At the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Orlando, Florida today Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn said that he "could confirm" that SpaceShip Two (SS2) would fly before the end of the year and that he hoped the SS2 could be air launched by its mothership WhiteKnight Two (WK2) prototype Eve and glide back to Earth
Whitehorn also confirmed that Eve would overfly the 19 June ground breaking ceremony of Spaceport America in Las Cruces on a non-stop round trip and that the mothership would fly into the EAA Airventure, Oshkosh, air show on 28 July and carry out demonstration flights during that week
He also spoke about the completion of firing tests for what he called "rocket motor two," video of which can be seen here. Speculating further on the future Whitehorn talked about bio-butanol based fuel produced by algae being used by WK2's Pratt & Whitney Canada 308A engines
Hyperbola watched Whitehorn's ISDC presentation via spacevidcast.com
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Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two glide flight test before end of year
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on May 28, 2009 8:03 PM | Reply
It's very impressive stuff to be sure. Also it's nice to see a company taking a proper engineering based approach to air-launch space access.
One thing that I don't see much discussion of is the potential for orbital and luna-orbital SpaceShipTwo flights.
I wonder, if the passengers mass was replaced by fuel and air if the pilot would be capable of taking the ship into orbit?
Does anyone with more expertise have an opinion on that?
on May 29, 2009 9:40 AM | Reply
Rutan has actually talked about an orbit capable spaceshipone http://tinyurl.com/kpf4qq
I don't know what you mean by luna orbital. As for passenger mass and fuel, with SS2 that would require substantial redesign as the solid rocket motor and its nitrous oxide oxidiser is in an unpressurised part of the vehicle and that would have to be enlarged and the pressurised cabin would have to be reduced in size. The ascent trajectory would also have to change to enable an orbit rather than the straight up and down that suborbit involves and that and orbital ascent speeds needed will require substantially better thermal protection for going up and especially for coming back down again. There are also acceleration limitations with solid fuels so you will hit a barrier for payloads to 'x' km at some point.