NASA and the Private Sector - Page 163

On October 24 2018 06:49 Simberto wrote:
I can imagine a setup where your "car" is basically a box with a seat in it, and the things which transport you just grab the whole box. That isn't a lot more effort than you just getting in a seat on the transport, and it still allows for the whole "Personal space" idea of cars. So you get into your box at home, than a driverless car grabs that box, transports it to some central hub, where it gets put onto a train, is driven to a hub close to where you need to be, at which point it gets loaded into a new car. So you get the "not having to constantly switch trains" effect of a car, with the benefits of a system where many people are transported at the same time.

The box itself doesn't have an engine or anything, so it isn't to heavy, but you can still customise your box in any way you want.

Blue Origin has provided additional details relating to its New Glenn rocket this week via the release of its Payload User Guide that is designed to aid customers interested in launching their payloads on their launch vehicle with requirements and capabilities. Meanwhile, work is continuing on the company’s Cape Canaveral launch site and the refit of its booster landing ship.

Blue Origin is quietly preparing to head into the orbital launch market with its New Glenn rocket, named after the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn.

With its first rocket, New Shepard, closing in on the end of its test series, Blue’s initial focus has been towards the launch of paying customers – and onboard payloads – via its suborbital system.

Another test flight of the New Shepard from its West Texas test site home is expected early in 2019, to be followed by the first crew launches later that year.

While the path to paying space tourists is continuing, the expansive facilities on the East Coast point to Blue Origin’s major aspirations.

With the company’s huge rocket factory already constructed at Exploration Park on Merritt Island, work is taking place on the launch site facility located at Cape Canaveral’s LC-36.

Most of the work has been taking place away from the interested gaze of rocket fans, with ground preparations taking up the bulk of the initial construction phase. This included the piling of 200+ foot poles into the ground to support the pad, support and integration buildings – and the lightning protection system.

Most of this work has taken place behind blue covers, with only the heavy equipment and cranes peeking over the perimeter.

However, a major sign of pad build up was spotted by Kennedy Space Center workers who noticed huge 100,000-gallon Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) tanks – which will store the methane used on the New Glenn booster – being transported by rail to LC-36.

They were noted as arriving last week via TTX railcars and shipping services.

More tanks are set to arrive, with liquid methane (LNG), LOX, and LH2 tanks required to support not only fueling and launch operations of New Glenn from LC-36, but also BE-4 engine test firings at neighboring LC-11 – thus allowing the propellant/oxidizer storage tanks to serve a dual purpose.

LC-11 is LC-36’s neighboring pad to the north, and Blue Origin announced earlier this year that pad 11 will be the site of BE-4 engine acceptance and test firings at the Cape. As such, LC-11 will sport a new engine test stand.

BE-4 will not only launch New Glenn but it has already been confirmed as the engine of choice for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket – providing Blue Origin with another revenue stream from its highly capable engine. BE-4 has already conducted numerous successful test firings at the West Texas test facility.

With a large amount of synergy with SpaceX’s reusability approach, Blue will be recovering New Glenn boosters for reuse.

New Glenn booster returns will utilize its own landing ship which has since arrived in the States for a refit into Blue Origin’s Floating Landing Platform.

NASA and SpaceX have agreed to move the target launch date of the uncrewed Demo-1 flight test to the International Space Station. SpaceX coordinated with the Eastern Range for a launch on Thursday, Jan 17. This adjustment allows the return of the Dragon spacecraft from the company’s 16th commercial resupply services mission. SpaceX’s Demo-1 will provide key data associated with the ground, integrated rocket and spacecraft, and autonomous docking systems, and the landing profile ahead of the company’s flight test with astronauts, known as Demo-2.

“We still have more work to do as the certification process, hardware development and readiness reviews continue,” said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “The key readiness reviews along with NASA’s continued analysis of hardware and software testing and certification data must be closed out prior to launch. The upcoming steps before the test missions are critical, and their importance can’t be understated. We are not driven by dates, but by data. Ultimately, we’ll fly SpaceX Demo-1 at the right time, so we get the right data back to support the in-flight abort test and the next test flight when our astronauts are aboard. However, the fact we’re coordinating target dates with the Eastern Range is a great example of the real progress we’re making with commercial crew and how close we are to actually flying American spacecraft and rockets from American soil again.”

WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic plans to perform the next test flight of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane as soon as Dec. 13, a flight that could be the first by the vehicle to reach at least one definition of space.

In a Dec. 11 statement, the company said the next powered test flight of VSS Unity, the second SpaceShipTwo, is planned for a window that opens Dec. 13 from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The flight would be the fourth powered flight for this vehicle and the first since July. The statement came shortly after the publication of airspace restrictions in the vicinity of the airport “for rocket launch and recovery” for Dec. 13 through 15.

“At a basic level, this flight will aim to fly higher and faster,” the company said in its statement. “We plan to burn the rocket motor for longer than we ever have in flight before, but not to its full duration.”

The flight will collect “new and important data points” about the vehicle at higher altitudes and speeds, including supersonic handling qualities and thermal dynamics. How well the vehicle is doing will determine how long they burn the rocket motor, the company stated. On the previous flight, SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket motor burned for 42 seconds, while a full-duration burn would run about one minute.

On that previous flight, SpaceShipTwo reached a peak altitude of 52 kilometers, and the company suggested the vehicle could go much higher on the upcoming flight. “At the end stages of the rocket burn in the thin air of the mesosphere and with the speeds that we expect to achieve, additional altitude is added rapidly,” it stated.

That could be enough for the vehicle to fly high enough to reach space, depending on the definition used. “We also plan to burn the rocket motor for durations which will see our pilots and spaceship reach a space altitude for the first time,” Virgin Galactic stated, but noted that, depending on the outcome of this flight, “it may take us a little longer to get to that milestone.”

The statement didn’t specify what it meant by “space altitude,” but company officials have previously said they were using the altitude of 50 miles, or approximately 80 kilometers, used by NASA and the U.S. Air Force for awarding astronaut wings.

“For Virgin Galactic, the major milestone that we perceive is the altitude at which NASA and Air Force folks get their astronaut wings, which is 50 miles,” George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, said last month. “For us and our customers, I think we’ll be focused on 50 miles, at least at the start.”

That is below the 100-kilometer Karman Line commonly used as the boundary of space, including in the Ansari X Prize competition won by SpaceShipOne in 2004. However, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world air sports federation that maintains records for both aviation and spaceflight, announced Nov. 30 it would reconsider that definition with an eye towards lowering it.

The company added that, on this test flight, it is carrying four unnamed payloads through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which provides suborbital and related flights of research payloads. Those experiments, the company said, are part of an effort by the company “to start simulating the commercial weight distribution in the spaceship represented by our future passengers.”

Virgin Galactic completed its longest rocket-powered flight ever on Thursday, taking a step ahead in the nascent business of space tourism.

The two pilots on board Virgin Galactic's spacecraft Unity became the company's first astronauts. Virgin Group founder Richard Branson was on hand to watch the historic moment.

"Many of you will know how important the dream of space travel is to me personally. Ever since I watched the moon landings as a child I have looked up to the skies with wonder," Branson said after the flight. "This is a momentous day and I could not be more proud of our teams who together have opened a new chapter of space exploration."

Virgin Galactic said the test flight reached an altitude of 51.4 miles, or nearly 83 kilometers. The U.S. military and NASA consider pilots who have flown above 80 kilometers to be astronauts. The Federal Aviation Administration announced on Thursday that pilots Mark Stucky and C.J Sturckow would receive commercial astronaut wings at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. early next year.

Lifted by the jet-powered mothership Eve, the spacecraft Unity took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in the California desert. Upon reaching an altitude above 40,000 feet, the carrier aircraft released Unity. The two-member crew then piloted the spacecraft in a roaring burn which lasted 60 seconds. The flight pushed Unity to a speed of Mach 2.9, nearly three times the speed of sound, as it screamed into a climb toward the edge of space.

After performing a slow backflip in microgravity, Unity turned and glided back to land at Mojave. This was the company's fourth rocket-powered flight of its test program.

Unity is the name of the spacecraft built by The Spaceship Company, which Branson also owns. This rocket design is officially known as SpaceShipTwo (SS2).

Unity also carried four NASA-funded payloads on this mission. The agency said the four technology experiments "will collect valuable data needed to mature the technologies for use on future missions."

"Inexpensive access to suborbital space greatly benefits the technology research and broader spaceflight communities," said Ryan Dibley, NASA's flight opportunities campaign manager, in a statement.

The spacecraft underwent extensive engine testing and seven glide tests before Virgin Galactic said it was ready for a powered test flight — a crucial milestone before the company begins sending tourists to the edge of the atmosphere. Each of the previous three test flights were successful in pushing the spacecraft's limits farther.

Branson told CNBC in October that his company was "more than tantalizingly close" to its first trip to space.

"We will be in space with people not too long after that so we have got a very, very exciting couple of months ahead," he added.

Branson's space company has "a step-by-step cautious approach" in its testing program, he said, doing "whatever it takes to make absolutely certain that we've put everything to bed" before trying to send humans into space. Thursday's successful flight was its fourth rocket-powered launch since the fatal crash of its Enterprise spacecraft on Oct. 31, 2014. Unity underwent extensive engine testing and seven glide tests before Virgin Galactic said it was ready to make another rocket-powered flight.

Once Virgin Galactic has "a safe craft" that can reach more than 264,000 feet, Branson said, he will go up.

A key part of Virgin Galactic's plan to turn space tourism into a business is rapid reuse of the spacecraft. By completing multiple spaceflights this year, each separated by only a few months, Virgin Galactic is closing in on that goal.

Branson is now a step ahead of fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos in the space tourism business. Bezos has been pouring nearly $1 billion a year from his Amazon holdings into Blue Origin, the rocket-builder he founded. Blue Origin is in the final stages of testing its New Shepard rocket, most recently launching its capsule to 322,405 feet in an eighth successful flight on April 29. But Blue Origin's aim of launching tourists to space on New Shepard this year have been delayed, with the company now targeting early next year.

Branson has said he does "not see this as a race," despite the comparison often arising.

Virgin Galactic has more than 600 would-be astronauts signed on to launch, with tickets priced at $250,000 per flight.