Might as well strip the first two of any useful bits afore you sell 'em.

Onyx8 wrote:Might as well strip the first two of any useful bits afore you sell 'em.

This was manned, I gather

Ironclad wrote:This was manned, I gather

Yes two pilots.

Ironclad wrote:This was manned, I gather

Co pilot killed, pilot ejected with serious injuries. It was a test pilot job as they refine the finished plane and they were hoping to have it ready for commercial work fairly soon. Which is why I hope they figure out exactly what happened, and don't kill the whole project.

The other rocket that blew was running on old soviet engines that had been mothballed since the space race, so for at least 40 years. So they are very old tech, and one of those engines blew up on the ground just as they were testing it out. Presumably the one that blew passed those tests, but still failed.

I am much more interested in the stuff Virgin and SpaceX are building. I really hope Virgin can keep their project going, but that depends on just what went wrong.

Thoughts are with their families. But it's an important cause. Perhaps the most important.

B.B.C. - Virgin Galactic crash: Branson vows to continue space project




B.B.C. - Will Virgin SpaceShipTwo crash set back space tourism?

Pitch issue???

They were using a much more powerful solid rocket fuel this time, apparently.

Made of Stars wrote:They were using a much more powerful solid rocket fuel this time, apparently.

They had switched from a type of rubber to a type of nylon for the fuel. They don't think the fuel is the issue, as it has been extensively tested on the ground.

Personally, I would note that the ground tests were under 1g of load, and in flight, the fuel is under 3g of load. That could cause it to behave differently in flight, exposing more or less surface area to the burn. More surface area could result in a minor "explosion", less surface area could result in the burn stopping prematurely.

A solid fuel rocket is really a controlled explosion - but the only approach with weight to energy to make the plane feasible to orbit.



Serious amount of thrust for a small craft.

From controlled to explosion in a heartbeat.



I wonder if they ever considered making it effectively a three stage with JATO style solid fuel rockets on the space plane that would fall away ( ala the shuttle ) and then the main plane engine would kick in as the "third" stage.

Seems to me it's a lot to ask of a small airframe to accelerate from jet speeds to orbital speed on fuel within it.
I mean the military has had a lot of experience with the small rocket planes and never got them to orbit ( that we know of ).

On Sept. 27, 1956, Apt became the first person to fly faster than three times the speed of sound. The engine burned slightly longer than expected and Apt flew a near perfect flight profile, allowing him to reach a speed of 2,094 mph (Mach 3.196). Elation was short lived. For some reason, Apt initiated a sharp turn back toward Edwards. This resulted in a control divergence known as inertial coupling. The X-2 began to tumble uncontrollably. Apt jettisoned the escape capsule, but was unable to extract himself before it struck the ground. Apt's death cast a shadow over the most spectacular achievement of the program.

50 plus years ago and we still can't "fly" to space

Yeager put the Starfighter into near space and that program eventually got to 120,000 feet in 1965 with rocket assist.


http://framework.latimes.com/2012/02/28 ... ter-crash/

You wonder if the focus on vertical take off killed the progress to "fly" to space.

MarkS wrote:Thoughts are with their families. But it's an important cause. Perhaps the most important.

A thrill ride for rich people hardly seems important.

You'd still be riding donkey's if it wasn't for the early adopters paying for "thrill rides" in new fangled machines and even faster horses.

Macdoc wrote:I wonder if they ever considered making it effectively a three stage with JATO style solid fuel rockets on the space plane that would fall away ( ala the shuttle ) and then the main plane engine would kick in as the "third" stage.

Seems to me it's a lot to ask of a small airframe to accelerate from jet speeds to orbital speed on fuel within it.
I mean the military has had a lot of experience with the small rocket planes and never got them to orbit ( that we know of ).

SpaceShipTwo does not reach and is not designed to reach orbital speeds.

Multistage designs are mechanically complex and Scaled Composite's entire strategy is geared towards simplicity. Having a carrier aircraft is probably about as much complexity as they want, and they don't need a multistage rocket to reach their goal altitudes.

Macdoc wrote:You'd still be riding donkey's if it wasn't for the early adopters paying for "thrill rides" in new fangled machines and even faster horses.

Yes. And we should be glad that some rich guy is paying for it, rather than its being funded by taxpayers.

Macdoc wrote:You'd still be riding donkey's if it wasn't for the early adopters paying for "thrill rides" in new fangled machines and even faster horses.

I can't think of any example where that is true.
Military applications have often been important. Of course, the same is true for boring commercial applications.
Take the example of (modern) rocketry. First tinkerers play around with it, then comes massive military funding perfecting the technology, then commercial satellites and their routine launches, and finally you have stuff like this.
This "space ship" is supposed to reach over 100km for a few seconds with a few passengers. Wheeee!

A rich man's toy.

Bluebird anyone.

There's a book one can read that is highly informative about the risks involved in rocket propulsion, and the development thereof. It's called, prosaically enough, Ignition!. Originally written by John Drury Clark, who was heavily involved in rocket fuel development, this contains some seriously scary accounts of what happens, when the best laid plans of mice and men go wrong in the presence of volatile, explosive chemicals. In the preface of this book, written by no less a person than Isaac Asimov, we read this:

Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don't mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.

There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole.

Well, John Clark worked with these miserable concoctions, and survived all in one piece. What's more, he ran a laboratory for seventeen years, that played footsie with these liquids from hell, and never had a time-lost accident.

Remember, this is an individual who worked with the pure, unadulterated evil that is chlorine trifluoride, and lived to tell the tale. So he's probably in a good position to explain why rocket fuels are, shall we say, not for the faint hearted. If you have to ask just how bad chlorine trifluoride is, then allow me to introduce you to a chemist who tells the story in a suitably amusing manner. You know you're in pretty deep, when you're working with a chemical that will make sand and asbestos catch fire. Clark tells a nice story about what happened when a ton of this chemical broke free of its container, and started getting playful with a concrete floor and the underlying gravel. Apparently, in the early years of the rocket programme, the Americans were mad enough to play with this stuff.

Consequently, even when you're working with slightly less lively chemicals than this, the moment you're handling something that's powerful enough to be used as a rocket propellant, you're deep into an area of activity that makes your life insurer reach for his running shoes. Clark's book should make your hairs stand on end if you can get hold of a copy, or find a downloadable PDF.

VK-machine wrote:

Macdoc wrote:You'd still be riding donkey's if it wasn't for the early adopters paying for "thrill rides" in new fangled machines and even faster horses.

I can't think of any example where that is true.
Military applications have often been important. Of course, the same is true for boring commercial applications.
Take the example of (modern) rocketry. First tinkerers play around with it, then comes massive military funding perfecting the technology, then commercial satellites and their routine launches, and finally you have stuff like this.
This "space ship" is supposed to reach over 100km for a few seconds with a few passengers. Wheeee!

They are advancing science and the motivation should be irrelevant. The fact that it is being financed through private investment is merely a nice bonus. Others will no doubt put their discoveries to more "noble" pursuits. Manhattan Project? Teflon? ....... A good idea is a good idea regardless of where it comes from.

Griz_ wrote:They are advancing science and the motivation should be irrelevant

How are they advancing science?

Griz_ wrote:Others will no doubt put their discoveries to more "noble" pursuits.

What discoveries?