Last week we noted that Richard Branson had a more ambitious schedule for Virgin Galactic than company officials have recently stated, claiming that “Virgin Galactic will take off in November”. That statement, made in Boston last week, doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident. The German magazine Stern has an article this week about Virgin Galactic [in German], where Branson makes similar claims. In particular, he appears to state that SpaceShipTwo test flights will be in August or September, and after a few months he and his family would fly as it officially entered service. (I say “appears” based on a crude translation of the German article, as well as the fact that it doesn’t specifically mention SpaceShipTwo by name.) Branson also adds that the venture’s cost is the same as a single 747; according to Boeing a 747 costs between $235 and $305 million, depending on the 747 version ordered.
Meanwhile, RLV and Space Transport News reported this week that SpaceShipTwo could be “unveiled” at the AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin at the end of July. As some people who have commented on this post note, it’s not clear what “unveiled” means in this context, since the vehicle would presumably be ferried there by air from Mojave by WhiteKnightTwo and thus be visible to anyone seeing the takeoff from Mojave or landing in Oshkosh. (One way around that, perhaps, would be to send the vehicle by truck from Mojave under wraps.) WhiteKnightTwo is already slated to appear at Oshkosh, but one wonders what the impact would be on the development and testing of SS2 if had to go out to Oshkosh and back.
On Wednesday I had a long telephone interview with Charles Simonyi, scheduled to make a return trip to the International Space Station late next month. (The interview got delayed a couple hours because his training that day ran long.) I plan to have a more complete account of the interview in Monday’s issue of The Space Review, but in the meantime here are some highlights from the interview:
Because he’s already flown to space before and gone through the complete training process, his training for this trip is far more condensed, starting just in January. Just this week he started training with the other two members of the Soyuz crew, Gennady Padalka and Michael Barrett.
He is planning to do many of the same activities as he did on his 2007 flight, including a space radiation experiment and some medical tests. He also plans to perform a number of contacts with schools through amateur radio links. He said that since this will be his second trip, he believes he’ll be more effective since he’ll be used to the environment and known what to expect while on the station.
He said he didn’t suffer from space sickness on his first trip and is thus optimistic he won’t have problems on this flight. He noted that Russians and Americans training for 0-g differently, with Russians relying more on ways to desensitize the vestibular system through things like rotating chairs. He said that may make a difference, but there’s too little data to draw conclusions on what is more effective in general.
Unlike a number of other Space Adventures clients, he does not object to being called a “space tourist” or the official space agency term “spaceflight participant”. Tourism, he believes, is an important early market for commercial spaceflight that can enable the development of additional markets down the road.
While he believes in the potential of space tourism, he’s not interested in putting his money into any of the ventures in this market: “I’m not an investor, I’m a customer.”
Asked if this would be his last flight into space, he said he promised his wife that he would not fly again—at least for a long time. “Maybe in 20 years it will be so common we’ll do it together.”
He also added that the web site developed to track his first flight, Charles in Space, would soon be updated with information about his upcoming mission. And, in fact, it was updated Thursday.
Last week Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn said that the first glide tests of SpaceShipTwo would take by the end of this year, not offering a timetable for either powered test flights or the beginning of commercial service. However, in Boston this week to mark the beginning of Virgin American flights into Logan Airport, Richard Branson offered a more accelerated timeline, saying that “Virgin Galactic will take off in November.” What exactly “take off” means in this context could be debated, although the average reader is likely to interpret this as to when service would begin, not the beginning of test flights, powered or unpowered.
When Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show last October to discuss the Kindle e-book reader, he mentioned in passing that he was reading a book on the history of cryogenics. Not your usual reading fare to be certain, even for a self-professed nerd like Bezos (and particularly when paired with the other book he said he was reading, Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road).
That unusual reading choice prompted the Wall Street Journal to ask him about it today when Bezos was announcing the new version of the Kindle. It turns out his interest in cryogenics is tied to his spaceflight venture, Blue Origin:
And what about the reference he made on his October appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show to a book about cryogenics? “It’s a rocket book. Liquid hydrogen turns out to be a very important propellant. I am very interested in space exploration and started a company called Blue Origin that pursues that,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to be the next Oprah Club pick, but I thought it was only fair to disclose some of my interests.”
And he’s right: that cryogenic book didn’t make the cut for Winfrey’s famous book club. But it will be sure to interest those trying to learn anything new about the ultra-secretive Blue Origin…
On Wednesday I’m going to be interviewing Charles Simonyi, who will be making a return trip to the ISS late next month as a private astronaut (aka space tourist). I’ve got plenty of questions that I can ask him, but I would like to see what questions you’d like to ask him if you had the chance. Leave the questions in the comments below or, if you prefer, email them to me at jeff [at] thespacereview [dot] com. (I leave it up to you to convert that into a valid email address.) The interview is Wednesday morning (US Eastern time), so please send any suggested questions by Tuesday night. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to use every question (or any question, for that matter), but will do my best.
Some other notes from Friday’s talk by Will Whitehorn (as well as another Virgin official, Enrico Palermo, in a panel later in the day) at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference:
Whitehorn said that he and Richard Branson “got a very excited email from Burt [Rutan]” the day before, after WhiteKnightTwo made its second test flight. Whitehorn said that the hour-and-a-half-flight was “flawless” and that everyone was “really, really, really pleased with the vehicle.”
Palermo added in the afternoon that WK2 flew to 18,000 feet (5,490 meters) and reached speeds of 130 knots (240 km/h) during the flight. That was a little bit higher than the first test flight in December, which flew up to 16,000 feet (4,880 meters).
Whitehorn said that SpaceShipTwo is “just under” 80 percent complete. Current plans call for the vehicle to begin glide tests by the end of this year. “So we’re on track,” he said. “Everything is looking good.”
In his talk Whitehorn didn’t discuss the status of the development of SS2’s rocket motor. I talked to him briefly afterwards and asked him about the status, including any engine tests, which the company had hinted at in recent weeks. “There have been, but not the full scale,” he said. “Subscale models?” I asked. “Yes, that’s been going on,” he replied, adding, “But we don’t really talk a lot about it” because both SpaceDev and Scaled want to keep things under wraps.
Whitehorn said Virgin now has “just under” 300 customers now, from 39 countries, with $39 million in deposits. Despite the current economic crisis, he said Virgin continues to sign up customers, including two this week. There have been a few “redemptions” of customers’ deposits, including one person who lost all his money in the Bernie Madoff scandal. “He could say to us that actually we were one of only investments he’d made that hadn’t gone bad.”
Regarding those customers, Whitehorn elaborated on statements he made last year on the development path Virgin chose for SpaceShipTwo. The company originally planned to simply develop a “commercial version” of SpaceShipOne, but found out from their customers that they wanted something more spacious than the cramped cabin of SS1. That drove up the size of SS2, and thus also WK2.
Increasing the size of the vehicles, he said, meant that Virgin could explore other markets, ranging from science and astronaut training to using WK2 as a platform for launching small satellites. “If we just built WhiteKnightOne and rebuilt SpaceShipOne, we would have basically been restricted to space tourism for a period of time until we then could have developed a second model,” he said. By listening to their customers, they’ve gone straight to that second model that can access those other markets. “Luckily we were saved by the early customers.”
Below is a brief snippet of Will Whitehorn’s speech at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference on Friday. In this segment Whitehorn examines some of the other ventures developing suborbital vehicles, including Rocketplane, EADS Astrium, Blue Origin, XCOR, Armadillo Aerospace, and Copenhagen Suborbitals, a little-known Danish firm developing a very minimalist suborbital system. Whitehorn’s theme in this segment is that while some of these ventures may be technically viable, they’re not capable—in his opinion, at least—of expanding to markets beyond tourism.
[Note: the video was shot with a Flip handheld camera, so the quality isn’t great, and you’ll probably want to crank the sound up.]
I’ve heard from a couple of sources that WhiteKnightTwo took off from Mojave Air and Space Port just before 8 am PST (11 am EST) this morning on its second test flight. Look for more details later today.
Update: WK2 landed back at Mojave at 9:22 am PST (12:22 pm EST) according to a source.
Also: more details from Flightglobal.com. Hopefully Will Whitehorn will add some details when he speaks Friday morning at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation conference in Washington DC.
There is an interesting angle to this that has, by and large, not been picked up. Last year SSTL was acquired by EADS Astrium, one of Europe’s largest aerospace companies; the deal closed just last month. Among Astrium’s many other projects is a suborbital spaceplane of its own that would compete directly with Virgin Galactic. Is SSTL’s cooperation with Virgin a sign that Astrium indeed allows SSTL to continue to operate as an independent company “with its individual brand and unique approach to space”, as the January press release about the deal’s closing stated? Or is it a sign that Astrium’s spaceplane project, which has not shown much overt progress since its unveiling in June 2007, is on hold or in greater jeopardy?
A roundup of space tourism news from across the globe:
Our first stop is Davos, Switzerland, where Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson says “business is good” for the space tourism company. Anderson, attending the World Economic Forum, said he’s looking for additional customers, but potential clients “should not expect any bargains because of the global financial turmoil.”
While we’re in Europe, check out a Flight International report on new European vehicle studies funded by the EU’s Future High-Altitude High-Speed Transport (FAST) 20XX program, to the tune of nearly $10 million. The effort is looking at two concepts: a relatively near-term (circa 2015) suborbital vehicle and a long-term hypersonic point-to-point transport. (How long term? Try 2075.) The funding is only for early-stage technology studies; where the money would come from for further development, even of the suborbital vehicle, is unclear.
The prospects for space tourism in China is examined in an Asia Times article this week. Industry officials agree that there’s tremendous potential in the Chinese market given its size, but for US companies export control restrictions would make it difficult to do business there. Also, the lack of a commercial space regulatory framework in China would hinder any effort for a domestic space tourism industry to develop.
There is, though, interest in space tourism in Mexico. The English-language Guadalajara Reporter said that an anonymous local businessman has signed up to fly with Virgin Galactic, becoming the first person from Mexico’s second-largest city to reserve a flight to space. Viajes Capistrano, the tourist agency who is one of five in the country that sells Virgin Galactic trips, is planning to make a bigger push for clients in the city in coming weeks.
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