NewSpace Journal » Virgin Galactic

Is Sierra Nevada Spaceport America’s next tenant?

Jeff Foust — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:30:59 +0000

The New Mexico legislature is currently considering updated legislation to provide spaceflight liability indemnification, similar to what exists in several other states, including Florida, Texas, and Virginia. Senate Bill 3 would require spaceflight operators to have participants sign waivers; the company is then protected except in the case of “an act or omission that constitutes gross negligence” or if it intentionally injures the participant. This legislation updates existing law, passed in 2010, specifically including suppliers of components for those systems.

In an interview with the Albuquerque Journal, Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides said that the legislation would not affect Virgin’s plans to operate from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. However, he said, passage of the bill could encourage other companies to locate operations there. One of those, he said, is Sierra Nevada Corporation, which is developing the Dream Chaser spaceplane and is one of four companies with funded Commercial Crew Development agreements with NASA. “Whitesides said that Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp., which has a $100 million federal contract to develop a prototype spacecraft, would consider locating at the spaceport if the bill passes,” the article states.

A fiscal impact report for the bill confirms this. “Two separate potential tenants at Spaceport America, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Rocket Crafters, Inc, have both recently indicated an unwillingness to move to New Mexico and operate from Spaceport America, absent this legislation,” it states. (Rocket Crafters is a relatively new and little-known company that has proposed developing a suborbital spaceplane.)

What would Sierra Nevada do at Spaceport America? Its Dream Chaser vehicle is designed to launch atop expendable rockets like the Atlas 5 that don’t operate from Spaceport America. However, the spaceport’s runway could serve as a landing site, although landing at a site other than the Kennedy Space Center could introduce some operational inefficiencies since they’ll have to ferry the vehicle back to Cape Canaveral. Spaceport America could also serve as a test site for captive carry and glide tests of the Dream Chaser; in such a scenario, though, it’s not clear it would need the enhanced liability legislation since it will not be carrying spaceflight participants.

Virgin’s delays hardly surprising (and not necessarily as long as WSJ claims)

Jeff Foust — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:45:55 +0000

Here are the first two paragraphs of a Wall Street Journal article about Virgin Galactic, published last night:

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.

WK2/SS2 flyover at Spaceport America

Jeff Foust — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:51:51 +0000

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.

Virgin dedicates its Spaceport America terminal

Jeff Foust — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:18:16 +0000

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.”

Charting Virgin’s customer growth

Jeff Foust — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:11:34 +0000

In a press release Thursday about NASA’s purchase of a SpaceShipTwo flight for research activities, Virgin Galactic provided an update on sales for its primary market, space tourism. “Virgin Galactic has already collected more than $58 million in deposits from 455 future tourist astronauts,” the release noted. Those are the largest figures that the company has cited for both customers and deposits to date. But how has its backlog grown in recent years?

To try to answer this, I dug through several years of my own notes as well as media reports and press releases. The result is the chart below, showing the number of customers Virgin Galactic has reported since the beginning of 2008:

It’s worth noting that in many cases the numbers given by the company are approximate: “nearly 300″, “over 350″, etc. For the purposes of the chart I’ve rounded up or down accordingly; in the case of the previous examples, they would be 300 and 350, respectively, in the chart. (Ideally I’d put in some error bars, but Google doesn’t support them in this chart.)

What this shows is that after a relatively flat 2009, Virgin has seen a steady increase in customers. (2009, it should be noted, is not as flat as the chart suggests, because of the rounding described above: the company reported “nearly 300″ in early 2009 and “over 300″ late in the year.) Over the last 17 months, from mid-May 2010 to Thursday, the company had seen an increase of 120 customers, a rate of a new customer every 4.3 days. During the nearly 22 months prior to that, from late July 2008 to mid-May 2010, the company had reported an increase of only 65 new customers, or one every 10.1 days. The sluggish growth then is not surprising given the economic crisis that started in 2008. Meanwhile, as the economy slowly improves Virgin is inching closer to flight, which may increase the interest among prospective customers.

This data set is certainly incomplete, based on a limited amount of research. If you’re aware of new or more accurate data, please let me know and I’ll update this chart accordingly.

Virgin Galactic’s upcoming spaceflight plans

Jeff Foust — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:46:24 +0000

Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides offered Saturday some clarity on the company’s plans to move ahead with the next phase of test flights of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle. Speaking at the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium in Orlando, Florida, Whitesides noted that SpaceShipTwo has not been in active test flights in recent months (the last test flight in Scaled’s SS2 flight log is from June 27.) “We’ve had the vehicle basically in the hangar for the last couple months… working on some mods,” he said. “Now, you’ll I think over the next couple months greater activity of both vehicles,” referring SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo.

Those upcoming flights through the rest of this year will still be unpowered, though, he said. Plans call for integrating SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket motor into the vehicle early next year and start rocket-powered flight tests. “Our current aspiration is to try to get to some definition of space by the end of next year,” he said. He was vague on what “some definition” is; while the Kármán line, a widely-used definition of space is 100 kilometers, US government agencies award astronaut wings for flights to 50 miles (80 kilometers).

After that, he said, entering commercial operations will depend on two “big tasks”: transferring flight operations form Mojave to Spaceport America in New Mexico (a formal dedication of the spaceport’s main terminal building is planned for October 17), and getting a launch license from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. “We don’t release a more precise public schedule” for beginning commercial operations, he added, to avoid putting schedule pressure on their engineers, he said. That’s consistent with past comments by Virgin officials that they’ll be ready to fly when it’s safe to do so, and not before.

Whitesides’ comments about SpaceShipTwo testing was part of a broader keynote at the conference, which is focusing on what technological and other breakthroughs are needed to develop an interstellar mission in the next century. His focus, by comparison, was on the near term. “We’re trying to do something, when it comes to suborbital space, that is doable today. That’s what’s exciting about Galactic and some of the other companies out there,” he said. “We’re trying to tackle a problem that is doable today.”

Still, he and others are supporting of the long-term vision at the conference. His talk included a video from Sir Richard Branson. “I think what you’re doing here is both important and absolutely fascinating,” Branson said.

Another step forward for SpaceShipTwo’s rocket motor

Jeff Foust — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:05:18 +0000

If you go to Virgin Galactic’s web site today you’ll see a release about the first flight of WhiteKnightTwo by Virgin Galactic chief test pilot David Mackay, which took place yesterday in Mojave. “I was able to fly WhiteKnight through the full extent of its flight envelope—to its maximum altitude, speed and crosswind limit—so it was a very thorough first look,” he said in the statement, which also indicated he would be making more test flights of the carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo in the coming months.

A bigger milestone, though, may have been a few days earlier. According to Scaled Composites’s test summaries, Scaled and Sierra Nevada Corporation performed on Sunday a “full duration hot-fire” of the rocket motor that will power SpaceShipTwo on its suborbital flights. The 55-second burn appeared to be a success, according to the brief summary, which indicated that “all objectives [were] completed” in the test. The engine test was the seventh for the full-scale “RocketMotorTwo” engine, and the first in five months.

The slow development of SpaceShipTwo’s rocket motor has been a major factor in the delays involved in getting the vehicle ready for test flights. “They’ve had to scale up the hybrid from a relatively smaller version to a bigger version,” George Whitesides, president and CEO of Virgin Galactic, said at the NewSpace 2011 conference at NASA Ames at the end of July. “We’ve seen some good progress over the summer,” he added. “We expect to be flying into space next year.”

In-flight suborbital Internet access? Maybe not.

Jeff Foust — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:55:29 +0000

One of the nice things about flying on Virgin America (among some other airlines) is having access to the Internet in flight. On one of those long transcontinental flights, it’s great to make the time productive by having access to the web, email, and the like. But what if you’re making a quick trip into space?

Flightglobal.com reports that Virgin Galactic is investigating the possibility of having Internet access on its suborbital flights. The system being considered, according to an unnamed source, would use X-band frequencies to provide connectivity between SpaceShipTwo and the ground. It doesn’t take much to imagine people using the system to post tweets, status updates, and the like from their brief jaunts into space.

There are, though, two problems with this proposal. One is technical. For space communications, X-band frequencies are traditionally reserved for government applications, including military satellite communications and deep space transmissions to spacecraft throughout the solar system. It’s not clear how a commercial venture would be able to use those frequencies. The other is more practical: if you’re spending $200,000 for a relatively short spaceflight, are you really going to be taking the time to post a Facebook update in-flight?

One Virgin official suggested the latter issue made it unlikely the company would develop an in-flight Internet access system. “I like Twitter as much as anyone else, but put the phone down,” advised Will Pomerantz, vice president of special projects, during a Commercial Spaceflight Forum organized by SpaceUp Houston on Thursday night. “Hopefully our passengers are not clamoring to look at their Blackberries and iPhones while in outer space.”

That approach makes some sense. Certainly there will be some data connectivity needs on these flights, both for vehicle telemetry as well as for transmitting data from any experiments carried on the vehicle, but a full-fledged Internet access system, like that on airliners, doesn’t seem necessary.

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.

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.