NewSpace Journal » Scaled Composites

Northrop Grumman (finally) reveals its XS-1 design

Jeff Foust — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 14:55:28 +0000

An illustration of Northrop Grumman’s XS-1 concept. (credit: Northrop Grumman)

More than a month after DARPA formally announced the winners of Phase 1 contracts for its Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) program, the last of the three companies that received those contracts unveiled the design of the concept.

In a press release Tuesday, Northrop Grumman showed off an illustration of its XS-1 design. The vehicle looks somewhat similar to Boeing’s XS-1 design, which the company released at the time the contract awards were announced last month. The release offers few other technical details, beyond that it will be launched vertically (based on statements in the release about plans for a “clean pad launch using a transporter erector launcher”) with a runway landing.

Northrop Grumman’s team includes its wholly-owned subsidiary, Scaled Composites, and Virgin Galactic, which has been working with Scaled on the development of SpaceShipTwo. Scaled will lead the fabrication and assembly of XS-1, while Virgin would be responsible for “commercial spaceplane operations and transition,” according to the release.

Besides Northrop Grumman and Boeing, Masten Space Systems also received a Phase 1 XS-1 award last month. All three contracts run for 13 months and cover early design work on each company’s concepts. The goal of the XS-1 program is to develop a vehicle that can serve as a reusable first stage for a medium-class launch system, as well as a hypersonic research testbed. The XS-1 vehicle would be designed to fly ten times in ten days, with at least one flight traveling at speeds up to Mach 10.

It turns out that Tuesday’s release was not the first time that this illustration of Northrop Grumman’s XS-1 design had been shown publicly. At the end of a presentation at the NewSpace 2014 conference July 26 offering an overview of cheap access to space efforts, Jeff Lane of Northrop Grumman showed this illustration as a closing slide, without discussing what it represented (the company’s XS-1 concept). “So the need is there. I think the technology is ready. So let’s go do it,” he said as the illustration appeared on the screen, referring to the concept of cheap access to space in general. You can see that in the video of the conference session below, starting at the 15:00 mark:

Year in PReview: is 2014 finally the year suborbital space tourism lifts off?

Jeff Foust — Tue, 31 Dec 2013 17:00:12 +0000

SpaceShipTwo during its first powered test flight on April 29, 2013. (credit: Virgin Galactic/MarsScientific.com)

One decade ago, hopes were high for suborbital space tourism. Scaled Composites had performed the first powered test flight of SpaceShipOne in December of 2003, and other than a minor landing mishap, the company seemed to be on track for flying into space in the new year, putting it on the inside track to win the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE before it expired at the end of 2004. That, many believed, would usher in an era of suborbital space tourism by Scaled and other companies, including other X PRIZE competitors, in the following years.

The future, though, turned out a little differently. Scaled did win the X PRIZE with SpaceShipOne, performing suborbital flights in late September and early October of 2004 (as well as a test flight in June.) Scaled also announced a deal with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, establishing a venture called Virgin Galactic that planned to perform flights using a new vehicle, called SpaceShipTwo, as soon as late 2007.

But six years after that initial start date, SpaceShipTwo is still not yet in commercial service. Building a new, and bigger, vehicle, with a larger version of the hybrid rocket motor that powered SpaceShipOne has turned out to be a far greater challenge than expected in the heady days of 2004. And the other teams who were competing for the X PRIZE in the early 2000s have largely faded awayâ€”the da Vinci Project, anyone?

Still, there are signs of optimism for 2014. While development of SpaceShipTwo has been slow, Virgin Galactic did achieve some milestone in 2013, most notably the first powered flight of the vehicle in April. However, more than four months passed before SS2 made a second powered flight, in early September. A third powered flight was reportedly planned for mid-December but scrubbed by poor weather; it’s likely to be rescheduled for early January, after the holiday break ends for Scaled and Virgin.

Virgin did put the year’s developments in a positive perspective in a blog post by Branson on Monday, which included a 90-second video recap of highlights of the past year. It also included undated footage of a full-duration (approximately 55 seconds) burn of a hybrid rocket engine on a test stand; that engine has long been perceived as the limiting factor in SpaceShipTwo’s development.

“We are truly in the final phase of preparations for commercial service,” George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic, said in the video. When that commercial service will begin isn’t stated, but the company expects that to be some time in 2014; coverage of Virgin’s deal with NBC Universal to broadcast the first commercial SpaceShipTwo flight mentioned a date of August 2014. That, though, is contingent on Virgin making sufficient progress on the test program, which appears to be going slowly so far.

Virgin isn’t the only company in the suborbital spaceflight market. Just down the flightline at Mojave Air and Space Port from Scaled and The Spaceship Company (the Virgin-owned entity that will manufacture SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo vehicles), XCOR Aerospace has been working on its Lynx vehicle. Its development has also been slow going, although the company has in recent months been actively blogging work on the Lynx and associated activities, like engine tests. In the company’s most recent release, about a payload integrator agreement with the Czech Space Office, XCOR said flights of the Lynx Mark I prototype will begin in 2014.

XCOR is selling seats on the Lynx through another company, Space Expedition Corporation, or SXC. It’s best known for the contest it held in 2013 with Unilever, whose products include Axe deodorants and related products. That worldwide contest culminated earlier this month with Axe Apollo Space Academy, which awarded 23 trips on Lynx flights earlier this month to contestants after a week of testing and training in Florida.

Blue Origin is also working, slowly, on a suborbital vehicle. In early December, it issued a press release and held a media teleconferenceâ€”both rare events for the publicity-averse companyâ€”to discuss a test of its BE-3 rocket engine, which flew a simulated suborbital flight profile. Company president Rob Meyerson said suborbital flights of its New Shepard vehicle should begin “in the next several years,” without being more specific.

While Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR Aerospace all plan to continue development of their suborbital vehicles for space tourism and research activities in 2014, a fourth company is unlikely to follow. In August, Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmack said in a speech that his company was out of funds and in “hibernation mode” because of a lack progress after a suborbital test flight in January that suffered a parachute failure. Carmack said the company would remain in hibernation until he found an outside investor or “thereâ€™s another liquidity event where Iâ€™m comfortable throwing another million dollars a year into things,” as he had previously supported the company with his “crazy money” that he has since exhausted.

Masten Space Systems is not in the suborbital space tourism businessâ€”its focus is on flying experiments and technology demonstrationsâ€”but it has been quietly working on some vehicles. At the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) in Colorado in June, Masten chief operating officer Sean Mahoney called 2013 “a critical year” for the company as it decides whether to continue work on low-level technology demonstrators or pursue a suborbital vehicle that can fly to 100 kilometers. If the company has made a decision on its direction for 2014, it’s kept that quiet so far.

The article linked to in the preceding paragraph also shows how the schedule slips for other companies continue: at NSRC less than seven months ago, Virgin Galactic was predicting test flights of SpaceShipTwo to space by the end of the year, while XCOR said Lynx text flights would begin by late in the year. Neither, though, happened. As 2014 begins, companies continue to promise major developments, but the slow progress and delayed schedules of the past suggest that people should continue to be patient.

SpaceShipTwo another step closer to powered flight

Jeff Foust — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:29:42 +0000

SpaceShipTwo completed a glide flight yesterday at the Mojave Air and Space Port, bringing the suborbital vehicle ever closer to its first powered test flight. Details about the flight have not shown up yet on the official test log, but it appears to have been a successful flight.

The glide flight was the first for SpaceShipTwo since December 19, when it made its first such flight in “powered flight” configuration, with its rocket motor installed. At that time Virgin Galactic said they planned a “minimum” of two more glide flights before beginning powered flights, suggesting that, after yesterday’s flight, there may be just one more glide test before SpaceShipTwo ignites its rocket motor in flight. Virgin has also been publicizing a series of static fire tests of the rocket motor, the most recent of which took place on March 30, according to its test logs. Those engine tests are a “short series of final tests” before SpaceShipTwo’s first powered flight, according to the company.

Virgin entering phase of “final confirmation firings” before first powered SpaceShipTwo flight

Jeff Foust — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:00:51 +0000

SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital vehicle under development by Virgin Galactic and its partner Scaled Composites, has been on the verge of beginning powered flights for a few months now, after performing a glide flight in a “powered flight configuration” in December. There’s been little news from Virgin since then, until a blog post today by Sir Richard Branson himself about a first-of-its-kind nighttime test of SpaceShipTwo’s rocket motor. Much of the blog post is a description of the February 28th test written by Matt Stinemetze, the Scaled program manager for SS2. The key item from the post is at the end, where Stinemetze writes that this test was the “first in a rapid series of final confirmation firings leading up to SpaceShipTwo’s first rocket powered flight.”

The test doesn’t yet appear on the RocketMotorTwo flight test log maintained by Scaled, where the last test is from Janaury 24. The description also doesn’t mention the length of the burn or other details, other than it appeared to be a success. The fact that the test merited a blog post, though, and by Branson himself, suggests a growing level of confidence that this first SS2 powered flight will finally be coming soon.

SpaceShipTwo edges closer to powered flight

Jeff Foust — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:26:34 +0000

SpaceShipTwo during a glide test on December 19, its first in a “powered flight” configuration, with its engine installed. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

A long-awaited major milestone for a leading suborbital vehicle developerâ€”the first powered flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwoâ€”is a little bit closer to taking place after a test flight Wednesday. Virgin Galactic reported SpaceShipTwo flew its first glide flight in “powered flight configuration”, with its rocket motor system, including tanks and nozzle, installed. The flight also featured the first flight with thermal protection material installed on the vehicle’s leading edges, components needed for high-speed powered flight. “Aero performance slightly better than expected and no negative issues identified,” Scaled Composites noted in its test flight log.

The flight was the first glide flight for SpaceShipTwo since August, and the 23rd overall. It came after a captive carry flight the previous Friday, which also features SpaceShipTwo in its powered flight configuration. The test suggests Virgin and Scaled are getting closer to the long-awaited first powered flight of SpaceShipTwo, although the Virgin press release stated that “a minimum of two more glide flights” are planned before that first powered flight. Assuming the rocket motor is ready (it has performed several static tests in recent weeks, with “all objectives” achieved each time), that powered flight looks like will take place early in the new year.

Virgin Galactic ramps up SpaceShipTwo testing

Jeff Foust — Wed, 11 May 2011 10:22:36 +0000

SpaceShipTwo during the feathered portion of a glide flight last week. (Clay Center Observatory/Virgin Galactic)

For some time, a long pause in glide tests of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo raised questions about the progress the company was making, in partnership with Scaled Composites, on development of suborbital spacecraft. After a January 13th glide test, the fourth overall for the vehicle, more than three months elapsed without another (although attempts to conduct a glide test in mid-February were aborted due to poor weather conditions, according to Scaled’s flight logs.)

That’s changed, though, in a big way. In less than three weeks, Virgin and Scaled have doubled the number of glide flights of SpaceShipTwo, with four flights between April 22 and May 10. Those flights included glide flights of longer duration on April 22 and 27, followed by the first flight of SpaceShipTwo that tested the vehicle’s ability to “feather” its wings, on May 4. That feathering, like that used on SpaceShipOne, rotates the tail section to a 65-degree angle, and is intended to provide for a stable reentry of the vehicle on suborbital spaceflights. On last week’s test, SpaceShipTwo flew in the feathered configuration for about 75 seconds before rotating the wings back to their normal configuration for landing.

Scaled and Virgin followed up that test with another glide test, this time without feathering, on Tuesday. That test was designed to perform testing on “flutter susceptibility” and also pilot proficiency, according to the flight logs. Why this sudden surge in testing isn’t clear, nor is there any indication from the company when they’ll be ready to start powered flight tests of SpaceShipTwo.

SpaceShipOne details in Allen’s book

Jeff Foust — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 04:07:57 +0000

Paul Allen’s appearance on “Charlie Rose” this week wasn’t out of the blue: it was prompted by the release of his new memoir, Idea Man. The book covers the various interests in his life, and while much of the publicity about the book has centered on the passages about co-founding and working at Microsoft with Bill Gates, there is a whole chapter devoted to his interest in space. The bulk of the chapter, after talking about how the early Space Race captured his imagination about the topic, offers some interesting details about the development of SpaceShipOne, the suborbital vehicle he funded that won the $10-million Ansari X PRIZE in 2004.

Allen first met with Burt Rutan in September 1996 in Mojave, Allen recounts in the book. “Burt had already begun thinking about a supersonic plane that could fly above the atmosphere,” Allen writes. Two years later, in Seattle, this idea took the form of a crewed suborbital rocket. At the time, Allen said he had a relatively narrow goal: “I wanted to do something in rocketry that no one had done before.” He was attracted to Rutan because of his perfect safety record, noting that for space tourism to be viable, it would have to have safety “comparable to the airline industry.”

At that time the project didn’t go forward since Rutan hadn’t come up with the “right design”, Allen writes. When Rutan did—the air-launched system with the feathered wings that provide the vehicle a “carefree” reentry—they reached an agreement in 2000, and by 2002 signed a contract creating Mojave Aerospace Ventures (MAV). They were initially not interested in the X PRIZE because it wasn’t funded, but when it became clear shortly after establishing MAV that it would, they changed the design of the vehicle to increase its crew capacity from one to three in order to meet the prize rules. That, Allen said, increased the system’s cost from a projected $9 million to $19 million. “Based on what I’d heard about bleeding-edge aircraft, I expected SpaceShipOne to come in overweight, underpowered, over budget, and behind schedule,” he writes.

While competing for the Ansari X PRIZE, Allen writes that Rutan in particular didn’t think that they had any competition from other teams, calling The da Vinci Project, the Canadian team that eventually made a last-ditch, but futile, effort to beat out SpaceShipOne, “especially far-fetched.” Curiously, Allen writes that they were concerned about “rumored covert efforts in Eastern Europe”, without offering more details.

Much of the rest of the chapter then discusses the development and test flights of SpaceShipOne. Allen was present for the first powered test flight on December 17, 2003, where test pilot Brian Binnie landed SS1 too hard on the runway, causing it to tumble off the runway but without significant damage. That incident, he said, set back their testing schedule by about two months, as they’d hoped prior to that to make the prize-winning flights in the summer of 2004; they instead took place in late September and early October.

After SpaceShipOne’s initial flight into space in June 2004, where the vehicle just barely made it above the von KÃ¡rmÃ¡n line (100 kilometers), Allen recalls there were concerns about whether SS1 could do the X PRIZE flights with a heavier load (it had to carry the mass equivalent of three people, although all the flights had only a single person, the pilot, on board). “In fact, SpaceShipOne hadn’t been pushed as close to its limit in June as it had seemed,” he writes. The vehicle was remarkably sturdy, with aerodynamic safety margins of 2.1 to 3 for various components (compared to 1.6 for a typical airliner), and engineers were able to reduce the vehicle’s weight to improve its performance. They also found they could put more nitrous oxide in the vehicle’s oxidizer tank by reducing the ullage, or empty space, that wasn’t needed since the oxidizer didn’t heat up and expand as much as first thought, in part because they took off in the early morning and quickly climbed to higher, colder altitudes.

Allen writes that a month before the June SpaceShipOne flight, Richard Branson approached him about licensing the SpaceShipOne technology. That led to a contract signed in September 2004 “that could net me $25 million over the next fifteen years.” Branson was at the prize-winning flight on October 4, and, as SpaceShipOne was ascending towards space, said to Allen, “Paul, isn’t this better than the best sex you ever had?” Allen didn’t respond, but according to his book he did think, If I was this anxious during any kind of interpersonal activity, I couldn’t enjoy it very much.

Allen could enjoy it, though, when SS1 safely returned and captured the prize. When he heard the roar of the crowd that had assembled in Mojave for the flight, “it struck me that SpaceShipOne was more than some momentary spectacle. It offered hope to everyone who aspired to journeys beyond the Earth.”

In the end, he writes, SpaceShipOne did come in over budget: he said the program’s total cost was $28 million, in the ballpark of previous estimates of its cost. He added that he achieved a “net positive return” on that investment by 2006, thanks to the prize money (he split the $10-million prize with Rutan), the Virgin licensing fees, and also the tax writeoff from donating SpaceShipOne to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “For a time I was tempted to stay involved in the effort to commercialize space tourism,” he writes, but made a decision to step back several months before SS1 won the prize, letting Virgin Galactic take the lead. As he told Charlie Rose earlier this week, he is now considering getting back in.

While Allen has a financial involvement with space tourism ventures, he’s not interested in flying himself. “But seeing up close what’s involved in spaceflight gave me pause. I’m not an edge walker.” What the SpaceShipOne experience did do, though, was restore his “boyhood sense of wonder” he had when he looked at the night sky. “It was good to get it back.”

BBC gets a behind-the-scenes look at SpaceShipTwo

Jeff Foust — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:35:10 +0000

Screenshot of a video report by the BBC's Richard Scott showing the interior of SpaceShipTwo.

BBC reporter Richard Scott has a bit of an exclusive: a look behind the scenes of the development of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo as well as Spaceport America in New Mexico. The real exclusive is the first look inside SpaceShipTwo, briefly seen in the two-minute video. (Other videos in the article include an interview with test pilot Pete Siebold and a tour of Spaceport America.)

The video makes it clear that SS2 is still very much a work in progress: the interior is barebones, lacking even seats (although the fittings where the rotating passenger seats will be installed can be seen). The video also helps illustrate the relatively modest size of the cabin. While Scott is able to stand up normally in the cabin, it seems likely it will look a bit more cramped when fully outfitted and containing six passengers; he notes in the article that the cabin’s size “will probably mean them bumping into each other” during the weightless portion of the flight. The date of the video isn’t specified, but it shows SpaceShipTwo undergoing a fair amount of interior and exterior work at the time: the vehicle’s nose, for example, was removed.

One interesting note is something made in passing by Scott about SpaceShipTwo: “It’s going to be taking paying passengers into space from hopefully 2013.” That’s later than previous reports, which have suggested that Virgin would put SpaceShipTwo into commercial service next year. SpaceShipTwo, meanwhile, hasn’t made a glide flight since mid-January, according to Scaled Composites’ flight logs, although two attempts for glide flights in mid-February was aborted because of weather conditions.

Third glide flight for SpaceShipTwo

Jeff Foust — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:26:56 +0000

SpaceShipTwo during its first glide test on October 10, 2010. (credit: Mark Greenberg/Virgin Galactic)

Scaled Composites carried out a third glide test flight of SpaceShipTwo (SS2) on Wednesday. According to the company’s WK2/SS2 flight test logs, SS2 flew free for 11 minutes and 39 seconds after its release from WhiteKnightTwo. There were no major milestones reported for the test, and all test objectives were achieved, according to the log. Those objectives included flying to “a more aggressive stall indication” and a slightly higher airspeed and g-forces.

Flybys: commercial space conference, TSC factory groundbreaking, SpaceX rescheduling

Jeff Foust — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:09:55 +0000

Special Aerospace Services, a Colorado aerospace company, announced Monday they would host the first Commercial Human Spaceflight Technical Forum in Boulder this coming January. The one-and-a-half-day conference is designed to give attendees “insight to techniques that will be required to successfully achieve NASA human rating certification and FAA commercial spaceflight licensing”, according to the conference web site. Featured speakers include former shuttle program manager Wayne Hale and former astronaut Jeffrey Ashby.

Groundbreaking is scheduled for Tuesday in Mojave for a new production facility for WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo. The 68,000-square-foot (6,300-square-meter) factory for The Spaceship Company (a joint venture of Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites) is slated for completion in September 2011. The formal name of the facility, according to a Tehachapi News article, is the Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar, which, yes, has the acronym FAITH.

SpaceX has rescheduled its next Falcon 9 launch for no earlier than December 7, citing both delays of other launches at Cape Canaveral as well as a desire to run more tests. The launch will be the first of three planned test flights of the Dragon spacecraft under its COTS agreement with NASA. The delay will also give SpaceX additional time to secure a first-ever reentry license for the Dragon from the FAA.

Some people dream their whole lives about flying in space. For Marc and Sharon Hagle, they sort of stumbled across the opportunity, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The two were taking a Zero-G flight along with, as it turned out, a number of Virgin Galactic sales agents, and as the article notes, “It didn’t take much to sell the Hagles on the chance for some real space travel.”