Virgin Galactic, Branson's space venture

[Bill Phil]

59 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

Meh, spaceX already does that. But it will be interesting to see how they will do it.

And BO (before SpaceX), NASA, USAF...

[Xd the great]

4 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

And BO (before SpaceX), NASA, USAF...

Well, the space shuttle was way too expensive...

Blue origin beat space by days?

Plus using parachutes to crash into the ocean makes reuse expensive.

[Bill Phil]

33 minutes ago, Xd the great said:

Well, the space shuttle was way too expensive...

Blue origin beat space by days?

Plus using parachutes to crash into the ocean makes reuse expensive.

The Space Shuttle was expensive, yes. But it was still reused.

Blue Origin reused a rocket before SpaceX did. Many will say that it wasn't an orbital class rocket, but it very could've been, had there been a second stage, and maybe a third stage.

[Xd the great]

26 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

The Space Shuttle was expensive, yes. But it was still reused.

Blue Origin reused a rocket before SpaceX did. Many will say that it wasn't an orbital class rocket, but it very could've been, had there been a second stage, and maybe a third stage.

The whole point of reuseability is its cost. I would surely like to see more reuseable launchcraft.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, Xd the great said:

The whole point of reuseability is its cost. I would surely like to see more reuseable launchcraft.

Reusability is worthless if you don't launch enough. That's what the Shuttle suffered from. 

More reusable vehicles would be great. But there needs to be demand for the services they will provide.

[Xd the great]

33 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

More reusable vehicles would be great. But there needs to be demand for the services they will provide.

well, there is. I really want to launch Kim Jong un into space atop a rocket(aka ICBM)

[tater]

 

[kerbiloid]

21 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Reusability is worthless if you don't launch enough. That's what the Shuttle suffered from. 

Imho, Shuttle mostly suffered from "every flight must be crewed". Without that its life would be much easier.

[Bill Phil]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Imho, Shuttle mostly suffered from "every flight must be crewed". Without that its life would be much easier.

The Shuttle program cost billions even during years where there was not a single launch. The system and infrastructure could not sustain launch rates high enough to have decent costs.

The requirement for a crew was a major disadvantage, and there were concepts for cargo only variants, delivering 70 tons or more to LEO.

[wumpus]

On 6/27/2018 at 3:15 AM, Bill Phil said:

Reusability is worthless if you don't launch enough. That's what the Shuttle suffered from. 

More reusable vehicles would be great. But there needs to be demand for the services they will provide.

USAF/NASA launched three X-15s for a combined 99 missions (although very few went into space).  It was a fairly high visibility program, but hardly the megabucks that went into 135 Shuttle flights.  Part of this means don't try to compare sub orbital to orbital, and part of this means that a fast launch cadence can get things done wildly cheaper than a plodding shuttle cadence. 

And don't try to compare the 135 shuttle flights to 20? (absolute highest) that Apollo had.  I can't imagine Congress paying for 135 Saturn [1 or V] launches (even if they were cheaper).  Reusability introduces the sunk-cost fallacy and can be quite useful in getting Congress to pay for another Shuttle Launch.  Remember: no bucks, no Buck Rogers.

[mikegarrison]

The shuttle was America's space station / satellite launch / crew delivery / ISS construction / PR project all rolled into one, and it was accordingly very expensive. It seems like the lesson everybody wants to learn from the shuttle is that it failed, except without the shuttle there would be no ISS, no crew and cargo delivery to ISS, no years and years of US experience living and working in space for a week or so at a time, and no very valuable experience at what to do and not to do with reusability.

All that, there is still no orbital spacecraft that been reused more than once except the shuttle. And none that have been reused with shorter turnaround times than the shuttle.

[Xd the great]

So, the shuttle was a rather fail reuseable vehicle.

Would have been better if they used the SpaceX/BO method.

Try mounting a space shuttle on a falcon heavy.

[tater]

On 6/30/2018 at 2:52 PM, mikegarrison said:

The shuttle was America's space station / satellite launch / crew delivery / ISS construction / PR project all rolled into one, and it was accordingly very expensive. It seems like the lesson everybody wants to learn from the shuttle is that it failed, except without the shuttle there would be no ISS, no crew and cargo delivery to ISS, no years and years of US experience living and working in space for a week or so at a time, and no very valuable experience at what to do and not to do with reusability.

All that, there is still no orbital spacecraft that been reused more than once except the shuttle. And none that have been reused with shorter turnaround times than the shuttle.

Yes and no.

I agree technically, but some are interwoven in an odd way.

Space Station Freedom, turned into ISS. It was busy work for Shuttle, just as the Gateway is busy work for SLS/Orion. They need something to do, so they do it. Had we learned the Shuttle lesson sooner (ie: had we cared that it was insanely expensive for what we got), we would have likely gone with some big cargo boosters, and perhaps a smaller, crew shuttle (Dream Chaser, anyone?). Figuring that out in the 1980s results in a counterfactual history, and any arguments about what the Shuttle gave us needs to look at plausible counterfactuals for the opportunity costs of Shuttle, IMO.

DCX and other resuse paradigms were not new, NASA contractors had loads of (very good) ideas since the early 1960s.

4 hours ago, Xd the great said:

So, the shuttle was a rather fail reuseable vehicle.

It was outrageously expensive.

4 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Would have been better if they used the SpaceX/BO method.

There were other VTVL options looks at even in the early 1960s, I'd say SpaceX and BO are using the "Phil Bono method," in fact, neither invented it. More recently, both benefit from DCX.

4 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Try mounting a space shuttle on a falcon heavy.

LOL, no.

[insert_name]

http://spacenews.com/virgin-orbit-wins-faa-license-for-first-launcherone-mission/

Virgin orbit looks pretty serious, have been granted a license for a launch this year

[mikegarrison]

30 minutes ago, insert_name said:

http://spacenews.com/virgin-orbit-wins-faa-license-for-first-launcherone-mission/

Virgin orbit looks pretty serious, have been granted a license for a launch this year

I kind of laughed about their "exciting" drop test. People have been dropping objects shaped roughly like this from airplanes for a long time now....

Anyway, according to Wikipedia they plan to specialize in lifting 200kg payloads into sun-synchronous orbits.

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2018 by tater

[tater]

VSS Unity has apparently done a partial duration rocket burn, and is gliding home.

[tater]

 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

Congrats to them on the successful test flight! Blue Origin appears to be creating a sense of urgency.

I remember people saying that due to post-crash modifications, SpaceShipTwo no longer had the capability to get to space. I've heard people say this is still true, and I've heard people say that the next iteration of SpaceShipTwo will fix this. Anyone have any up to date information?

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Congrats to them on the successful test flight! Blue Origin appears to be creating a sense of urgency.

I remember people saying that due to post-crash modifications, SpaceShipTwo no longer had the capability to get to space. I've heard people say this is still true, and I've heard people say that the next iteration of SpaceShipTwo will fix this. Anyone have any up to date information?

By "space" you mean 100 km?

[Ultimate Steve]

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

By "space" you mean 100 km?

Yes.

[tater]

46 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

By "space" you mean 100 km?

Actually, it's my understanding that Virgin is using the USAF value, 50 miles (~80km). There was a news story in just the last few days about moving the line, too:

 

 

I was looking for a link, so I might be wrong on the altitude, and they are going to 100km since I can't find it. I swear I read that, though.

Looks like early flights will be over 50 miles (USAF def) and they will count that as space, and they will try for 100km at a later date (but making it to 80.4 km will count, so anything higher is gravy as far as they are concerned). A few articles (space.com, etc) mention this. Can't find a definitive thing on the lousy VG website.

[wumpus]

On 6/27/2018 at 3:15 AM, Bill Phil said:

Reusability is worthless if you don't launch enough. That's what the Shuttle suffered from. 

More reusable vehicles would be great. But there needs to be demand for the services they will provide.

The space shuttle launched 135 times with 5 shuttles.  Each one launched far more time than any Falcon 9 ever has and I doubt that any block 5 will get to those numbers.  The Shuttle's problem wasn't "not launching enough", although that would certainly harm most programs.  The shuttle's most obvious issue was the shear cost to refurbish the shuttle to launch condition.

[scrubs spacex rant, replaces with more on thread topic]

A better example would be the X-15, which flew 199 missions on 3 air/spacecraft.  I suspect the whole budget is still classified, but it had to be less the 135 shuttle flights.  All 199 missions were completed in 9 years (actually only 177 were powered, but more flights than the shuttle ever tried.  Note most were speed runs with few going into space).

[Bill Phil]

2 minutes ago, wumpus said:

The space shuttle launched 135 times with 5 shuttles.  Each one launched far more time than any Falcon 9 ever has and I doubt that any block 5 will get to those numbers.  The Shuttle's problem wasn't "not launching enough", although that would certainly harm most programs.  The shuttle's most obvious issue was the shear cost to refurbish the shuttle to launch condition.

[scrubs spacex rant, replaces with more on thread topic]

A better example would be the X-15, which flew 199 missions on 3 air/spacecraft.  I suspect the whole budget is still classified, but it had to be less the 135 shuttle flights.  All 199 missions were completed in 9 years (actually only 177 were powered, but more flights than the shuttle ever tried.  Note most were speed runs with few going into space).

The Shuttle only made sense economically if they flew it at almost impossible rates. I say almost because it could've flown at those rates, but the necessary infrastructure and other investments were not made available, and the program was limited by that.

The Shuttle cost a large amount to refurbish, yes. But this cost was still less than the over 1 billion dollar launch cost, by a large margin. The program itself was a multi billion dollar per year project, whether or not a single launch even happened in that year. The majority of the Shuttle program's cost wasn't refurbishing the orbiters and building a new ET, but just having tens of thousands of people employed. 

They launched 135 times, over 30 years. The original design goal was 100 launches per orbiter. They didn't even break 40. Could they have gotten 100 launches per orbiter? Not with that design, but the real issue with the Shuttle was lack of continued development. The Space shuttle was effectively a series of prototypes for reusable vehicles. 

Reusability only makes sense when there's enough demand for launch services.