PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Virgin Galatic Spaceship Two down in the Mojave.
Old 11th Nov 2014, 08:45
  #267 (permalink)  
Jwscud
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Scotland
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I think anyone expecting this craft to be fully certified would be making a similar mistake to NASA made after 4 flights of the Shuttle. They will never make enough powered flights in the test program to certify it to the same standards as the well understood tropospheric sub Mcrit areas most of us operate in.

DARPA regularly have in-flight breakups of their experimental high Mach number vehicles. This is not an area that is well understood. Most space vehicles brute force their way through it with massive amounts of thrust rather than what Scaled are trying.
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