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TheGreenGoblin
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Branston is all in a pickle!

#681 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 6:57 am

E57RFZ0XIAApffQ.png

Let's hope Branson, et al, don't end up in one!
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Re: SpaceX

#682 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:03 am

Virgin Galactic will launch Richard Branson and three company employees to the edge of space on the morning of Sunday, July 11th. The company is promising quite a show for the mission: Stephen Colbert will host the mission’s livestream, singer-songwriter Khalid will reportedly perform a new single live onstage following the spaceplane’s landing, and Branson has said he’ll “announce something very exciting” after his spaceflight.

The flight marks one of the company’s final test missions before it aims to kick off commercial space tourism business next year. The mission, dubbed Unity 22, will mark Virgin Galactic’s fourth flight to space carrying humans, with its largest crew yet. Four people, including Branson, will test the astronaut cabin experience, and two pilots will be in the cockpit.

The action will start when Virgin Galactic’s twin-fuselage WhiteKnight carrier aircraft takes off from Spaceport America, the company’s spaceport in New Mexico on Sunday morning. The WhiteKnight aircraft, VMS Eve, will carry a rocket-powered spaceship called VSS Unity, with Branson and others on board. About 40 minutes after takeoff, Unity will drop from the middle of the mothership and ignite its rocket engine moments later to send Branson and the crew to the edge of space, about 55 miles high, for a few minutes of weightlessness. Unity will return to a landing strip at Spaceport America, much like any normal commercial airplane.

Unity 22 is a significant step forward for Virgin Galactic’s ambitions for space tourism, a burgeoning market catered to wealthy adventure-seekers. The company, started in 2004, has already sold roughly 600 tickets, with each ticket going for around $250,000. Branson is just one player in the billionaire-led race to court space tourists. He’s vying with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which aims to launch passengers on its suborbital New Shepard rocket, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which plans to put tourists in its orbital Crew Dragon capsule for a longer and more expensive experience in space.

Sunday’s mission has also been surrounded by an increasingly spicy air of competition with Bezos. Virgin Galactic announced Branson’s spaceflight a few weeks after Blue Origin announced it would send Bezos to space on July 20th. Then, Blue Origin announced it’d also fly Wally Funk on its July 20th mission, an aviator who initially planned to fly on Virgin Galactic’s spaceship first. Branson denies his new flight date was meant to beat Bezos to space; he told The Washington Post last week it was just a “wonderful coincidence that we’re going up in the same month.”
From The Verge...

Watch the show here starting at 9AM ET on Sunday (14:00 hrs local if you live in the UK)


https://youtube.com/c/VirginGalactic
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Re: SpaceX

#683 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:45 am

A spat has erupted over whether Branson’s flight really counts as going into space.

The boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, known as the Kármán line, has been a source of controversy for years.

Aeronatics standard setter Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the Switzerland-based world body, defines the Kármán line as the altitude of 100 kilometres (62 miles; 330,000 feet) above Earth’s mean sea level, as do several other organizations.

However, US space agency Nasa says the boundary is 50 miles, or 80 kilometers, above sea level, with pilots, mission specialists and civilians who cross this boundary officially deemed astronauts.

Seemingly stung that its prized “first” moment for space travel for the general public is being seized by Branson, Bezos’s Blue Origin took to Twitter to make digs alluding to whether Unity 22 is really going into space, instead of just to the edge of space.

“From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Kármán line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name,” the company tweeted Friday.

“For 96% of the world’s population, space begins 100km up at the internationally recognized Kármán line.”

Virgin Galactic hasn’t engaged in the social media banter, instead promoting the launch, and hosting a question and answer thread with Unity 22 crew members, with the flight label recognizing that this will be the 22nd flight of the company’s VSS Unity rocket plane, although the first to carry space travel passengers as opposed to crew.

Branson’s spaceplane will be borne aloft by a twin-fuselage carrier jet to an altitude of 50,000 feet, where the Unity craft riding upon it will then be released and soar by rocket power in an almost vertical climb through the outer fringe of Earth’s atmosphere.

By contrast, Blue Origin’s passenger capsule lifts off vertically atop a reusable rocket from a launchpad in west Texas, with Bezos’s flight on 20 July scheduled for the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing.

On 2 July, Branson had told CNN Business, “I don’t know for sure exactly when Jeff Bezos is going, he may decide to go before us, but I honestly don’t see this as a space race.”

“I would love for Jeff to come and see our flight off … I would love to go and watch him go in his flight, and I think both of us will wish each other well,” he continued.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... nson-orbit
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Re: SpaceX

#684 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 10:07 am

Bezos.JPG
Amen to that.
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Re: SpaceX

#685 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 10:19 am

Guy Messier's take on all this is very good as ever... <<link to an article that is well worth reading>>
Fewer than 25 suborbital spaceflights have ever been conducted
Most suborbital launches were conducted with vehicles retired decades ago
No suborbital flight has ever carried a paying passenger
There is no agreement on what even constitutes a suborbital spaceflight
http://parabolicarc.com/2021/07/10/to-b ... more-79841
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Re: SpaceX

#686 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:10 am

Given the flight today I was apt to think of those that have perished in pursuit of this dream, and those that lived, and pilot Peter Siebold came to mind.

Peter Siebold.JPG

http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/spac ... -survival/
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Re: SpaceX

#687 Post by Boac » Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:52 am

90 minute delay now due 'weather' with lift-off at 14:30Z and 'drop' scheduled for 15:20Z

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Re: SpaceX

#688 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 12:09 pm

Boac wrote:
Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:52 am
90 minute delay now due 'weather' with lift-off at 14:30Z and 'drop' scheduled for 15:20Z
Thanks for the update...

https://www.space.com/virgin-galactic-r ... tification
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Re: SpaceX

#689 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:46 pm

Bad start for the official link... which is now working... while I am not so sure about Stephen Colbert... this coverage is cringe making...
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Re: SpaceX

#690 Post by Boac » Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:52 pm

So far, 'Virgin on the ridiculous'

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Re: SpaceX

#691 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:56 pm

Boac wrote:
Sun Jul 11, 2021 2:52 pm
So far, 'Virgin on the ridiculous'
Let's put our tongues further up Branson's fundament.... truly embarrassing... I am not sure I can watch any more of this....
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Re: SpaceX

#692 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:04 pm

I’ve given up watching it. Really awful. Back to the tennis.......
The helicopter pilots' mantra: If it hasn't gone wrong then it's just about to...
https://www.glenbervie-weather.org

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Re: SpaceX

#693 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:17 pm

Imagine being stuck in a spacecraft with Veronica McGowan?... Aaagh! She is eject from the airlock, due to being so irritating, material.

Listening to the nasaaspacflight.com feed and just monitoring the muted official channel. Almost bearable. The Virgin Galactic channel is deficient at every level.

3 minutes to go.
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Re: SpaceX

#694 Post by Boac » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:21 pm

I feel Bojo would have been a better 'compere' than this Colbert - does that adequately indicate what I think?

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Re: SpaceX

#695 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:24 pm

Boac wrote:
Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:21 pm
I feel Bojo would have been a better 'compere' than this Colbert - does that adequately indicate what I think?
it does... =))


On its way. 40 second delay in coverage... poor, poor coverage...
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Re: SpaceX

#696 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:38 pm

Beardie's mouth opening and closing soundlessly... =))

Landed...
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Re: SpaceX

#697 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jul 11, 2021 3:47 pm



A lot of expense, risk and money to allow some wealthy people to experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the earth. Is it worth it?

I don't know to be honest.
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Re: SpaceX

#698 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Jul 11, 2021 8:54 pm

Yawn.

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Re: SpaceX

#699 Post by Boac » Thu Jul 15, 2021 10:52 am

Possibility of a B3 static fire today https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07 ... irst-time/
AND
The FAA having a go at SpaceX about the not 'insignificant' tower...... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/14/faa-war ... tower.html

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Re: SpaceX

#700 Post by Boac » Sat Jul 17, 2021 3:06 pm

What does the intelligentsia think? Is the possible spat with the FAA (no 'planning permission' :)) ) likely to hold back adding the 8th and 9th segments? BM is not using his postcard at the moment, so fire away.

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