Fly the Friendly Space Craft!

[3113]

From here:

Richard Branson unveiled his Virgin Galactic spaceliner for tourists willing to pay 200,000 dollars a ticket Monday, showing off a white port-holed craft suspended under the wings of a mothership dubbed the White Knight. Previewing the roll-out of the Virgin Galactic craft in California's Mojave desert, the British billionaire said he planned to be on its first passenger flight in about 18 months time with his family and the space ship's American designer Burt Rutan.

...In an interview with CNN before the test-flight, Branson explained how the craft was designed to return to Earth "like a giant shuttlecock" to avoid the buildup of heat that makes re-entry one of the great hazards of space travel. "What happens is that the six potential astronauts will be sitting in the central pod here, what is their spacecraft, and the White Knight will take them up to about 60,000 feet. At 60,000 feet, they will drop away and they will then go 2,000 miles per hour in 10 seconds where they get propelled into space," he said.

Once in space, the travelers can get out of their seats and look back at the Earth through large portholes — the first in any space craft, he said. "They can float around and become astronauts, and, when they are ready to come back into the earth's atmosphere again, they will put themselves back into their seats and buckle in and they will begin their voyage back into the Earth's atmosphere. At that stage the space ship effectively turns into a giant shuttlecock — that would be the genius of Burt Rutan, the engineer behind it," he said.

"And so it literally feathers its way back into the Earth's atmosphere so it doesn't have the enormous heat buildup that some of the NASA space ships have had in the past," he said.

Here's what the White Knight and space craft look like:

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn13219/dn13219-3_700.jpg

So. Who's for an AH lit-together in space? What better place for a meet-up of porn writers than on "Virgin" Galactic? I hear they play good music....

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

From here:


Here's what the White Knight and space craft look like:

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn13219/dn13219-3_700.jpg

So. Who's for an AH lit-together in space? What better place for a meet-up of porn writers than on "Virgin" Galactic? I hear they play good music....

Actually. That fucker looks pretty unstable to me, 3

 

[Huckleman2000]

They go up on Virgin, they come down as women.

 

[3113]

Actually. That fucker looks pretty unstable to me, 3

Well, it's the thing in the middle that breaks away from the rest and actually goes up into space and comes back down.

It's a sexual metaphor.

 

[oggbashan]

You won't get much freefall flying.

The interior is about the size of a Ford Transit van (third of the size of a school bus for US readers).

Og

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Welcome to ... "Bus in Space!"

Imagine a lot of echo and a deep voice yelling that.

 

[3113]

Welcome to ... "Bus in Space!"

Does that mean there'll be some weird old man in the back talking to himself?

 

[TE999]

Does that mean there'll be some weird old man in the back talking to himself?

Yes, also an ugly old woman eating fried chicken out of a greasy paper sack as an unshaven drunk pukes in the aisle.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yes, also an ugly old woman eating fried chicken out of a greasy paper sack as an unshaven drunk pukes in the aisle.

And don't forget the guy pissin' himself as he sleeps.

 

[JackLuis]

The Mile High Club, may now be out classed, by modern technology.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

And don't forget the guy pissin' himself as he sleeps.

God... don't even bring that up, Zeb. Some old bastard peed on me while standing in line at the toilet on a United flight from Chicago to Portland some years ago. Bastard didn't even appologize.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

$200,000 for a two and a half hour "sub-orbital" flight? Scratch that from my Xmas list!

And the bastards would prolly lose your luggage too.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

God... don't even bring that up, Zeb. Some old bastard peed on me while standing in line at the toilet on a United flight from Chicago to Portland some years ago. Bastard didn't even appologize.

Whoa! Did you pound him into the floorboards?

My very first flight overseas as a civilian was to the UK back in '96. It was the last smoking flight out of Atlanta, Ga. Back then I was a smoker. I sat in the last aisle of an L1011 or was it a DC10 flown by BA right next to the inboard WC. The stench from there was horrendous by the time we finally landed fifteen hours later.

I know it's only a ten and a half hour flight from Atlanta to London but Gatwick and Heathrow were fogged in. The crew circled hoping it would clear then landed us up in New Castle when they ran out of gas. Sat on the ground for another three hours before they would let us de-plane. Those WCs were really ripe be then.

 

[Dragonlipz]

Actually. That fucker looks pretty unstable to me, 3

Burt Rutan designed it.

 

[JackLuis]

Here is a Wicki about it.

First hand tweet of unvailing.

An Early simulation.

A later Simulation

Latest Pix.


6 passengers x $200K=$1.2 Million a flight and $225 Million to build the Space Port? Well I guess with seven ships at 30 flights a year each, that's a lot of money.

 

[3113]

6 passengers x $200K=$1.2 Million a flight and $225 Million to build the Space Port? Well I guess with seven ships at 30 flights a year each, that's a lot of money.

Seven ships with room for 6 passengers each? Hm. That's 42 passengers x 30 = 1,260 passengers a year.

And at 1.2 mil a flight, with a total of 210 flights (7 ships/30 flights each), that $252 million. So the Space Port pays for itself within a year, provided all those flights go up as planned.

 

[Dragonlipz]

Seven ships with room for 6 passengers each? Hm. That's 42 passengers x 30 = 1,260 passengers a year.

And at 1.2 mil a flight, with a total of 210 flights (7 ships/30 flights each), that $252 million. So the Space Port pays for itself within a year, provided all those flights go up as planned.

In addition to the six on board the 'spaceship', twelve to twenty paying passengers will be aboard the 'White Knight 2'......I can't remember how much they'll pay: at least $5000 and probably around $20,000 each after they get a better idea of the costs associated with this project....so that's an additional quarter mil to factor in.... it pays for the gas.....

 

[TE999]

The sci-fi film 'Destination Moon' released in 1950 had a space ship constructed by private enterprise making the first landing on the moon.

The way our government space program is being bungled, life may imitate art (again).