Space Ship Two - General Thread

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Thanks for the response. The recent Grasshopper launch had been listed in advance but was then taken down and the actual flight was a couple of days later!

[BrightLight]

Is there any information on the stability of the rocket engine performance? Much has been commented on about issues with the rocket motor.

[yg1968]

Prices are going up to $250k.

http://www.space.com/20886-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-ticket-prices.html

[QuantumG]

Pretty low inflation over 10 years

[Kabloona]

Is there any information on the stability of the rocket engine performance? Much has been commented on about issues with the rocket motor.

The SNC/VG press release says the burn went fine. If there were any issues, I doubt they'd be releasing that info publicly.

As far as combustion stability, that's an issue that should/would have been worked out in development. They wouldn't be flying a motor with stability problems.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Wired have posted a couple of pictures I've not yet seen any where else: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/spaceshiptwo-powered-flight/

[Comga]

Burt Rutan absolutely did not design SS1 with 2 paying customers in mind.  The only paying customer was Paul Allen and he was not going to be in the ship.  Someone might read that into the "spirit" of the X-prize specs, but Rutan had a history with the general public, paying customers, and lawsuits.  He built a vehicle custom-designed to win the X-prize. 

For example, it was designed to be flown by an expert flight test pilot accustomed to shouldering high risk, designed for only a few suborbital flights, designed for minimal aesthetics and maximum function (eg tiny windows you had to move your head around to get a picture of the outside world), and so on.

Richard Branson is the one taking paying customers, managing the legal issues, and contracting with Scaled Composites for a vehicle.  In that capacity, Sir Richard gets to study the market, look at the profit/cost figures per passenger seat, look at the safety profile, work out the legal/regulatory framework, work out the logistics/operations management, and so on.  Those details are business matters.  A billionaire with ties to the airline industry should be well suited to judge them, far better than random Internet observers without the benefit of Rutan's advice, knowledge of the specifics, or comparable business qualifications. 

Most of the criticism I've read comes from impatience.  I suspect Branson is also a bit disappointed with the time it's taken--after all, he's a big enough fan to commit to being on the first paid flight--but determined to do things right.  And probably also a bit more realistic about how much effort is required to do something completely different.

Do you have a basis for these statements or are they just your interpretation of the documents we have all read?

I know someone how was talking to Burt Rutan about early flights, perhaps starting with the first paid flight, when SS1 was shut down.   It would not have been the consumer friendly vehicle that SS2 has become, but it would have been a decade earlier, and probably fully booked. 

[a_langwich]

Burt Rutan absolutely did not design SS1 with 2 paying customers in mind.  The only paying customer was Paul Allen and he was not going to be in the ship.  Someone might read that into the "spirit" of the X-prize specs, but Rutan had a history with the general public, paying customers, and lawsuits.  He built a vehicle custom-designed to win the X-prize. 

For example, it was designed to be flown by an expert flight test pilot accustomed to shouldering high risk, designed for only a few suborbital flights, designed for minimal aesthetics and maximum function (eg tiny windows you had to move your head around to get a picture of the outside world), and so on.

Richard Branson is the one taking paying customers, managing the legal issues, and contracting with Scaled Composites for a vehicle.  In that capacity, Sir Richard gets to study the market, look at the profit/cost figures per passenger seat, look at the safety profile, work out the legal/regulatory framework, work out the logistics/operations management, and so on.  Those details are business matters.  A billionaire with ties to the airline industry should be well suited to judge them, far better than random Internet observers without the benefit of Rutan's advice, knowledge of the specifics, or comparable business qualifications. 

Most of the criticism I've read comes from impatience.  I suspect Branson is also a bit disappointed with the time it's taken--after all, he's a big enough fan to commit to being on the first paid flight--but determined to do things right.  And probably also a bit more realistic about how much effort is required to do something completely different.

Do you have a basis for these statements or are they just your interpretation of the documents we have all read?

I know someone how was talking to Burt Rutan about early flights, perhaps starting with the first paid flight, when SS1 was shut down.   It would not have been the consumer friendly vehicle that SS2 has become, but it would have been a decade earlier, and probably fully booked. 

I don't know what documents "we have all read." 
Here's a quote from a relatively recent Air & Space Magazine article about the liability and why he shut down Rutan Aircraft Factory and kept Scaled Composites:

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/The-Magician-of-Mojave.html

So anyway, the bottom line was that both businesses were profitable, they were both something that I could easily support my family on, but one of them had a very high product liability exposure that I still have to this day.  I still have these airplanes flying, and regardless of what happens to them—if they run into a mountain with a drunk pilot—there’s still a risk that I could be sued for bad design. So I decided that I should cut off further exposure to product liability, and I stopped selling plans in June of ’85.  So it’s been almost 25 years since I sold a set of plans.

That's 25 years later and mellow as a grandparent with grandkids:  as I recall 10-20 years back, he was not so mellow about the lawsuit (the relatives of a passenger killed by a customer who bought his plans and built an aircraft).  Probably disrespectful of me, but I would say he was ticked off and almost rage-quit RAF.    Oddly, I can't find a single mention of the lawsuits on the Wiki page.  Rutan Aircraft Factory redirects to Scaled Composites, though as the quote above shows, the two were separate entities that at one point existed side by side.

Here's another quote from the same magazine:
http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/InTheMuseum-March06.html

After winning the X-Prize, Rutan had planned on continuing test flights in SpaceShipOne, and since the craft is a three-seater, he wanted to ride into space as a passenger; he also wanted to give Allen the opportunity to do so. “But the invitation from the Smithsonian prevented that,” said Rutan. And SpaceShipOne had served its purpose. “We realized that we had learned all that we needed to on the technological issues,” said Rutan. “So let’s move on to a commercial system. Start flying the public. Let them see that beautiful black sky.

“We are indeed in development on a large commercial system,” said Rutan, but he would not reveal any flight-testing schedules. He did say that SpaceShipOne’s successor, SpaceShipTwo, will have at least eight seats and that the craft will make plenty of test flights on its way to certification for ticket-paying passenger flights, giving Rutan, his test pilot brother Dick, Paul Allen, and journalists plenty of opportunities to fly into space. “A guy from CNN has been bugging me real hard,” said Rutan, smiling.

Notice, ZERO mention of paying customers (other than Allen, the Big Payer) as passengers on SS1.  "Flying the public" comes AFTER "move on to a commercial system."  There's a mention in the article about  the risks that both Rutan and Allen (and the pilots) knew were involved, though of course Rutan designs always have good thought put into benign failure modes.  And already the focus on the larger model, that paying customers would be for the 8-passenger model, and Rutan would just be designer, not operator.

If you go back and read the first article, you will see that Rutan had evolved his proof-of-concept VariEze plane in a similar way.

The second article mentions that SS1 is the last aircraft "designed by Rutan" (literally cranking out CAD drawings the night before parts were built), that while he oversaw the SpaceShipTwo work, he made a deliberate effort to transition work to his employees.

Those aren't the exact interviews I had read earlier, but I think they substantiate what I said.

[Ben the Space Brit]

Wired have posted a couple of pictures I've not yet seen any where else: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/spaceshiptwo-powered-flight/

Is "S0036" the motor serial number or SS2's registration number?

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Wired have posted a couple of pictures I've not yet seen any where else: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/spaceshiptwo-powered-flight/

Is "S0036" the motor serial number or SS2's registration number?

I guess it's the motor s/n. The SS2 has the reg. N339SS (the first WK2, BTW, is N348MS).

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Notice, ZERO mention of paying customers (other than Allen, the Big Payer) as passengers on SS1.  "Flying the public" comes AFTER "move on to a commercial system."  There's a mention in the article about  the risks that both Rutan and Allen (and the pilots) knew were involved, though of course Rutan designs always have good thought put into benign failure modes.

That's true, but they did consider carrying other people. There was an unfunded milestone on the Tier One programme beyond the X-prize flights. Burt wanted to really prove the re-usability by flying SS1 once a week for 6 months. I've seen a quote where he said that he and Paul Allen could fly plus twenty of their friends each. That would have been non-paying public. It was serious enough that they had a quote from SpaceDev for what the additional RM1s would cost and they put the proposal to Paul Allen.

Of course, Paul Allen wanted to go with the Smithsonian instead and I suspect he was a bit worried having seen some of the issues on the flights. My guess is that Burt was more comfortable that they knew how to avoid the issues, as the last (flawless?) X-prize flight demonstrated.

My source ... I'm trying to remember where I read it and I think it's in Dan Linehan's SS1 book (unfortunately I don't have my copy to hand).

Edit: I was right, it's on p151 of Dan Linehan's book

Scaled composites received about $25 million from Paul Allen for twenty tasks that Burt Rutan had specifically outlined, which covered building SpaceShipOne all the way through competing with it. "Task 21 was that we would fly SpaceShipOne every Tuesday for five months, reasoning that if we did that you could then make with confidence a commercial business plan," Rutan said.

But Task 21 wasn't funded. Rutan figured that once he got the data on the real costs of flying SpaceShipOne, he would then approach Allen. "That would be the opportunity for Paul and me and both of our friends to be astronauts," Rutan explained. "If you count only the passengers, you've got forty-four people. So, maybe twenty of my friends could be astronauts and twenty of his friends could be astronauts. That would be kind of cool. That was the plan. But something got in the way of the plan. I underestimated the impact of SpaceShipOne on the media and the public, and I underestimated its effect on historians."

[Nickolai]

There's some discussion of engine issues over on parabolicarc (see comments): http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/04/30/snc-yeah-we-lit-that-candle-and-it-worked-baby/

I'm not sure what to make of the claims some people are putting forth, like saying that the "afterglow" from when the engine was shut off (or, more accurately, I think, when the oxidizer valve was shut off) is a very bad sign and could lead to an explosive situation. Is there anyone here on this forum with some background in hybrids that would care to weigh in? Are these issues serious, or do the people on PA really not know what they're talking about?

[BrightLight]

There's some discussion of engine issues over on parabolicarc (see comments): http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/04/30/snc-yeah-we-lit-that-candle-and-it-worked-baby/

I'm not sure what to make of the claims some people are putting forth, like saying that the "afterglow" from when the engine was shut off (or, more accurately, I think, when the oxidizer valve was shut off) is a very bad sign and could lead to an explosive situation. Is there anyone here on this forum with some background in hybrids that would care to weigh in? Are these issues serious, or do the people on PA really not know what they're talking about?

I'm no rocket engineer but the flight video looks very much like the ground test video

including the shut-down.  On the ground where O2 concentration is high, the "flame out" looks about the same as at altitude.  Is this near catastrophic? I don't know but one would think that after all this time testing the engine, the engineers and scientists would be concerned about failure.

[Nickolai]

There's some discussion of engine issues over on parabolicarc (see comments): http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/04/30/snc-yeah-we-lit-that-candle-and-it-worked-baby/

I'm not sure what to make of the claims some people are putting forth, like saying that the "afterglow" from when the engine was shut off (or, more accurately, I think, when the oxidizer valve was shut off) is a very bad sign and could lead to an explosive situation. Is there anyone here on this forum with some background in hybrids that would care to weigh in? Are these issues serious, or do the people on PA really not know what they're talking about?

I'm no rocket engineer but the flight video looks very much like the ground test video


including the shut-down.  On the ground where O2 concentration is high, the "flame out" looks about the same as at altitude.  Is this near catastrophic? I don't know but one would think that after all this time testing the engine, the engineers and scientists would be concerned about failure.

It doesn't look quite the same. There's no re-ignition. I wonder if maybe that part was an in-flight anomaly they'll be investigating. As for the flame-out, it looks slightly larger on the ground from your video, but not by much, which is concerning. You'd think that at such a high altitude it would be significantly less:

[Lars_J]

The shutdown in the engine test looks the same as the flight one, but the startup of the ground test appeared to be much smoother.

[Comga]

Notice, ZERO mention of paying customers (other than Allen, the Big Payer) as passengers on SS1.  "Flying the public" comes AFTER "move on to a commercial system."  There's a mention in the article about  the risks that both Rutan and Allen (and the pilots) knew were involved, though of course Rutan designs always have good thought put into benign failure modes.

That's true, but they did consider carrying other people. There was an unfunded milestone on the Tier One programme beyond the X-prize flights. Burt wanted to really prove the re-usability by flying SS1 once a week for 6 months. I've seen a quote where he said that he and Paul Allen could fly plus twenty of their friends each. That would have been non-paying public. It was serious enough that they had a quote from SpaceDev for what the additional RM1s would cost and they put the proposal to Paul Allen.

Of course, Paul Allen wanted to go with the Smithsonian instead and I suspect he was a bit worried having seen some of the issues on the flights. My guess is that Burt was more comfortable that they knew how to avoid the issues, as the last (flawless?) X-prize flight demonstrated.

My source ... I'm trying to remember where I read it and I think it's in Dan Linehan's SS1 book (unfortunately I don't have my copy to hand).

Edit: I was right, it's on p151 of Dan Linehan's book

Scaled composites received about $25 million from Paul Allen for twenty tasks that Burt Rutan had specifically outlined, which covered building SpaceShipOne all the way through competing with it. "Task 21 was that we would fly SpaceShipOne every Tuesday for five months, reasoning that if we did that you could then make with confidence a commercial business plan," Rutan said.

But Task 21 wasn't funded. Rutan figured that once he got the data on the real costs of flying SpaceShipOne, he would then approach Allen. "That would be the opportunity for Paul and me and both of our friends to be astronauts," Rutan explained. "If you count only the passengers, you've got forty-four people. So, maybe twenty of my friends could be astronauts and twenty of his friends could be astronauts. That would be kind of cool. That was the plan. But something got in the way of the plan. I underestimated the impact of SpaceShipOne on the media and the public, and I underestimated its effect on historians."

Thanks Future Space Tourist
I know one of "Burt's friends" and it wasn't specifically about joyriding.  There were serious plans afoot for the flights.

[iamlucky13]

There's some discussion of engine issues over on parabolicarc (see comments): http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/04/30/snc-yeah-we-lit-that-candle-and-it-worked-baby/

I'm not sure what to make of the claims some people are putting forth, like saying that the "afterglow" from when the engine was shut off (or, more accurately, I think, when the oxidizer valve was shut off) is a very bad sign and could lead to an explosive situation. Is there anyone here on this forum with some background in hybrids that would care to weigh in? Are these issues serious, or do the people on PA really not know what they're talking about?

Somebody had an interesting counterpoint - how does adding oxidizer to the fuel grain make it run rich?

It does seem plausible that a stuttered start could start the process of evaporating the fuel, and since it's not immediately combusted as this happens, lead to over-pressure when it does re-ignite.

But at the same time, hobbyists have apparently be dealing with this for a while (I found plenty of message board conversations about it in a quick search). I suspect the poster Carolyne is discussing a real concern, but assuming that SNC is somehow unaware of it.

Speculation is the only basis she gave for her claim, "My first observation is that the rocket motor came perilously close to a catastrophic explosion." Indeed, as she notes, the pressure data for the motor is the real authority on whether or not the motor almost exploded.

She also seems to have a bone to pick. The basic points don't sound like unreasonable concerns to me, but her apparent certainty that "more people probably will die" is definitely colored.

[Garrett]

Prices are going up to $250k.
http://www.space.com/20886-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-ticket-prices.html

Pretty low inflation over 10 years

Around 2.25 % to be precise.

[Kabloona]

But at the same time, hobbyists have apparently be dealing with this for a while (I found plenty of message board conversations about it in a quick search). I suspect the poster Carolyne is discussing a real concern, but assuming that SNC is somehow unaware of it.

Yes, no doubt amateur rocketeer Carolyne is aware of a looming danger that the two major aero(space) entities who developed and financed the project are not...quick, get Sir Richard on the phone...

[QuantumG]

Prices are going up to $250k.
http://www.space.com/20886-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-ticket-prices.html

Pretty low inflation over 10 years

Around 2.25 % to be precise.

So yeah, about the same as luxury cars, significantly less than the CPI at 3.1%.