Virgin Galactic, Branson's space venture

[tater]

 

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[RCgothic]

Virgin feel even more gradatim than BO. Pretty sure I was first hearing about Virgin's spaceflight ambitions twenty years ago.

Still not flying passengers suborbital.

[Scotius]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Virgin feel even more gradatim than BO. Pretty sure I was first hearing about Virgin's spaceflight ambitions twenty years ago.

Still not flying passengers suborbital.

Rocket science, man. It's hard.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, RCgothic said:

Virgin feel even more gradatim than BO. Pretty sure I was first hearing about Virgin's spaceflight ambitions twenty years ago.

Still not flying passengers suborbital.

They do have more casualties under their belt than every other private spaceflight company.

Combined.

[mikegarrison]

I'll just point out that no one has yet taken public passengers into space except for the Russians. It's a big step from test flights to making a boarding call for "flight 642 to the ionosphere".

Edited August 27, 2020 by mikegarrison

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[Nightside]

@tater , has this thing flown over your house yet?

[tater]

12 minutes ago, Nightside said:

@tater , has this thing flown over your house yet?

No!

The have flown the carrier around a bunch, but they can't be bothered to fly north over ABQ. They really should do some flybys since our tax dollars built the spaceport.

[kurja]

https://www.space.com/amp/virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-test-launch-october-2020.html

 

Apparently they have another test flight coming shortly, and one more planned after that - and then they'll start flying customers

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[tater]

Closer to home (for me, anyway):

 

[tater]

Spaceship 2 gets better livery:

 

 

[RyanRising]

So I'm sure I can find this info somewhere, but I haven't seen a discussion of it on this thread. What's up with that slanted nozzle they've got at the end of SpaceShipTwo? Is there some clearance requirement for it, or some sort of performance they gain from doing that?

EDIT: Apparently this sort of thing is called a "scarfed" nozzle. Still dunno why it's there, but using it to get a vectored thrust without gimbals seems somewhat reasonable.

Edited December 10, 2020 by RyanRising

[tater]

9 hours ago, RyanRising said:

So I'm sure I can find this info somewhere, but I haven't seen a discussion of it on this thread. What's up with that slanted nozzle they've got at the end of SpaceShipTwo? Is there some clearance requirement for it, or some sort of performance they gain from doing that?

Dunno. Instead of control surfaces, use thrust vector to maintain angle of attack, then save control surfaces for return glide? (harming any on ascent would be Immediately Bad™, and would also result in it being bad later on landing)

[mikegarrison]

Yeah, I don't know why they are called "scarfed" nozzles or inlets, but that's what they are called all right.

One purpose can be to shield some of the noise, but I doubt that is a concern here. (There have been proposals to scarf some airplane engine inlets to help shield the inlet noise from the ground. They have performance disadvantages, though.)

[Ultimate Steve]

This is a guess, but it could be to kinda like a permanent thrust vector, to help pull up early into the burn, or maybe to better direct thrust through the center of mass because the wings/landing gear will lower the CoM somewhat.

[mikegarrison]

6 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

This is a guess, but it could be to kinda like a permanent thrust vector, to help pull up early into the burn, or maybe to better direct thrust through the center of mass because the wings/landing gear will lower the CoM somewhat.

Searching on the internet, that seems to be the common answer people give to the question. It's a built-in permanent thrust vector that helps the airplane pitch up during the powered phase of their flight.

There is a certain amount of thrust inefficiency inherent to a scarfed nozzle, but I guess taking everything into account they decided this was their best design option.

[tater]

13 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

There is a certain amount of thrust inefficiency inherent to a scarfed nozzle, but I guess taking everything into account they decided this was their best design option.

They have that odd variable wing that is in one position for powered flight, then switches for descent. Switching early was what caused that fatal accident if I recall correctly, that's why I was assuming they wanted no control forces for "up" during powered flight maybe? Keep controlled surfaces only for lower velocity regimes during the glide phase?

[tater]

 

[RCgothic]

Abort.

The Problem with plane-dropped rockets is you don't get to recover the rocket on an abort.

 

[Brotoro]

Hopefully they recovered it.

[tater]

This rocket is crewed.

They are gliding down to the runway right now.

https://www.flightradar24.com/VGX01/264afbd5

Touchdown