SpaceShipThree Mothership Question: Remove double cockpit?

[The7thEngineer]

In the future, would there be benefits to removing the double cockpit in favor of a ground controlled mother-ship, similar to military drones?


What I'm thinking is less weight on the mothership means more thrust, greater lift, ect.

Thoughts?

[Lars_J]

It could happen, but don't expect it. That would not be how Scaled Composites usually operates. They are fond of the traditional "tweak and fly with a test pilot" development cycle, and it has worked well for them in the past.

[Jim]

In the future, would there be benefits to removing the double cockpit in favor of a ground controlled mother-ship, similar to military drones?

No, not when there are people onboard.

Also, the other cockpit is for passengers.

[joek]

Not until the FAA approves remote control passenger carrying aircraft, which is extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future.  Until then, the only option would be if the SS3 pilot was also in command of the mothership while it was attached and carrying passengers.

In any case, it's not wasted space in WK2.  IIIRC at least one (maybe both) space has the same layout as SS2 so it can be used for training.  I expect if you book a flight on SS2, your first flight will be a training flight on WK2.

[Danderman]

If margins are so thin that the mass of the flight crew is significant, SS3 indeed would not be that much more capable than the current model. I would imagine that a hypothetical SS3 would be an order of magnitude more capable than SS2.

[The7thEngineer]

In the future, would there be benefits to removing the double cockpit in favor of a ground controlled mother-ship, similar to military drones?

No, not when there are people onboard.

I don't quite understand your answer.

[Lars_J]

What he means is that you will not see a remote-controlled aircraft with human passengers, it is not allowed. (For the forseeable future)

[Jim]

In the future, would there be benefits to removing the double cockpit in favor of a ground controlled mother-ship, similar to military drones?

No, not when there are people onboard.

I don't quite understand your answer.

An unmanned aircraft can not be a carrier for a manned aircraft.

[The7thEngineer]

Not until the FAA approves remote control passenger carrying aircraft, which is extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future.  Until then, the only option would be if the SS3 pilot was also in command of the mothership while it was attached and carrying passengers.

In any case, it's not wasted space in WK2.  IIIRC at least one (maybe both) space has the same layout as SS2 so it can be used for training.  I expect if you book a flight on SS2, your first flight will be a training flight on WK2.

Yeah, I think you're looking at the issue the best here, but were talking 10-15 years from now so I have to assume the FAA will keep pace with technology somewhat. Also, considering WK2 flys the same flight path only in clear weather, the tech should be there.

[Zed_Noir]

If they build a WK3 mothership. They might get rid of the cockpit pods and relocated the flight crew to a bridge pod in the middle of the wing.

It would be easier to install a combine cockpit/escape capsule similar to what they have on the F111 aircraft.

IMO the chance of crew survival in a high altitude bailout is quite low if they can egress from the current WK2 craft in the first place.

[Moe Grills]

In the future, would there be benefits to removing the double cockpit in favor of a ground controlled mother-ship, similar to military drones?


What I'm thinking is less weight on the mothership means more thrust.

Thoughts?

More thrust because a mothership is lighter?

No!
 Thrust is dependent on a combination of exhaust velocity and propellant flowrate and consumption. I think you meant to say that the acceleration rate
of a mothership will increase if it is lighter (and the thrust is more or less constant).

[Moe Grills]

IMO the chance of crew survival in a high altitude bailout is quite low if they can egress from the current WK2 craft in the first place.

Are you serious?

The WK2 iis supposed to be a PASSENGER carrying transport.
While my analogy may not be perfect, would you want the pilot and copilot of a commercial aircraft you fly on to "bail out" if something goes
wrong with the 767 you happen to be onboard?

 OK! A bit off topic, I know, but the agenda for the WK2 (and planned WK3) are to make them as SAFE to fly in as the passenger-carrying aircraft
back in the 1920's or 1930's.

[hop]

It strikes me as really pointless to speculate about a carrier for SS3. Based on what has been publicly stated by, I don't see any evidence SS3 more than a notional placeholder for a (probably orbital) orbital vehicle that follows SS2. There's no indication that there is any actual design at this point, let alone that it will follow the same architecture as SS1 and SS2.

That said, shaving a relatively minor amount of mass from the carrier in this kind of architecture seems fairly pointless. Compared to the increased mass of an orbital LV compared to a 100km suborbital, the crew cabins on the carrier are going to be down in the noise.

[Patchouli]

I read somewhere that Virgin may be considering Dream Chaser for SS3.
In this case it's not a follow up for SS2 but something that flies concurrent for a different market.

[Zed_Noir]

IMO the chance of crew survival in a high altitude bailout is quite low if they can egress from the current WK2 craft in the first place.

Are you serious?

The WK2 iis supposed to be a PASSENGER carrying transport.

No, the WK2's primary purpose is to enable the sub-orbital launch of SS2 carrying passengers from over 60000ft. SS2 could act as it's own escape pod, but the WK2 crew & passengers will have to egress and hopefully survive the HALO freefall experience.
 

[Patchouli]

IMO the chance of crew survival in a high altitude bailout is quite low if they can egress from the current WK2 craft in the first place.

Are you serious?

The WK2 iis supposed to be a PASSENGER carrying transport.

No, the WK2's primary purpose is to enable the sub-orbital launch of SS2 carrying passengers from over 60000ft. SS2 could act as it's own escape pod, but the WK2 crew & passengers will have to egress and hopefully survive the HALO freefall experience.
 

Most of the safety likely is just triple redundancy on everything just like any other passenger carrying jet aircraft.
It's not flying as high as a U2 so it won't have to fly within a 10 knot window between stall and over stressing the airframe.

It does have one safety advantage over a typical airliner in that it's glide characteristics would be better.

[gin455res]

In the future, would there be benefits to removing the double cockpit in favor of a ground controlled mother-ship, similar to military drones?


What I'm thinking is less weight on the mothership means more thrust, greater lift, ect.

Thoughts?

Okay this thread is ten years old, things have moved on and now there are plans for pilot-less electric air-taxis.


Do the same reservations to the OP still apply, or for a purely cargo variant of the OP? 


Would autonomous (and/or electric?) carrier planes reduce fuel and operational costs enough to alter the economics of airlaunch, or shrink the scale* at which this is economically viable?


*e.g. an autonomous starship-one and an autonomous (& electric?) white knight sized system. (Maybe with an electropumped engine, released with a high carrier-plane angle of flight to minimise structural loads which would allow the wings to be sized only for empty landing weight like Len Cormier's xvan concept. Or perhaps a parachute recovery might work better at this scale). However stratolaunch-sized carriers might look impressive, too.

[trimeta]

We do know that Aevum is planning on a pilotless drone plane for their air-launch system. Although in their case, they seem to be saying that the advantages are quick turnaround (just hit a button and the plane flies, no need to get the pilot), tight integration between the plane and rocket's control systems, and being able to light the rocket immediately after dropping, rather than waiting for it to fall a safe distance away. Removing the pilot purely to save weight in the carrier aircraft doesn't seem to have been a major consideration.

[Vahe231991]

If Virigin Galactic decides to create a variant of SpaceShipThree with a seating capacity of 12 people, a improved version of the RocketMotorTwo with greater fuel capacity and higher specific impulse, and a service ceiling of 420,000 feet, and WhiteKnightTwo were not heavy enough to carry an improved SS3, Virgin Galactic could team up with Boeing to retrieve a mothballed B-52 Stratofortress from the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, modify it to accommodate a space launch crew and an underwing pylon for SS3, and strip it of excess military equipment to allow it to reach 70,000 feet. Afterwards, the heavily modified B-52 would be operated by Virgin Galactic for use as a launch platform for an enlarged SpaceShipThree variant.

[trimeta]

If Virigin Galactic decides to create a variant of SpaceShipThree with a seating capacity of 12 people, a improved version of the RocketMotorTwo with greater fuel capacity and higher specific impulse, and a service ceiling of 420,000 feet, and WhiteKnightTwo were not heavy enough to carry an improved SS3, Virgin Galactic could team up with Boeing to retrieve a mothballed B-52 Stratofortress from the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, modify it to accommodate a space launch crew and an underwing pylon for SS3, and strip it of excess military equipment to allow it to reach 70,000 feet. Afterwards, the heavily modified B-52 would be operated by Virgin Galactic for use as a launch platform for an enlarged SpaceShipThree variant.

It seems far more likely to me that a SpaceShipFour* would switch to using the Stratolaunch Roc as a carrier aircraft -- that vehicle was explicitly designed to drop spacecraft from its central hardpoint. The WP says that it can carry (and drop) up to 250 metric tons, compared to 17 metric tons on White Knight Two (which seems really low, but apparently SpaceShipTwo is under 10 metric tons). So a new SpaceShip design could grow by over an order of magnitude and still fit the payload requirements.

* SpaceShip 3 has already been announced, it's a minor refinement on SpaceShipTwo to improve reusability