, a combined “C2/C3″ mission incorporating milestones originally planned for two separate demonstration flights. The Dragon spacecraft will initially approach and fly by the station at a distance of a little over three kilometers (two miles) to demonstrate its systems and its ability to abort a rendezvous. If successful, Dragon will then closely approach the ISS, allowing the station’s robotic arm to grapple the spacecraft and berth it to the Earth-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. Later, the arm will undock the spacecraft, allowing to fly away and return to Earth.
Later at the Seattle event, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell indicated that NASA and SpaceX made the decision about the launch date just the day before. “We had some discussions with [NASA ISS program manager] Mike Suffredini yesterday to determine a launch date. We decided that February 7 was the right day to shoot for,” she said. “That really kind of focuses all the activities for the next 60 days. We’re thrilled to get there, we’re thrilled that NASA is letting us get there.”
The announcement puts an end to months of uncertainty about when SpaceX would fly its second COTS mission an uncertainty created in part because of discussions with NASA, and the other ISS partners, particularly Russia, about allowing a combined C2/C3 mission. (The delay, presumably, also allowed SpaceX to get its technical ducks in a row for its next mission.) With Friday’s announcement, one assumes all of the necessary international coordination has been resolved to allow NASA to set a launch date.
In an article in the latest issue of Space Quarterly magazine, I wrote an article (freely available here) about how the next several months would be “crunch time” for the overall COTS program, given the upcoming demonstration flights by SpaceX and the other COTS awardee, Orbital Sciences. A lot will be riding on those flights, not just for the companies, but for the future of the ISS as well as NASA’s commercial crew plans. We’ll soon see what the future of commercial spaceflight will look like.
The ranks of companies with Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) awards from NASA has quietly grown by one. The charter for a hearing on the program today by the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee reveals that NASA has signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement with Excalibur Almaz on October 17. There are no other details about the contents of the agreement, including what work it covers and over what schedule.
Excalibur Almaz is now the third company with an unfunded SAA, after NASA signed similar agreements with United Launch Alliance in July and with ATK in September. Both of those were greeted with press releases by NASA and the companies, as well as press conferences. There has yet been no formal announcement about this new agreement by either NASA or Excalibur Almaz.
Sir Richard Branson’s space-tourism company won’t start passenger flights for at least two more years and operations will ramp up significantly more slowly than previously anticipated, according to its chief pilot.
In an interview, David Mackay said Virgin Galactic, the venture controlled by the British billionaire, likely won’t begin commercial flights until 2013.
First of all, the two paragraphs are at least potentially contradictory. Starting commercial flights in 2013 doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t start “for at least two more years”, given it’s October 2011: it’s entirely possible that they could start in early 2013, which would imply a delay of a little over one year, not at least two years. (They could, of course, start in late 2013, which would be closer to two years, but Mackay doesn’t provide a specific enough date to make the conclusion in the article’s lede.)
The second issue is that this delay should not be considered a surprise. Pronouncements in recent weeks and months indicated that commercial service would start, at best, in late 2012, with 2013 as a more likely date. For example, Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides said at the beginning of this month that the company would “try to get to some definition of space by the end of next year”, implying that they would still be performing test flights at the end of 2012.
What is true is that Virgin’s announced date for the beginning of commercial service has been a moving target, one that has been regularly moving to the right. When Virgin’s partnership with Scaled Composites was announced on the eve of Scaled’s X PRIZE-winning flights in September 2004, Virgin was expected to begin commercial flight by2007, a date that has gradually slipped to now 2013. That delay likely has several reasons, including the decision to develop a larger SpaceShipTwo as opposed to a version of the original SpaceShipOne, the July 2007 engine test accident in Mojave that killed three Scaled employees, and usual development delays. (Funding, presumably, has been less of an issue, given Virgin’s resources and outside investment from Aabar.) However, should those schedule slips continue, there will be new questions about Virgin’s ability to follow through on its commercial suborbital plans, and those delays create new opportunities for competitors, like XCOR Aerospace, to close the gap and even begin flights before Virgin.
SpaceShipTwo is nestled between the twin fuselages of WhiteKnightTwo during a flyby at Spaceport America in New Mexico on October 17.
On September 29th, SpaceShipTwo made its 16th glide flight, and first in three months, in the skies above Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The SpaceShipTwo test flight log at Scaled Composites indicates that the flight did not go exactly as planned:
Test card called for releasing the Spaceship from WhiteKnightTwo and immediately entering a rapid descent. Upon release, the Spaceship experienced a downward pitch rate that caused a stall of the tails. The crew followed procedure, selecting the feather mode to revert to a benign condition. The crew then defeathered and had a nominal return to base. Great flying by the team and good demo of feather system.
Scott Ostrem, chief engineer at The Spaceship Company, the Scaled-Virgin Galactic joint venture that will be manufacturing SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo, offered an explanation at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Wednesday. “You come off the WhiteKnight and quickly going into a pitch-down attitude by design,” he said. “We pitched down a little too steeply on that flight and experienced a tail stall.”
There are several options to recover from such a stall, he said, one of them being using the vehicle’s unique feathering mechanism, designed to provide stability during reentry. “Our pilot chose to feather it. It’s an incredible testament to the feather design: instantly the vehicle stabilized at about 20, 30,000 feet,” Ostrem said. “We just then de-feathered and glided back down safely. It was a unique opportunity for us to prove out the feather design ata point where we weren’t necessarily intending to do it.”
That, however, has not stopped a series of rumors, whispered during breaks at the ISPCS and on the Internet, that the incident was more serious than what the companies have reported. Those include rumors that they were testing a maneuver in order to perform a drop test at the Spaceport America terminal dedication event held Monday. No such drop test took place, of course, but whatever happened did not prevent Virgin and Scaled from ferrying SpaceShipTwo from Mojave to the spaceport for the event.
Below is a brief video I shot of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo flying over the “Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space” terminal building at Spaceport America on Monday. You’ll see it coming in from the right in the distance, they going over the terminal building and almost straight overhead.
Sir Richard Branson, dangling from the top of Spaceport America's new terminal building, dedicates the building with a bottle of champagne. (credit: J. Foust)
It was the biggest line of the day—and Sir Richard Branson flubbed it.
Branson was dangling from the balcony Spaceport America’s new terminal building, halfway down the building’s glass wall. He and his son and daughter had joined a dance company, Project Bandaloop, for their performance on the building’s wall. After the dancers and Branson’s children rappelled down to the ground, Branson remained in place, and then had an oversized champagne bottle lowered to him so he could formally dedicate, and name, the building. “And, the name is, whoa!” he said as he uncorked the bottle, “Virgin Galactic Galactic.” And then, after a six-second pause, “Gateway to Space!”
While there was laughter and cheers from the several hundred people in attendance (“more than 800″, according to Virgin), some were left scratching their heads. “What did he say the name was?” one person in the media section asked. “Something about a gateway to space, I think,” said another. The building’s name, in fact, is now officially the “Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space.”
That, though, was a minor glitch in an event designed primarily to show off the spaceport and demonstrate Virgin’s continued commitment to flying SpaceShipTwo from the spaceport in the near future. The new name for the terminal building was one of the few new developments from the event. Virgin did announce some new research customers, including the Challenger Center (whose founder, June Scobee Rodgers, was in attendance). Virgin also announced its first hire for a new group of commercial pilots who will fly WK2 and SS2: Keith Colmer, an Air Force pilot who had previously applied to NASA’s astronaut corps but just missed the cut.
WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo take off from Spaceport America's runway on a brief captive carry flight over the spaceport. (credit: J. Foust)
At a “press conference” during the event (which, despite the name, did not allow any questions from the media), Virgin Galactic officials played up the progress they’ve made in the last year and sought to set themselves apart from the competition. “There is no other company that is as close to flying people to space as Galactic,” said Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides. “There is no one else test flying vehicles that can take you and me into space. And there is no one whose vehicles are based on a design that has already been safely to space to people,” a reference to SS2′s precursor, SpaceShipOne.
WK2 and SS2 soar over Spaceport America's new terminal building. (credit: J. Foust)
New Mexico officials at the event, including Governor Susana Martinez and Congressman Steve Pearce, focused on the economic benefits of the spaceport, including both the jobs created during the spaceport’s construction and those that will be created when the spaceport begins operations. Martinez in particular saw the spaceport as both a way to inspire the state’s youth to study science and engineering, as well as a source of high-tech jobs. “As a young child, what could be more exciting than space travel?” she asked. “We want these new jobs to be created right here so that young New Mexicans don’t have to leave the state to find fulfilling work.”
Martinez, who past comments suggested she was at least somewhat skeptical about the $200-million investment in the spaceport, sounded a little excited herself about the spaceport. “I look forward to strengthening the partnership between the state and Virgin Galactic,” she said. Turning to Branson, she added, “And Richard, today I may have to add it to my bucket list.”
Virgin didn’t offer any new clues yesterday on when it will begin flights from Spaceport America. “Our contractors are working hard now to get the system ready for the first powered flights next year,” Whitesides said, a timeline similar to what he said early this month. He did add that another full-scale ground test of SpaceShipTwo’s rocket motor is planned “very soon”.
Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space, the new terminal building at Spaceport America. (credit: J. Foust)
The fact that Virgin is still some time from beginning flights at Spaceport America is perhaps a relief to New Mexico, since the “Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space”, while formally dedicated yesterday, isn’t quite done. Walk up to that distinctive glass wall—which, in the bright sunlight, acts like a mirror—and peer inside, and you see that the interior rooms that will host Virgin Galactic’s operations, astronaut lounge, and other facilities, are still unfurnished, with the walls and floors completely bare. In one case, a door leading into the building was still lacking a handle. However, the building can already serve one its primary purposes: serving as a hangar for WK2 and SS2, which is where they vehicles were housed Sunday when spaceport executive director Christine Anderson saw them for the first time. “It was so awesome to see that,” she said. “Then I thought, ‘Wow, it fits in the hangar. Super!’”
Virgin appeared very pleased with the building and its unique design, as well as its environmentally-friendly characteristics that won it a LEED Gold rating. “Simply put,” Branson said, “it is a 21st century building for a 21st century business.”
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