VG SpaceShipTwo Test Flight

[Satellite_Driver]

Posted here in part because this video of SpaceShipTwo's latest supersonic test flight manages to look very reminiscent of newsreel of Blue Steel launches!

Stunning video shows Virgin Galactic test flight - YouTube

About a decade ago I did my ICSC presentation on the potential military applications of privately-operated space planes (this was not long after SpaceShipOne had won the X-Prize for exceeding 100km). The credit crunch has slowed things down a bit, but it seems that Branson still has a big queue willing to pay 200K for their five minutes of weightlessness.

[CoffmanStarter]

And the Chief Pilot of Virgin Galactic, is a former RAF Harrier and Test pilot :ok:

[TomJoad]

Showed that video together with the one on the BBC re Alan Bond's Reaction Engine space plane concept. The kids were mesmerised that in say 25 years they may be in a position to take a flight into space for their 40th birthday treat. Realistic, perhaps, just as air flight has become routine and cheap. With Branson's business acumen I can certainly see it happening.

More important is that that the Reaction Engine space plane concept must surely get of the ground - come on UK government back this winner and keep the technology in the UK.

sorry can't embed the BBC video so here is the link

BBC News - Could Scotland house European spaceport? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25679000)

[Lordflasheart]

And the Chief Pilot of Virgin Galactic is a former RAF Harrier and Test pilotAnd a very modest Shuttleworth chap and an excellent VS 747 Classic Captain as well.

BZ Dave. :ok: :ok: LFH

[glad rag]

Is that a yaw string around the back of the nozzle?

[The B Word]

There are far cheaper ways to experience weightlessness than VG and their £200k.

For ~£3k you can fly in the 'vomet comet' - https://www.gozerog.com/

Or go for aerobatic trial lesson for ~£150 per hour and ask the pilot to keep unloading to 0g!!!

I'm sure that they pay their £200k for the full astronaut experience: rocket ride, weightlessness, the view from outside the atmosphere, re-entry and the ability to say they did it!

The B Word

[CoffmanStarter]

Tom ...

Here is a superb lecture from Alan Bond on Skylon and Reaction Engine Technology ... really worth a watch ... if you haven't seen it :ok:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2G-HPHNrrLQ

Best ...

Coff.

[dragartist]

Coff, According to my membership card we have Richard Varvill (Tech Director Reaction Engines) coming to Cambridge RAeS on 13th March. Do we expect a similar lecture? I do hope so.
Drag

[TomJoad]

Coff, According to my membership card we have Richard Varvill (Tech Director Reaction Engines) coming to Cambridge RAeS on 13th March. Do we expect a similar lecture? I do hope so.
Drag


Coff,

Thanks for video - post message to you.

dragartist:

Soo envious - any chance he could face time it:{

Please get an update on support by UK Plc and EASA/EADS. I want a space port at Lossie;)

Tom

[CoffmanStarter]

Drag old chap ... sounds great ... please do report back :ok:

Let's hope CUAS get an invitation to attend ... help inspire some of budding young Mil Aviators :ok:

[dragartist]

Tom,
Not sure of your location but all the RAeS lectures are open to the public. I must admit the Cambridge lot have put on some good shows in recent months it has been standing room only on a few occasions.


Still by March the interest in space my have died down a bit.

[awblain]

It's certainly all exciting stuff, especially the SABRE engine; if whatever magic dyson frost trick there is in there is effective.

However, the heat dumping into the hydrogen fuel will be interesting, and the margin for any weight growth in the whole Skylon concept is exceedingly slim. When you have to set aside using methane as a fuel and adopt hydrogen as the only one that will do the job, it's a worry. Its survival after an engine failure or a tangle with a goose or two also looks unlikely.

If SpaceX can recover substantial parts of their rockets, or if Stratolaunch works, then the cost of launching on a rocket drops close to Skylon levels, and the business case for a Skylon-type vehicle gets thin.

Potential military applications of an upper-atmospheric Skylon for something along the lines of "prompt global strike" might make for a more entertaining case, but I don't see well-heeled passengers, or their insurers, being able to afford flights to the antipodes.

And in the context, don't forget that Mr Branson's fairground ride in that video only gains about a tenth of the energy required for orbit. While that seems to be well placed commercially (at least for PR), Virgin Galactic's lack of an escape system may also weigh on the minds of the insurers or the rich and famous.

[chevvron]

Is it my imagination or does the exhaust plume look 'dirty' as if there were impurities in the fuel?

[t43562]

The whole SABRE and Skylon concept has been explained and gone over almost to death by some very interesting people here:

The Reaction Engines Skylon Master Thread (1) (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=24621.0)
The Reaction Engines Skylon Master Thread (2) (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30547.0)
The Reaction Engines Skylon Master Thread (3) (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33648.45)

It's a huge amount of reading and needs to be summarised but you can hardly imagine a question which hasn't been very well addressed as far as anyone can with a development project and within the understanding of a lay person such as myself.

I think the point about whether the Hydrogen can absorb all the heat is answered by the fact that they don't liquify the incoming air. They just get it very cold so it becomes compressible. This is the key insight which makes their effort different from ones in the past - that a rocket can run on cold, non-liquid gas. The amount of hydrogen needed becomes a great deal less than in a Liquid Air Cycle Engine.

If you read the threads you'll find that their weight margin is very good.

SpaceX is interesting. They may and may not reach their reusability goals. Someone pointed out that a rocket booster containing explosive fuel and kept aloft by a delicate mechanism is not something that you would want to have any failures with if you were one of the people underneath who is waiting for it to land. Also not something you want to have within many many miles of a city in such an event either. I don't really know because I am the farthest thing from being an expert.

There is also an aspect known as cross-range which controls the difference between where a rocket can take off from and where it can land and having a big one like you get with a winged vehicle is an advantage.

Regards,

t43562

[Lima Juliet]

Like many hybrid engines they use rubber and nitrous oxide and that produces a dirty flame but is far safer and more efficient than earler generations of rocketry.

:ok:

[The Oberon]

Dumb question maybe but do crew and passengers have to wear any sort of specialist clothing or is it a case of check in and off you go. Google doesn't say.

[chevvron]

I'm only used to seeing peroxide rockets powering dragsters; their exhaust is always clean as it's mainly steam!!

[dead_pan]

Dumb question maybe but do crew and passengers have to wear any sort of specialist clothing

Article in Flight recently said PAX would be in shirt-sleeves.

Looks like the PAX will get a few seconds of microgravity right at the beginning of the flight when they're dropped from the mother-ship. That'll certainly get their attention :eek:

[dead_pan]

the SABRE engine

I reckon Mr Bond would be better off flogging his IP to the Chinese and let them take this on. There's simply no way we in the UK can afford to fund this project through to fruition.

As for those million+ welds in each engine, well good luck with getting those right :ok:

[awblain]

They'll get a lungful of stomach for a couple of seconds on the drop, a push-back-into-their-seats as they climb into space, and then several minutes of weightlessness between engine cutout and the rise of drag as the atmospheric density builds on descent.

[awblain]

The smell of burning rubber.

Along the same lines as the Bloodhound 1000mph car.

[awblain]

t43562,

whether the Hydrogen can absorb all the heat

It can. It's a question of managing that process.

Also not something you want to have within many many miles of a city

No indeed, you'd want it just as far from a city as the launch site. Kerosene is not the most explosive material. I understand that hundreds of tons is often to be found traveling over major cities on a minute by minute basis.

The great thing about SpaceX is that they've spotted that the booster returns 20 times lighter than it departed, which makes it a rather less threatening object on the way down than on the way up.

The sales material might boast an impressive mass margin, but in reality, it's worrying. The structure to hold all that hydrogen is large, and needs to cope with quite some dynamic pressure on ascent.

Good luck to them, but as time marches on, I suspect they're going to need it.

[t43562]

@awblain

If you take the time to read the discussions that I pointed to you'd have most of your doubts addressed better than someone like me can. I'd just be repeating them badly. It depends on whether you want to give it a chance or are set on imagining a SpaceX-only future.

@dead_pan

As for millions of welds - I'm not 100% sure what that's in reference to but they have built full size head exchanger modules using brazing to let them perform many welds at once. The heat exchangers are the super-duper-technology-that-makes-it-all-possible and are indeed expensive and difficult to make and that's what they've spent many years developing and what they aim to build themselves while the airframe etc is taken on by a company big enough to do that.

'Flogging it to the Chinese' appears to not be on their agenda but this doesn't mean they will not look outside Britain for things they can't get done inside. e.g. the latest news item is that RE has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement ('CRADA') with the Air Force Research Laboratory.

[dead_pan]

Re the number of welds, I read this somewhere recently (New Scientist?). Either way, RE have an enormous technical challenge ahead of them - by way of example, from Fine Tubes web-site, who are supplying tubes for the heat exchanger:

Each engine will use over 2,000km of tubing

As for the US Air Force contract, presumably the people previously involved with the X-30 have all retired...

[t43562]

There is a talk at the Wheatsheaf hall in Vauxhall by Mark Hempsell on Wed 22nd January. If you know about this already then the venue has changed to let more people attend.

You'll need to buy tickets. Mark Hempsell consults for Reaction Engines and was their Future Programmes Director until quite recently.

http://www.bis-space.com/2013/11/26/12151/the-future-of-skylon

[SOSL]

I know this has appeared before so lay off me Beags!


Richard Branson - space tourism - hotel in orbit - luxurious accommodation - superb cuisine - but no atmosphere - boom boom!


Rgds SOS


P.S. How interesting that Alan Bond's team, in the 21st century, have developed a truly earth shattering concept, which owes so much to the ideas of Max Planck published in the 19th century. The science seems to fall into the Goldilocks porridge bowl but the engineering is seriously tough.

[CoffmanStarter]

According to my membership card we have Richard Varvill (Tech Director Reaction Engines) coming to Cambridge RAeS on 13th March. Do we expect a similar lecture? I do hope so.

Dragartist ...

Really good to meet you last Thursday ... great lecture from Richard Varvill ... with quite a few interesting questions coming from the floor post his presentation.

I really would recommend the Cambridge RAeS evening events to other PPRuNe members ... superb value and a great setting in the Engineering College. :ok:

[TomJoad]

Coffman,

I'm really enviousness you got to enjoy the talk, I would have loved to have been there but just to far away. How are they doing for funding now, did they get backing from the UK government and EASA? Did you get any sense of how secure the project is both technically and financially? Be great if you could share anything.

[dragartist]

Guys I am still buzzing after Thursday evening. What a fantastic lecture. Quite technical. I wish I had listened with more intent when we were doing hard sums on my Propulsion pre Employment Couse at Sleaford tech. All these equations presented may have made more sense. The venue was Cambridge University and well attended by a number of students and Air Cadets. Richard did say one of his aims was to inspire the next generation. He certainly did this.


Tom,
Yes the project is progressing and they have funding for phase 3. The production scale SABRE engine which they hope to run at Culham by October 2017. Target date for a launch to space is 2029. I hope I am still around.


Some really interesting technology in the fine tube heat exchanger which makes it all work. Also the airframe structure is more like an Airship (Neville Norway Shute design) with some exotic materials to withstand the temperatures. Gold plated titanium very thin foil blankets. Silicon carbide reinforced titanium for other bits. The aluminium tank sounded a bit thin and difficult to weld. (That said I think I may have seen a prototype when I went round the Welding Institute at Abington last year)


The ZFW is similar to that of the Nimrod but much longer. Needs a 5 km runway to take account of any aborted take off.


Interesting facts about the banana shaped engine nacelles and the jet thrusters to change direction and manoeuvre in space. We all laughed at the video showing the vehicle used to push the satellites out into Geostationary orbit returning to the payload bay.


I do hope it becomes a reality. If funding had been in US NASA proportions I feel certain we would have colonised Mars already.


No one asked about military applications.


I wish them well.

[CoffmanStarter]

Hi Tom ...

I'm sure Drag will pitch-in ... but in a nutshell "steady as she goes". RE have secured c. £60M funding from UKG for the next stage of development. On the technical front two points of note ... (1) in test the pre-cooler is producing the thrust gains predicted and (2) they seem comfortable that they can achieve the desired quality and consistency of manufacture with the cooler micro tubing structure on the front end. It is also clear that they have cracked the Frost Clog in the cooler ... but clearly not in their commercial interest to discuss too much on how they cracked that particular challenge.

What I did find interesting is they way in which the fuselage is more like an "airship" structure rather than a true airframe :8

Still more work to be done in terms of vehicle control and automation ground/onboard (as there will be no aircrew) ... this was the basis of my question to Richard.

Hope this helps ...

Best ...

Coff.

[TomJoad]

Thanks for the update Coff and dragartist. Godspeed to Alan Bond and his team:ok:.

[t43562]

https://www.adsgroup.org.uk/community/news/download.asp?a=11642

Northern Ireland Space Special Interest Group - Visit by Reaction Engines Ltd

Date: 11/03/2014

https://www.adsgroup.org.uk/pages/media/4282.jpg Reaction Engines Ltd are developing the technologies needed for an advanced rocket engine class called SABRE that will enable aircraft to operate at speeds of up to five times the speed of sound or fly directly into Earth orbit. Reaction Engines also have a development plan for a spaceplane called Skylon.
Through the UK Space Agency, the Government is investing £60 million in the development of the SABRE rocket engine which could revolutionise the fields of propulsion and launcher technology, and significantly reduce the costs of accessing space.
Richard Varvill, Technical Director and Chief Designer and Tom Scrope, Finance Director visited Belfast on the 5th March 2014 to attend a meeting of the Northern Ireland Space Special Interest Group (NISSIG). At the meeting Richard very kindly delivered a very informative, interesting and inspiring overview of the Skylon and SABRE programmes to ADS NI Members who were very impressed and motivated by future business opportunities in the Space Industry.
A PDF version of the presentation has been made available to download.

[t43562]

Alan Bond Lecture at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in Dec 2013. I found it interesting so perhaps others might.

Reaction Engines (http://www.imeche.org/video-pay/reaction-engines)

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

t43562 -thanks for posting!

Fox3 AMIMechE (Retd)

[t43562]

Skylon Economics "Stack Up"

BBC News - Skylon ?spaceplane economics stack up? (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27591432)