SpaceShipTwo is Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceplane which completed its second victorious trial flight on Thursday, as stated in a report by Jeff Foust from SpaceNews’.

VSS Unity, the suborbital vehicle, departed from Californian Mojave Air and Space Port around 16:20 Eastern attached itself to the carrier WhiteKnightTwo aircraft, Foust said. WhiteKnightTwo released the SpaceShipTwo after about 40 minutes, sliding back to a Mojave runway landing.


http://flyinganarchy.com/second-suborbi ... -galactic/

I believe Space News has it wrong.. the sub orbital vehicle can not take off by itself and then connect to the White Knight.. the two are mated on the ground and the White Knight takes it to an elevation where it is launched..

kanban wrote:

I believe Space News has it wrong.. the sub orbital vehicle can not take off by itself and then connect to the White Knight..

That's not what they said. If you change "attached itself" to "itself attached" or just "attached", then you'll see what they were trying to say.

It's pathetic writing and editing... when you read departed, attached itself, etc the sequence described construes a mid air attachment.. trying to reword it in one's head to match verbiage to fact is just bad writing.

Another way to explain: add a comma.

AirstairFear wrote:

VSS Unity, the suborbital vehicle, departed from Californian Mojave Air and Space Port around 16:20 Eastern, attached itself to the carrier WhiteKnightTwo aircraft, Foust said.

kanban wrote:

It's pathetic writing and editing... when you read departed, attached itself, etc the sequence described construes a mid air attachment.. trying to reword it in one's head to match verbiage to fact is just bad writing.

No it is not. I am not a native English speaker, and I understood the phrasing perfectly. Yes, the phrasing is unusual, but you should be happy that at least some author's English is not catering to the lowest common denominator.

"Yes, the phrasing is unusual, but you should be happy that at least some author's English is not catering to the lowest common denominator."

News offerings or scientific scripts are not intended to be entrants to innovative language use.
The intention is to be precise in description.
( not achieved here

OK enough beating that dead horse. Kudos for the flight though.

AirstairFear wrote:

kanban wrote:

I believe Space News has it wrong.. the sub orbital vehicle can not take off by itself and then connect to the White Knight..

That's not what they said. If you change "attached itself" to "itself attached" or just "attached", then you'll see what they were trying to say.

Or just omit the word "itself". Will be clearer then.

Just to clarify, this was a glide test only. Unity was dropped from White Knight 2 and glided to a landing. It was not a suborbital flight (well, technically, I guess it was in the sense that it was well under any orbiting altitude and speed ).

This was the second glide test for Unity, almost a month after the 1st one. Apparently they had to wait a little while before the second one to iron out a few issues that came up during the first.

In any case, it's good to hear from Virgin Galactic and to know they're making progress. Understandably, they are a lot more cautious and a lot less bombastic about their headway these days... "Space is hard".
I wish them well.


http://www.space.com/35137-virgin-galactic-ends-2016-with-second-spaceshiptwo-glide-flight.html

Thanks for the accurate information, Francoflier! Indeed, lets wish the good luck and good progress!

There's finally some exciting news from Virgin Galactic, with the first supersonic flight of their rocket-powered Unity spaceship:

https://twitter.com/virgingalactic?ref_ ... r%5Eauthor

How far behind are they now? 5 years?

zanl188 wrote:

How far behind are they now? 5 years?

Their original goal was to be in space by the end of 2009.

At the time of winning the X prise this dual aircaft technology did appear the right way to go.For both tourism 'hops' and indeed launching small satellites.A decade on and sadly this is not the case (imho).Small sat's are now being launched by very cost effective small rockets -and bolted on to larger ones.
Regarding tourism -I am not so sure.Of course you have Jeff Bezos who appears to be ready whenever he cares to start.Bit I noted yesterday an article (BBC website) of a space hotel that is being actively planned.
I know that Spacex are not interested in space tourism but with BFR they could (if they wished) lob 50-100 pax up in one go.Do a few circuits of the Earth and come back -probably for half the price.And sell a few hats as well !!
I do wish them the best though.

Things finally seem to be picking up pace over at Virgin Galactic.

VSS Unity just carried out its second supersonic flight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsPHywoQZWA
http://www.virgingalactic.com/articles/ ... ic-Flight/

They said it reached Mach 1.9 which, in itself, is not particularly impressive I suppose but then again it was going straight upwards...
Altitude reached was 114,500 ft, which is still some ways away from the Karman line (though I'm not sure what their ultimate goal is).

If the video is to be believed, it seems the trajectory was ballistic and that they were inverted near apogee, in free fall.

Looks like a fun ride!

https://www.virgingalactic.com/articles ... at-Mach-2/

Mach 2.4, apogee 170,800 feet.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/63294519 ... est-flight

Sir Richard quoted "Before the end of the year I hope to be sitting in a Virgin Galactic spaceship, going to space"...

Seabear wrote:

Sir Richard quoted "Before the end of the year I hope to be sitting in a Virgin Galactic spaceship, going to space"...

Over-optimism is a rampant disease among Space-industry entrepreneurs, and SRB will not be flying to space this year after all. Can't say I'm surprised.

That being said, Virgin Galactic is pressing ahead and is due for another launch today. This one should make it to about 50 miles up.

https://spacenews.com/virgin-galactic-r ... wo-flight/

I don't know what to think about Virgin Galactic anymore. They've been pushing their idea for space democratization for almost 15 years now, and so far have little to show for it. Among the delays, drama and lack of tangible results at a time where New Origin has a fancier, more performant and flight-proven rocket/capsule almost ready to launch their first paying passengers, it's hard to know whether those wealthy enough for a space joyride would still put their faith and money in that venture.

I still want them to succeed and find their clientele. I do hope they manage to make touristic suborbital flights as common as scenic chopper rides over the Grand Canyon.
At least it seems they might be entering the final stretch. But that has been said before... Space is hard.

Good luck to them!

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/13/virgin- ... space.html

Successful flight reaching 53 miles. Technically "space" by NASA standards.

Technically in space is the best kind of in Space.

Their tweet about completing the first manned space flight since the Space Shuttle is a bit like me claiming to have dunked a basketball because I can graze the bottom of the net if I try hard.

DarkKnight5 wrote:

Technically in space is the best kind of in Space.

Their tweet about completing the first manned space flight since the Space Shuttle is a bit like me claiming to have dunked a basketball because I can graze the bottom of the net if I try hard.

Yeah.. It's not like they launched a car into space or anything.

DarkKnight5 wrote:

Technically in space is the best kind of in Space.

Lol.

I like how instead of aiming for the Karman line they simply, and quite literally, lower the bar:

"That altitude goal is approximately 80 kilometers, or 50 miles. “I think what we’ll see is something not far over 50 [miles],” said George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, if the flight goes as expected. The company has identified 50 miles as the altitude for reaching space, as NASA and the U.S. Air Force award astronaut wings to those who exceed that altitude.

That is below the 100-kilometer Karman Line that had been widely used as the definition of space, particularly during the Ansari X Prize competition for commercial suborbital vehicles won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. Whitesides, asked about the Karman Line, pointed to recent papers that suggested that 80 kilometers was a better altitude for demarcating space and an initiative by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world air sports federation that maintains records for both aviation and spaceflight, to revisit the definition of the line."

Yeeeah...

trpmb6 wrote:

DarkKnight5 wrote:

Technically in space is the best kind of in Space.

Their tweet about completing the first manned space flight since the Space Shuttle is a bit like me claiming to have dunked a basketball because I can graze the bottom of the net if I try hard.

Yeah.. It's not like they launched a car into space or anything.

Correct. Also, they didn’t get said car into a heliocentric orbit with an apohelion beyond Mars’ orbit.

More eloquent commentary than mine:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a25573688/virgin-galactic-hype-richard-branson-space-race/

Francoflier wrote:

DarkKnight5 wrote:

Technically in space is the best kind of in Space.

Lol.

I like how instead of aiming for the Karman line they simply, and quite literally, lower the bar:

"That altitude goal is approximately 80 kilometers, or 50 miles. “I think what we’ll see is something not far over 50 [miles],” said George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, if the flight goes as expected. The company has identified 50 miles as the altitude for reaching space, as NASA and the U.S. Air Force award astronaut wings to those who exceed that altitude.

That is below the 100-kilometer Karman Line that had been widely used as the definition of space, particularly during the Ansari X Prize competition for commercial suborbital vehicles won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. Whitesides, asked about the Karman Line, pointed to recent papers that suggested that 80 kilometers was a better altitude for demarcating space and an initiative by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world air sports federation that maintains records for both aviation and spaceflight, to revisit the definition of the line."

Yeeeah...

I like to think of it as being similar to the Voyagers. How many times now have we been told that Voyager 1 has enter interstellar space? At least a couple times now I believe.

If Branson can get enough people to stump up $$$$ then good luck to him -and Jeff Bezos when he kicks off.But as the attached article above says so well.Its not that much of an achievement.They clearly can't make the Karman line indeed not even close,but luckily they can reach the point where customers can receive their space 'wings' Forget the few mins of weightlessness- that's got nothing to do with space just a parabolic curve which you could do in an aircraft.
I certainly won't be sainting my money.

Why is Branson going with joyrides-for-the-rich business model instead of taking customers from point A to B? Certainly the later would be more lucrative.

TWA772LR wrote:

Why is Branson going with joyrides-for-the-rich business model instead of taking customers from point A to B? Certainly the later would be more lucrative.

His platform doesn't have legs.
range wouldn't be much bigger than 3..4 times height reached.
you could probably go faster by car on the ground

I just watched the video - they said 66,000ft it reached? I swear the concorde flew at 60,000ft. Am I missing something here?

No you must have misread.Went approx 50 miles up.Below the Karman line but high enough ( just) to be called space.I did note the carrier aircaft went to 50k feet when it usually goes to 45k feet.It suggests to me that it's been a bit of a struggle to get to official 'space'.
Still the punters probably won't mind as long as they get their 'Astronaut badge'.
Whether it will make much difference it's hard to tell but clearly New Shepherd can go above the Karman line 100,000 Kms.
What I don't understand from a consumer perspective is Blue Origins idea of putting no staff on board for the rocket flight.I think people may get scared and panic.Furthermore can you envisage all these punters un buckled then floating about for a few mins.Then somehow ( they've never done anything like this before) getting back to their correct seat and re buckling themselves in ( all of them) in the space of a few mins really for re-entry.Just not possible imho - actually dangerous thinking about it.Gotta have one cabin crew.

parapente wrote:

Furthermore can you envisage all these punters un buckled then floating about for a few mins.Then somehow ( they've never done anything like this before) getting back to their correct seat and re buckling themselves in ( all of them) in the space of a few mins really for re-entry.Just not possible imho - actually dangerous thinking about it.Gotta have one cabin crew.

You know about those sprung roller dog leashes ?
Then:
As they need an incognito plain clothes Air Marshall anyway ...
fixing any ruckus is solved already.

Tee hee!
But seriously I really believe it would be a catastrophe without someone in charge.Really dangerous.I think fear would arrive very quickly.
And no they wouldn't be allowed to 'float around' at all imho.
Anyway we will see next year.Clearly Virgin are ready and Jeff is not far behind.I really don't see it as a money spinner myself.
As an ex pilot I have every reason to want to go,but 10 min joy ride at v high altitude for quarter of a million bucks just doesn't sound good value to me.
Now double/quadruple the price and give me a couple of orbits and you're on! Whilst I couldn't easily afford it ,frankly at $1 million a couple of orbits would be v good value.6 pep's and a crew member.So 6 million gross income.Guess it's not enough sadly.I wonder what a profitable dragon orbital flight for 6 would be? Any guesses?

Sorry was being lazy.Will answer my own question.Spacex charge approx $60 million a launch-with profits.So that's €10 m a person.But of course you have to land as well.Lets add 50% and call it $15 m per person.That would do it.
Soooo $15m per person for ( let's say ) 6- 10 orbits. You know frankly there are plenty of people for whom that's money they could burn for the absolute ultimate experience -orbiting our planet in real space.
Don't think Musk is the slightest bit interested but if he wanted to add to his F9 launch manifesto,I believe he could very easily indeed.
By next year Dragon will be human rated -it's all totally possible if he wanted some extra money and absolute massive publicity!

parapente wrote:

No you must have misread.Went approx 50 miles up.Below the Karman line but high enough ( just) to be called space.I did note the carrier aircaft went to 50k feet when it usually goes to 45k feet.It suggests to me that it's been a bit of a struggle to get to official 'space'.
Still the punters probably won't mind as long as they get their 'Astronaut badge'.
Whether it will make much difference it's hard to tell but clearly New Shepherd can go above the Karman line 100,000 Kms.
What I don't understand from a consumer perspective is Blue Origins idea of putting no staff on board for the rocket flight.I think people may get scared and panic.Furthermore can you envisage all these punters un buckled then floating about for a few mins.Then somehow ( they've never done anything like this before) getting back to their correct seat and re buckling themselves in ( all of them) in the space of a few mins really for re-entry.Just not possible imho - actually dangerous thinking about it.Gotta have one cabin crew.

Do you think the customer base for these flights will be from the LCC's of the world?

There will be a little more than the FA with the we are here for your safety brief before the flight. I hope you are just joking with this post.

Another successful flight for SpaceShip Two.
This time, they went up to 89 Km and Mach 3. Interestingly, they had a 'passenger' of sorts; a Virgin Galactic employee.
Along with some Nasa experiments, they were apparently close to commercial weight.

Still well short of the 100 Km Karman line, however, which Bezos criticized them for recently... The race is heating up now, as both companies seem close to flying their first commercial passengers.

https://spacenews.com/spaceshiptwo-flie ... ace-again/

I know it's just suborbital but it is so cool do see what they can do. A reusable mini shuttle for the average (rich) person to book tickets on. A private Mach 3 spaceplane. I hope we get some good HD footage.

A little update on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two, which just completed another successful flight yesterday:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57214988
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TVs2lWk_GI

They are expecting to complete two more flights before the end of the year to obtain certification from the FAA, then they can start carrying revenue passengers.
The next 2 flights will carry Virgin staff, including Sir Richard Branson on the second one.

It's good to finally see them so cose to their goal, after years of hard and painful development.
They have more than 600 customers lined up and, seeing the footage, I can understand why wealthy people would pony up the money... it looks like quite a ride.
Although, interestingly, their first commercial customer flight will be for the Italian Air Force, which will perform micro-G experiments.

Francoflier wrote:

A little update on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two, which just completed another successful flight yesterday:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57214988
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TVs2lWk_GI

They are expecting to complete two more flights before the end of the year to obtain certification from the FAA, then they can start carrying revenue passengers.
The next 2 flights will carry Virgin staff, including Sir Richard Branson on the second one.

It's good to finally see them so cose to their goal, after years of hard and painful development.
They have more than 600 customers lined up and, seeing the footage, I can understand why wealthy people would pony up the money... it looks like quite a ride.
Although, interestingly, their first commercial customer flight will be for the Italian Air Force, which will perform micro-G experiments.

But we are a few months from seeing that Dragon flight, to orbit, for several days, which for 'space tourism' kind of puts this in the shade, (which Branson will not like).
Yes that flight is one arranged by a billionaire with pax essentially as a charity, however there will be others, with more on board, the costs will come down. Not including the Hollywood flight to the ISS planned late this year/early next.
Then the sub orbital one from Blue Origin, admittedly that also has been going a long time with no pax, though nothing compared to 'SpaceShipTwo' (Starting services next year, each year, from 2007).

A lot has been said about, in space, government bad (NASA), private good (and much faster and cheaper), well Branson has certainly not proved that, SS2 makes SLS look swift, Space X has done so (in part though by getting government contracts via NASA), but you need a massively committed CEO and team who are proper engineers.
And Blue Origin? The jury is still out. For pax at least, their contribution so far is in engine development.

You can't really compare SpaceShip Two and Crew Dragon when it comes to space tourism. They belong to a completely different price bracket.

Even on a used booster and used capsule, a Dragon flight will never cost less than a few dozen million dollars. Even if you cram 7 or 8 paying pax in there, we are still talking about several million dollars a head. A bargain compared to what you would have had to pay NASA or Roscosmos for a ride a few years back, but still not the democratic access to space we all dream of.
In the case of SS2, we may only be talking about a suborbital flight that's only a few minutes long but thanks to a more modest vehicle that is 100% reusable, we are talking about several hundred thousand dollars per pax at most.

They're not after the same clients. SpaceX will cater to billionaires and multi-millionaires whereas Virgin will cater to the mere, plebeian millionaire...
As to how it compares to a ride on New Shepard, I guess it's up to individual preference. A rocket/capsule combo vs. the spaceplane formula. It remains to be seen whether these 2 will compete on price, however. I have a feeling a New Shepard flight will be more costly overall than an SS2 flight.

I'm pretty sure Virgin Galactic will not struggle to find customers as long as they keep it safe. I'd happily have a go myself, should my wife not mind living under a bridge for a while.

I agree that price and experience will be the competition between SS2 and New Shepard, the latter we don't know the prices yet but it looks to be a superior experience and for the layman/passenger, a lot less moving parts, in both senses of the term.
Likely safer too, remember SS2 has in the air and in an earlier ground explosion at the facility, killed people.
If New Shepard gets pax on board in the near future it could have that part of the market if not to itself, then a distinct advantage.

GDB wrote:

Likely safer too, remember SS2 has in the air and in an earlier ground explosion at the facility, killed people.
If New Shepard gets pax on board in the near future it could have that part of the market if not to itself, then a distinct advantage.

I'm not sure we can compare the safety merely on the basis of past accidents. Both are potentially dangerous trips.

AirlineCritic wrote:

GDB wrote:

Likely safer too, remember SS2 has in the air and in an earlier ground explosion at the facility, killed people.
If New Shepard gets pax on board in the near future it could have that part of the market if not to itself, then a distinct advantage.

I'm not sure we can compare the safety merely on the basis of past accidents. Both are potentially dangerous trips.

Yes, just the whole SS2 set up seems more inherently risky.
Cards on the table, I don't like air launched manned vehicles, not for commercial use at least. This is not record breaking research by elite test pilots, X-15 style.
For small satellites certainly it can work, as shown with that L1011 launched system and now Virgin's own 747 based one, which could well be a modest success, albeit in an increasingly crowded market.

If New Shepard does fly with people this year, with all the footage and PR, that may well cast a shadow over SS2, after all Branson knows the value of PR.

Well there you have it, in quite possibly the most pretentious and underwhelming manner possible, Richard Branson has gone to space.

I’m glad we live in a world where a billionaire can make his dream of flying a novelty airplane kind of sort of a little bit close to space for a few minutes a reality, while telling us what an amazing achievement it is for the rest of us.

Not a mention of Rutan on the VG webcast. Whole concept was his brainchild.

Ridiculous undertaking for a ridiculous price but that's what our world has come to. Meanwhile the forests are burning and polar ice caps are melting but no let's go to "space" for 30 seconds because we can.

Strato2 wrote:

Ridiculous undertaking for a ridiculous price but that's what our world has come to. Meanwhile the forests are burning and polar ice caps are melting but no let's go to "space" for 30 seconds because we can.

The whole billionaire space programs don’t bother me much. SpaceX is launching (real) astronauts, creating a satellite Internet service, and offering lower cost launches. Blue Origin is…building engines, or something. No one really seems to know.

But Virgin is just pure vanity. You pay a fortune to dip your toes in space for barely 2 minutes, all while laying claim to the title of astronaut. The space equivalent of taking a harbor dinner cruise and claiming to be a seasoned sailor.

Can we leave them up there? Especially Bezos who looks like he came from outer space.

Sadly SS2 didn't even cross the Kármán line, let alone get anywhere near orbital velocities. Musk is the only billionaire with access to LEO, perhaps he could offer a seat to the other two.

Apart from carying pax and one more pilot, I find it's flight performance somewhat similar to that of the X-15.

The US/NASA/USAF started the thing by calling astronauts test pilots who flew a bit high.

Redefine astronaut as people who made one orbit and be done with it.

It wouldn't even hurt pioneers who made suborbital flights as astronauts as they did eventually fulfill the criteria.

Strato2 wrote:

Ridiculous undertaking for a ridiculous price but that's what our world has come to. Meanwhile the forests are burning and polar ice caps are melting but no let's go to "space" for 30 seconds because we can.

I agree - how is pumping that much exhaust into the upper atmosphere a good idea. It would be interesting to see how much CO2 the launch aircraft and whatever rubber based fuel and oxidizer the suborbital ship puts out.