TSC and Stratolaunch are both at least partially owned by Paul Allen, AFAIK.
HistoryIn 2005 at EAA Airventure Oshkosh, Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan announced their signing of an agreement to form The Spaceship Company – a new aerospace production company to build a fleet of commercial sub-orbital spaceships and carrier aircraft.
Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, but I am not aware of any official interaction between the two (though of course, both companies tend to see themselves as Musk babies, making them sister companies).
No.. it's "taking so long" because they decided to make a whole fleet of eight-seater vehicles, rolled out in multiple countries around the world, in parallel with flight testing a brand new airframe.They're going after the big bang entry into the market over incremental development. In some alternate history they could have fixed whatever problems they had with SS1 and flown customers the year after they won the X-Prize as everyone at the time thought they would be doing.If anything, the engine development fatalities are proof of their hubris and handing that task back to SNC gave them one less thing to do. If no-one had died they'd be even further behind the expectations of the public.
The issues are rocket motor development and the technical and regulatory problems surrounding the challenge of sending passengers (not test pilots) to 100km.
Remember, WK2 was rolled out 4 years ago, and SS2 was rolled out nearly 2 and a half years ago.
SS1 did not have "problems". It was a prototype test vehicle. Even if they used an upgraded SS1, they would not have been able to fly passengers the year after winning the X-Prize. It would still have taken several years to complete flight testing, get regulatory approval, and complete a solid business plan.
The rocket motor accident happened during a test procedure they had carried out multiple times previously while working on the SS1 project, so linking it to some sort of SS2 development "hubris" is very disingenuous.
No it's not. The rocket motor is done. It was done before SS1 even flew. SNC's rocket motor is mature, and Scaled Composites isn't doing rocket development anymore. As for regulation, there's a moratorium.. you may have heard.
There is no regulatory approval required. You don't know what you're talking about.
WTF? Everyone who works in the industry said they were being reckless and their own report said they had been lax on n2o2 safety.
OMG.. I am so sick of trying to educate people on this. The rocket motor that SS2 will be using was developed by SpaceDev.. in the 90s. Scaled Composites was going to use it for SS1 but the price was too high. In the end it cost lives.
Trent, are you talking about SS2 or DreamChaser? I thought you were highly critical of SC's decision to go with hybrids (rather than buying engines from XCOR) and highly skeptical about progress on RM2.
Oh, I was.. and SNC's official comment for 3 years was "no comment".. suddenly, in the last 12 months, they started actually answering questions and became clear that they've been covering for Scaled.
Did I miss a major development? Is SS2 going to use different motors than originally planned? Or were they further along than we all thought?
In what way was SNC covering for SC?
Scaled Composites has been blaming the schedule slips on the rocket motor for years.. when SNC was asked about it, they said no comment.. about 12 months ago, something changed.. not sure what.. but they made it clear that the delay isn't on their end.
Very interesting. Any ideas on what the real culprit is?
Yea! Let's test it carefully, slowly, taking our time, not rushinganything. If I were the manager at Scaled Composites and some young, wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn engineer or technician came to me and impatiently demanded we rush the tests and development of the SS2, I wouldn't hesitate to fire them.
Quantum, if there's no problem with RM2, then why will they be using a "battleship" "baby" motor for the first powered flights?
