NewSpace Journal » Virgin Galactic

Virgin: Irish article “entirely inaccurate”

Jeff Foust — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:25:00 +0000

Virgin Galactic has responded to yesterday’s report that the company is only accepting US citizens for its flights by, in effect, saying the article is completely off base. The Irish Independent article claimed that an Irishman living in England, Cyril Bennis, had been told by the company that it was currently only accepting US citizens. A Virgin official said Monday that Bennis had inquired about flying non-US citizens on its flights and was told that they were accepting deposits from Americans and others alike “because we fully intend to be able to fly these pioneering people”. (That would include, of course, Sir Richard Branson, who has previously said he and his family would go on the first SpaceShipTwo commercial flight.) The company will do so “in a way which fully complies with all applicable laws and regulations including those which relate to US export controls”; as noted yesterday, there’s already precedent for allowing spaceflight participants to be trained for such flights without going through ITAR-related paperwork. “Unfortunately we were not contacted by the Independent before the piece was published and so had no chance to correct an entirely inaccurate report,” the Virgin official said.

Weekend roundup

Jeff Foust — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 18:12:55 +0000

Is Virgin Galactic only accepting US citizens now? That’s the claim of an article Sunday in the Irish Independent, which reports that an Irishman living in England “received a legal notice from Virgin Galactic stating that at present only US citizens can be considered for inclusion.” The company has signed up and accepted deposits from a number of people outside the US, so it’s not clear what would cause this change in direction, if in fact correct. The obvious concern would be something having to do with US export control regulations, but Bigelow Aerospace won a ruling last year that ITAR-related agreements were not needed for prospective spaceflight participants.

Even without that issue, Bruce Dickinson isn’t interested in flying on Virgin Galactic. The 52-year-old British lead singer of Iron Maiden, who is a licensed commercial pilot and Star Trek fan, would seem to be in the ideal demographic for space tourism, but he tells QMI Media he’s not interested right now because of price and safety issues. “I think I’d want to take a long hard look at those little suborbital things before I got on one,” he said. “And for the amount of money it costs, well, I could think of a lot of things you could do that would be a lot more fun, and last a lot longer.”

Those who do want to, and are able to, fly on Virgin Galactic may be able to enjoy a little bit of a shortcut to Spaceport America. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority approved Friday a proposal to pave a road on the southern approach to the spaceport. The road, from the Upham exit on I-25, will shorten the travel time for people coming to the spaceport from Las Cruces from one hour and 40 minutes down to one hour as they will no longer have to take the current northern approach through Truth and Consequences. The money for paving the road comes from “unexpected savings” on other aspects of the project because of a “good bid climate”, freeing up the $11.5 million needed for the paving.

That decision, as well as the FAA’s award of a commercial space transportation “center of excellence” to New Mexico State University, get the seal of approval of the Las Cruces Sun-News in an editorial Sunday. With a greater emphasis on commercial spaceflight emerging in national space policy, “NMSU and Spaceport America are poised to lead the way in a burgeoning new industry with limitless potential.”

WhiteKnightTwo landing gear collapses

Jeff Foust — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:27:27 +0000

WhiteKnightTwo in flight over Las Cruces airport in June 2009. The landing gear is partially extended during this overflight.

The AP reported late today that part of the landing gear for Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo aircraft collapsed upon landing at the end of a test flight today at Mojave Air and Space Port in California. An FAA spokesman told the AP that the left main landing gear, the one that collapsed, was damaged, but he did not know if there was any other damage to the aircraft. SpaceShipTwo was not attached to the aircraft during Thursday’s flight.

Scaled Composites issued a brief statement about the incident, offering few details about what happened in the “minor” incident:

A minor incident occurred on the runway at Mojave airport this morning, which involved a mechanical problem with the left hand-side landing gear of WhiteKnightTwo. No injuries were sustained and the incident did not involve the Spaceship which was not attached to WhiteKnightTwo. WhiteKnightTwo was on its 37th test flight, and has been flying since December 2008. Further information will be posted in due course.

A brief Virgin (and TSC) update

Jeff Foust — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:50:37 +0000

Enrico Palermo of Virgin Galactic discusses the company's development of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo at the NewSpace 2010 conference on Saturday.

At the end of Saturday’s sessions at the NewSpace 2010 conference in Silicon Valley, Enrico Palermo, project engineering manager for Virgin Galactic, gave a brief update on the company’s activities. There weren’t any new announcements about the company’s efforts, nor (consistent with their past practices) predictions about future flights. Palermo did show video of their most recent captive carry flight, the first time a crew flew in SpaceShipTwo, as well as some new photos of work on SpaceShipTwo in Scaled’s facilities, showing the spaceplane’s wings rotated up in the feathering position that provides for the “carefree” reentry of the vehicle, in much the same way as SpaceShipOne.

Palermo did provide a few updated statistics about the company and the vehicle testing program. WhiteKnightTwo now has over 100 hours of flight time on 33 flights since the test flight program began in late 2008. SpaceShipTwo, meanwhile, has now flown three captive cary flights. On the business side, the company now has over 350 customers who have paid deposits ranging from $20,000 to the full $200,000, with a total of now over $50 million. Those deposits, he added, are held in escrow for now, and won’t be converted to company revenue until the tickets are formally issued.

Palermo also briefly discussed The Spaceship Company (TSC), the joint venture between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites that will manufacture the WK2 aircraft and SS2 spaceplanes. “This is a company you’re going to be hearing a lot more about over the next year or so,” he said. “We’re currently assembling a team of individuals to run TSC in Mojave; we’re recruiting like mad.” (There is a list of job openings on the TSC web site.) TSC is currently located in an existing building at Mojave Air and Space Port, but Palermo said there are plans to build a new final assembly hangar there.

Space Adventures returns to suborbital spaceflight

Jeff Foust — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:43:21 +0000

Eric Anderson (left) and John Carmack talk about their suborbital partnership at ISDC on Thursday.

As expected, Space Adventures announced Thursday at the International Space Development Conference, (ISDC) in Chicago its partnership with Armadillo Aerospace to provide suborbital space tourism flights. Armadillo will develop a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) suborbital vehicle carrying people to at least 100 kilometers altitude, with Space Adventures selling the seats, starting with its existing customer list of about 200 people, including several former astronauts.

The presentation, featuring Space Adventures president and CEO Eric Anderson and Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmack, offered few technical or schedule details about their plans. There is no finalized vehicle design yet: a video shown in the presentation showed a number of differenent Armadillo concepts, from a cone sitting atop four propellant tanks with a central engine to the “fishbowl” concept Armadillo showed off in 2008 for the short-lived suborbital joint venture between Armadillo and the Rocket Racing League. Carmack also offered no timetable for the beginning of tourist flights, although he did note the company hoped to be flying unmanned scientific payloads to altitudes of approximately 100,000 feet (30 kilometers) in the next year, and to 100 kilometers altitude in the following year.

Instead, the presentation was examining in more general terms the companies’ plans, including why Space Adventures, who has made a name for itself for nearly a decade by arranging flights to the International Space Station, would get into the suborbital spaceflight business. Anderson noted that when Space Adventures was founded in the late 1990s, its focus was on suborbital spaceflight at a time when many vehicle developers were saying “we’re only two years away,” he recalled. “We didn’t have any idea at the time that we would be fortunate enough to be able to launch private citizens to orbit before suborbital flights,” he continued. Later, Space Adventures considered working with a Russian company to develop a suborbital vehicle called Explorer, which he said they abandoned because “frankly, it got too expensive.” As Armadillo made progress with their vehicles, “I was just so impressed” with their efforts he was convinced they were the company that could really reduce the cost of space access.

While neither Armadillo nor Carmack discussed the cost of the project, they did confirm that Space Adventures was providing Armadillo with funding to support it, at least in part. Alluding to past partnership announcements that failed to pan out, Carmack said, “One of my new rules on this is that I’m not going to get up and talk about something unless a check has cleared.” And since Carmack was getting up and talking about this, he confirmed, “Space Adventures has actually paid Armadillo Aerospace to begin developing a new suborbital vehicle.” Carmack said later that under their agreement, Space Adventures will pay Armadillo unspecified amounts upon achiveing certain milestones in the vehicle development effort. “The amount of money that has changed hands here is not trivial, but it’s not enough to fund the vehicles,” he said. “It isn’t enough money to pay for these vehicles, it’s enough money to make me think about not pursuing other contracts.” He added that he expected to kick in more of his own money into the venture, but also looked to getting funding from NASA’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program for flying scientific payloads.

The timelines that they did reveal suggest that Space Adventures and Armadillo will not be the first to market for commercial suborbital space tourism, given the progress being made by companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace. Carmack addressed this as well, in the process perhaps raising the hackles of some of his competitors in the audience at the ISDC. “It’s a fool who doesn’t think he has any competition,” Carmack said. On Virgin, he said, “I think they have explicitly not chosen the most cost effective solution on this. I don’t think they will be able to compete on price, eventually, but some people will prefer their experience.”

Carmack was critical of XCOR from a funding standpoint. “I believe that, if fully funded, they could build a vehicle that could fly, that could service passengers,” he said. “I do not believe they are fully funded.” He then issued something of a warning to other companies, after earlier noting that Armadillo planned to accelerate its development plans and hire more people. “I think one of the best things about having the other companies in the industry is that it’s developed some very skilled and talened people, and we’re probably going to steal some of them.”

Carmack also said he felt Armadillo’s VTVL vehicle was a superior approach to a winged vehicled like SpaceShipTwo or Lynx. A ballistic reentry, he said, is better than a winged reentry, noting one fatality from the X-15 program. Launching a winged vehicle, he added, is “a lot harder than making a ballistic vehicle fly right up.” Thus, for greatly reducing the cost of suborbital spaceflight, “the powered [vertical] landing has significant benefits.” After the presentation I talked briefly with XCOR COO Andrew Nelson, who said, “People will want a lot of different experiences. We believe that most people will want something involving wings.”

ISDC has a strong NewSpace flavor this year

Jeff Foust — Thu, 27 May 2010 10:38:27 +0000

I’m at the airport waiting to catch a flight to Chicago for this year’s International Space Development Conference, the annual conference of the National Space Society. (I was already supposed to be there, but Untied, er, United, canceled my flight last night.) This year’s conference has a particular emphasis on NewSpace, more so than conventional space companies. Some highlights:

On Thursday morning Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, will announce the company’s “New Venture”, according to the title of his talk. This is likely to be the exclusive marketing agreement with Armadillo Aerospace the company announced last month; at the time the company said they would announce additional details at ISDC. We’ll hopefully learn more about the deal and why Space Adventures, which had de-emphasized suborbital space tourism in recent years in favor of orbital spaceflight, is jumping back into this market.

Virgin Galactic will be represented by its new CEO, George Whitesides, who returned to the company earlier this month after roughly 18 months at NASA in several roles, including chief of staff to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. With Virgin and Scaled continuing their captive carry flights of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, hopefully we’ll get some updated details about their plans for upcoming tests and introduction of commercial service. Whitesides is scheduled to speak late Saturday afternoon.

On Friday morning there will be updates about the progress of XCOR Aerospace and Bigelow Aerospace by XCOR CEO Jeff Greason and Bigelow DC Operations Director Mike Gold, respectively. XCOR is working on its Lynx suborbital vehicle, so we may learn more details about the progress they’re making on their prototype. Bigelow, as Aviation Week reported earlier this month, is ramping up its marketing efforts for its inflatable orbital habitats. Bigelow will also benefit from the new interest in commercial crew transportation as part of the NASA fiscal year 2011 budget proposal. On Friday afternoon Masten Space Systems president and CEO Dave Masten will talk about winning $1.15 million in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge last year, and presumably their ongoing efforts as well.

There are also several other talks from representatives of the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Spaceport America, and several other NewSpace companies, including a panel Saturday morning on “The ‘NewSpace’ Paradigm”. So the next few days should offer a good opportunity to see where much of the NewSpace industry stands as of 2010 and what companies think their prospects are.

See WK2 and SS2 fly in New Mexico this October

Jeff Foust — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:51:24 +0000

Well, at least flyby overhead. The organizers of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) announced today that the two vehicles will put in an appearance in the skies over Spaceport America in New Mexico on October 22, the day after the two-day ISPCS. “This will be the first long distance test flight of the VG spaceship and mothership system as part of the celebrations inaugurating the completion of the runway at Virgin Galactic’s future home – Spaceport America,” the announcement states. The two vehicles made their first captive-carry flight last week.

To get a feel for what it (hopefully) will be like, here’s video I shot last June in Las Cruces as WhiteKnightTwo made a low pass over the runway at the local airport, after a planned flyby of Spaceport America the previous day was scrubbed because of a technical problem with the aircraft:

SpaceShipTwo captive carry flight video

Jeff Foust — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:58:25 +0000

Virgin Galactic has posted a video of yesterday’s first captive carry flight of SpaceShipTwo, including a brief interview at the end with test pilot Mark Stuckey, who says that “I don’t think we could have planned, realistically planned, for any better success” on the flight.

SpaceShipTwo flies, on schedule

Jeff Foust — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:34:26 +0000

WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo take off Monday morning from Mojave (credit: Mark Greenberg)

Yesterday morning WhiteKnightTwo took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California with a special payload attached to it: SpaceShipTwo, making its first, albeit captive carry, flight. The flight lasted two hours and 54 minutes and achieved an altitude of about 13,700 meters (45,000 feet). The flight went well, according to all accounts, and Burt Rutan said in a Virgin statement, “The captive carry flight signifies the start of what we believe will be extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program.”

The flight also took place roughly on schedule. As Virgin Galactic’s Stephen Attenborough said last month at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Boulder, Colorado, the first captive carry test would take place by the end of the first quarter of this year (which it achieved with a little over a week to spare). Captive carry tests would continue through the second quarter with the first glide test some time in the third quarter; the first powered test flight would, he hoped, take place by the end of the year.

WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo in flight (credit: Mark Greenberg)

One minor thing I noted. As you can see in the picture above, SpaceShipTwo flew without an engine, or, apparently, an engine nozzle: just a black plug of some kind where the engine would go. See the closeup below:

Compare that to an image I took of the vehicle during the rollout ceremony last December, when there was at least a replica engine nozzle in place:

Brief notes: Soyuz, Virgin, and… iCarly?

Jeff Foust — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:07:03 +0000

The news media has something of a case of amnesia when it comes to space tourism in Russia: they regularly, breathlessly report comments that Russia will stop flying space tourists on Soyuz flights to the ISS. Every few months, it seems, a Russian official makes comments to that regard, dutifully reported by the wire services and others. There’s a good reason why they’re not: the seats are all needed for ferrying crews to and from the ISS, particularly with the retirement of the shuttle. Also recall that Russia had made similar statements in the past only to have seats become available, as was the case with last year’s flight of Guy Laliberté. When that flight opportunity was first announced last year, Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson said he felt there still might be occasional flight opportunities even after the station goes to a six-person crew.

Virgin Galactic provided an update on their plans at a conference in Dubai this week, although the information they provided appears to be largely similar to what the company reported at a suborbital research conference in Boulder last month. Will Whitehorn did say that he didn’t believe the company didn’t need additional investment to complete development of SpaceShipTwo after Abu Dhabi’s Aabar Group invested $280 million into the company last year. Although Aabar has exclusive regional rights to SS2, Whitehorn said there were no plans for SS2 flights to take place there for the foreseeable future.

If you (or, rather, your kids) watch the Nickelodeon show “iCarly”, you might be interested in Friday’s episode, based on this description: “A quirky billionaire asks Carly and her friends to put on the first live Web show from outer space, so they undergo tests for space travel.” A billionaire who wants to send some kids into orbit to do a webcast is probably a little more than just “quirky”.