A few recent developments involving Virgin Galactic:
Virgin Galactic has struck a deal with NOAA to collect atmospheric data on WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo flights. The vehicles will be equipped with sensors to measure carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere; the sensors will sample air from existing systems that collect air for use by the airspeed sensors on the vehicles, thus requiring no additional modifications. The initial agreement covers the approximately 200 test flights for the WK2 prototype.
Virgin officials also said this week that they are still interested in conducting flights from Scotland, starting in 2013. RAF Lossiemouth is the best of three locations under consideration, according to Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn. “The runway is on the edge of the sea so you can take off over the Moray Firth, which is safer than taking off over a populated area,” he said of the Lossiemouth location. “There’s also closed air space in that area which would be ideal for us launching the spaceship at 50,000ft.”
When people think of the Yucatan Peninsula and Mexico, they usually think of resort destinations like Cancun and Cozumel, or exploring Mayan ruins like Chichen Itza. However, some people are proposing the region for a spaceport that could serve space tourism, according to a report in Sunday’s Stockton (Calif.) Record. When not training for a shuttle mission to the ISS next year, NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez, a native of Stockton, has been advising Mexican officials who are trying to establish a national space agency. Part of those plans, according to the report, include “a commercial launch platform for space tourism in Yucatan, Mexico.” Legislation creating the Mexican Space Agency is scheduled to a vote by the Mexican Senate this week.
It’s difficult to take this development too seriously at the moment, given the information included in the article:
Hernandez said Yucatan, the location of the agency’s commercial space tourism launch station, is geographically ideal for frequent commercial use because it’s situated directly under the equator.
The close proximity into space means shuttles could carry more weight and save on fuel costs at the same time.
The problem here is that the Yucatan is most certainly not situated directly under the Equator. In fact, it’s on average about 20 degrees north of the Equator. That’s closer to the Equator than, say, Cape Canaveral, but farther north than the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana. Moreover, for suborbital space tourism, latitude isn’t important, since you’re not trying to reach orbit; the position of the facility relative to the Equator is important only for orbital launches, where being closer is an advantage. Also, saving on “fuel costs” is traditionally not a concern for launch vehicle operators, since the cost of propellants is a tiny fraction of the overall vehicle cost.
Left unsaid in the article is perhaps the biggest issue: how much would this “launch platform” cost and whether the Mexican government is willing to pay for it. So don’t count on mixing some Cancun sun with some suborbital fun any time soon.
[Yes, I’m trying to get back into the blogging game here again. Thanks for your patience.]
A report by the Arab news channel Al Arabiya notes that more Saudis have signed up for Virgin Galactic flights than from any other nation in the middle East. The article doesn’t provide any hard numbers, but states that Kuwait and the UAE follow Saudi Arabia in numbers of their citizens who have signed up with Virgin. That shouldn’t be that surprising, since all three nations are relatively wealthy, and Saudi Arabia has vastly more people than either: more than 10 times more citizens than Kuwait, for example. What would be more interesting to know is, on a per capita basis, which of these three countries would be in the lead, and how they would stack up against the US, UK, and other nations.
At the annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites in Logan, Utah, on Wednesday, Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX provided some additional details on the failure of the third Falcon 1 launch earlier this month in a previously-scheduled talk about the mission. She showed the rocket’s-eye view of the launch previously released on the SpaceX web site, but with some additional frames after the 2nd stage engine ignited; you can see some debris in the video (or “nasty bits”, as she put it), which she said included a parachute recovery system as well as the second stage engine nozzle (this particular cut of the video is not on the SpaceX web site because of ITAR concerns.) Also:
The second stage started to tumble after ignition because of the loss of the nozzle. Still, they were able to command the separation of the payload fairing, and got telemetry up to nine minutes after launch.
SpaceX is pressing ahead with the next launch, which will be a demonstration mission with nothing more than a mass simulator. Hardware for the mission will start shipping to Kwajalein in a week or two, and they are aiming for a “narrow” launch window in September, with another launch window in October.
There are two failure investigations in process, one internal and one external, but SpaceX doesn’t plan to wait until those reviews are complete before proceeding with Flight 4.
Shotwell said that she had the task of explaining the failure to Elon Musk’s assistant, who is not a launch vehicle expert. After explaining what happened, she recalled, the assistant said, “You mean to say we rear-ended ourselves?”
While in Oshkosh last weekend I experimented with some video of the Rocket Racer flights and other activities. Below is one short sample: the XCOR-powered Rocket Racer taking off on Saturday, August 2:
The Rocket Racing League’s first racer flew again at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Saturday. This time the weather was better than Friday, when a storm encroached on the area; Saturday featured clear skies and light winds, so the Rocket Racer, again piloted by Rick Searfoss, flew a more ambitious series of aerobatic maneuvers. (More pictures to come.)
One minor difference outside of the flight was that the second Rocket Racer, which had been on display at the RRL exhibit, was not there on Saturday. The vehicle is being towed back to Texas, where it will perform a test flight on Tuesday for the FAA. I did not see anyone from Armadillo around the exhibit either day, although one person had another commitment: founder John Carmack was at the QuakeCon tourament in Dallas this weekend, where he briefly talked about Armadillo with the Dallas Morning News. Carmack noted that the venture is now making a small profit after “eight years of being a money pit.” Carmack is spending 20 hours a week on Armadillo, on top of 40 hours at id Software; he said Armadillo is considering hiring a “full-time chief executive” in the near future.
I was at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Friday and saw the Rocket Racing League’s first vehicle fly during an afternoon performance. I have a collection of images from the day, including both the flight and some items at their exhibit, including the second racer (which, RRL officials said, will begin flying next week.) More insights to come.
On Friday Scaled Composites issued an accident investigation update about last July’s propulsion system test accident that killed three company employees and injured three others. The statement does not indicate a cause of the accident, and notes that a Cal OSHA investigation that wrapped up in January did not determine a cause. The statement does note that Scaled is making a number of changes, including:
Conducting increased compatibility testing between N2O and any materials that contact it in the tank and eliminate incompatible materials in the flow path;
Revising cleaning procedures to further minimize the risk of contaminants in the system;
Replacing the composite liner in the N2O tank with a metal tank liner;
Diluting N2O vapor in the tank with Nitrogen or another inert gas to decrease its volatility and/or act as a pressurant;
Designing additional safety systems for the N2O tank to minimize the danger due to tank overpressure; for example, a burst disk feature; and
Increasing the amount of testing during the development program to demonstrate that these design changes, and any improvements to system components, prevent the sequence of events
that led to the accident.
The statement does appear to indicate that Scaled is continuing with a nitrous hybrid propulsion system for SS2.
Well, someone is not too happy with the concept of personal spaceflight. In a letter to the editor in Saturday’s Washington Post, C. Anthony Altar of Garrett Park, Maryland, uses the WhiteKnightTwo rollout to complain that personal spaceflight is “selfish excess” that should be prohibited. Such travelers, or, rather, “eco-hypocrites”, “burn toluene and other pollutants” on their flights (not sure about the toluene, but no matter). “We cannot accept a narcissism that trumps common sense and pollutes the fragile atmosphere the rest of us must breathe,” he argues. “Public outrage can mobilize our government to outlaw this kind of activity.”
Dr. Altar (yes, he is President and Chief Scientific Officer at Psychiatric Genomics) is more than a little off base here. Yes, suborbital spaceflights will likely release some degree, however small, of pollutants—many human activities do. However, the small size of the vehicles, short burn time, and relatively low flight rate means that such flights will have a miniscule footprint on the environment compared to commercial aviation. Perhaps if he is really concerned about protecting the “fragile atmosphere”, he can try to “mobilize out government to outlaw” commercial aviation.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the status of SpaceShipTwo (SS2) did not come up in any of the public presentations during Monday’s event in Mojave. I was able to eventually track down Burt Rutan and ask him what the status of the program was, particularly after he said to another interviewer that the investigation into last year’s accident was wrapping up. “Yes, it’s over, and there’s a report,” he said. “With our new owner [Northrop Grumman] and with the constraints we’re under it’s difficult to get things released, but we’re in the process of doing that.”
Rutan confirmed that the investigation was causing “a lot” of design changes for SS2. “We have not worked on SpaceShipTwo in a year,” he said, “because there’s a possibility that the propulsion system would be markedly different and we’d be building things that we would have to scrap.” He declined to comment on whether, in fact, SS2 will have a different propulsion system than originally planned, saying that details about any changes would be announced “in a different venue.”
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