SpaceShipTwo

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Cacophonix

SpaceShipTwo

#1 Post by Cacophonix » Wed Nov 18, 2015 5:46 pm

For those of you ppruned, if any, who are interested in Virgin Galactic's alliance with Scaled Composites and their SpaceShipTwo programme based upon Scaled's earlier success story in winning the Ansari prize, journalist and owner of the Parabolic arc website, Doug Messier has put together a very good synopsis of events leading up to and including the test flight that resulted in the tragic death of test pilot Mike Alsbury and miraculous escape of his colleague, test pilot Pete Siebold...

Doug Messier is pretty sceptical about the role of Richard Branson's over optimistic pronouncements and marketing of the enterprise throughout the programme to date but I think he is fair in his comments and is well informed generally...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipTwo

Image

In his autobiography, Chuck Yeager dismissed Tom Wolfe’s “right stuff” as a meaningless phrase for describing a pilot’s attributes. Good pilots are not born, they are made. Yeager attributed his success to a combination of natural abilities (good coordination, excellent eyesight, intuitive understanding of machinery, coolness under pressure) and good old-fashioned hard work. He worked his tail off learning how to fly, learned everything he could about the aircraft he flew, and spent more time flying them than anyone else. Yeager also mentioned another factor: luck. He was born at the right time, and found himself in the right places to make a career out of flying. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he always managed to find his way out of tight spots through a combination of skill and luck. “The secret to my success was that I somehow always managed to fly another day,” Yeager wrote. “To be remembered for accomplishing significant things, a test pilot has to survive. Hell, I could have busted my ass a dozen times over and nobody would have heard of me. I would have been Yeager Boulevard carrying military housewives to the commissary at Edwards.” On the morning of Oct. 31, 2014, Mike Alsbury’s luck ran out in the sky near Koehn Lake. Piloting SpaceShipTwo in powered flight for the first time in 18 months, he made a mistake from which he could not recover. The ship broke up, and he plummeted to Earth still strapped into his seat. His friend Pete Siebold was extremely lucky. He was thrown free of SpaceShipTwo as it disintegrated around him. When he regained consciousness in the thin air, he had the presence of mind to release himself from his seat so the parachute could deploy later. The chute was undamaged by the breakup and saved his life
. - See more at:http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/11/16/shock-tears-spin-aftermath-spaceshiptwo-crash/#sthash.zmayCwNd.dpuf

from Part 5 of the series

Caco

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Re: SpaceShipTwo

#2 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sat May 22, 2021 6:24 pm

Virgin Galactic launches third successful spaceflight

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/22/tech/vir ... index.html

(CNN)Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered plane, carrying two pilots, soared into the upper atmosphere on its third mission to reach space Saturday morning.

The success cues up Virgin Galactic to begin launching paying customers within the next year as the company works to finish its testing campaign at its new headquarters in New Mexico.
Spaceplane VSS Unity reached an altitude of 55.45 miles, according to the company. The US government recognizes the 50-mile mark as the edge of space. The company tweeted Saturday morning that the spaceflight carried technology experiments for NASA's Flight Opportunities Program.
News of Virgin Galactic's test flight appeared to encourage investors earlier in the week, as they sent shares soaring more than 14% on Wednesday.
Saturday's flight comes after Virgin Galactic's last spaceflight attempt ended abruptly when the rocket engine that powers the space plane, called VSS Unity, failed to ignite, setting the company's testing schedule back by months.

Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004, has spent years pledging to take groups of customers on brief, scenic flights to suborbital space. But the company has faced a series of complications and delays, including a 2014 test flight crash that left one pilot dead.
Nonetheless, Virgin Galactic has already sold tickets for $200,000 to $250,000 to more than 600 people. And the company said it expects to see broad interest when ticket sales reopen -- tickets that will be sold at a higher price than previously.
Recently, the company installed a new CEO, former Disney executive Michael Colglazier, and has been pledging to slowly ramp up to commercial operations over the next year or so. It's also focused on constructing a new line of planes, called SpaceShipIII, and is angling to one day fly about 400 flights each year from its New Mexico spaceport.

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Re: SpaceShipTwo

#3 Post by G-CPTN » Sat May 22, 2021 6:33 pm

Just like the US gallon is smaller than the Imperial gallon,
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), an international standard-setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics, defines the Kármán line as the altitude of 100 kilometres (62 miles; 330,000 feet) above Earth's mean sea level. Other organizations do not all use this definition.

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Re: SpaceShipTwo

#4 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sat May 22, 2021 6:57 pm

OK.
Your's is bigger! :ymdevil:

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