Lampyridae - 29/1/2008 8:46 PMVirgin Galactic has already collected something like $40 million in ticket sales. SS2 is fully reusable and has a (projected) flight rate of something like 100 per year, with what seems like a rock solid business case....
kevin-rf - 30/1/2008 8:46 AMAnother would be a set of LEO birds that provide decent resolution IR coverage every half hour or so for detecting, tracking, and fighting wild fires. If we could only make the birds and place them in orbit cheap enough to actually do it.
aero313 - 30/1/2008 8:11 AMQuoteLampyridae - 29/1/2008 8:46 PMVirgin Galactic has already collected something like $40 million in ticket sales. SS2 is fully reusable and has a (projected) flight rate of something like 100 per year, with what seems like a rock solid business case....Right, just like the Space Shuttle business case of 50 flights a year for $4.5 MILLION (with an "M") per flight. How did that work out?
BTW, this thread is kinda OT from the title.
jongoff - 30/1/2008 10:31 AM Well, to be fair to Scaled, this is actually their *second* spaceship. They've already gotten some data on what it takes to turn one of these things around ... Plus they have a much simpler system that was designed from the start for operations.
Also, Burt has this nasty habit of not trying to acheive (or, even more importantly, promise!) more than he knows can chew, even if the bites are pretty big. Bad, bad Burt, if you keep acheiving what you promise, you will give us all a bad rep...
I don't think that's what edkyle99 meant - he was not comparing a 79XX with a Delta K on top versus a T-II with a Delta K on top. He was comparing a T-II with a Delta K on top with a T-II with a Castor-30 on top!
tnphysics - 20/2/2008 1:42 PMIt will be drop-launched from an aircraft.
tnphysics - 20/2/2008 3:42 PMIt will be drop-launched from an aircraft.
Patchouli - 20/2/2008 5:48 PM1. Looking at Cynus' payload it appears to be a small vehicle that will fly very often vs a big vehicle that flies twice a year.2. Though if the NK33 can't be mass produced before the supply runs out could another engine replace it though this is a very very tough order.3. Killing SLI was one of the stupidest decisions they made and was undefendable. it's a decision that may cause the US to loose the space race .
Frediiiie - 20/2/2008 12:02 AMEd,Elon Musk in an interview Feb 15http://www.news.com/Elon-Musk-on-rockets%2C-sports-cars%2C-and-solar-power---page-2/2008-11389_3-6230661-2.html?tag=st.numsaid Launch cost for Falcon 1 is about $8M thats after experience of two launch attempts, so I guess he's got a bit of data now.You're right the price is up, but not a great deal.Yet.
I can tell you first hand that there is zero issue with a lack of NK-33 engines. None.