
Virgin Galactic goes faster than speed of sound in flight test - andydev
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/momentous-day-for-space-travel
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carbocation
Maybe the physics or the finances aren't there, but I would imagine that an
excellent use for sub-orbital near-spaceflight would be to get between two
distant cities (Tokyo and London) extremely quickly. Virgin Galactic would
seem to be poised to execute on this, if there is a market for it.

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arjunnarayan
This is one of the end uses of suborbital flights: New York to Beijing in 3
hours. The cost is high, but there are people who would pay a lot of money to
make that trip in that short a time.

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jlgreco
I wonder how the in-flight wifi would/could be. The sort of customer you are
talking about is probably rather accustomed to being constantly connected.

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arjunnarayan
I highly doubt that 13 hours of wifi-connected travel is preferable to 3 hours
offline. With a 3-hour suborbital flight you can fly out to Beijing to
finalize a deal and be back in time for a late dinner.

If you fly out with your lawyers and team, you could spend the 3 hours
prepping, and the 3 hours back drinking the celebratory champagne.

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ars
Assuming you could determine the flight schedule personally, which you
probably can't.

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the_french
Considering that the first ship had 6 spaces advertised, you might be able to
determine the schedule by book all the spots.

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rquantz
Can anyone speak to the significance of this achievement, considering that
reaching low earth orbit requires something like Mach 24?

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youngtaff
Branson is very good at 'blowing his own trumpet'.

All he seems to doing on this project is providing money and grabbing as much
publicity as he can, Burt Rutan's people seem to be the ones doing the real
work.

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melling
Yes, fortunately most of us understand the importance of publicity when trying
to build a new business, especially one where your clients aren't going on a
ride at Disney World.

I'm sure Richard Branson understands Burt Rutan's contributions. He, however,
needs to sell tickets.

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salimmadjd
I noticed the youtube video was removed? I wonder if it was a PR decision. Any
ideas?

Also, I agree hitting speed of sound is not that of an achievement, but it'
something given it wasn't bankrolled by limitless government funding. If they
have any mishaps, their program is crashed. Where as government program can
have many mishaps and it doesn't have the same impact as a consumer-oriented
business.

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akie
I think it's just a mistake. The video is still available through their
YouTube channel - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pln9JKEjFks>

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jbrowning
That drop from the mothership seems like it would make a few people sick. :)

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xanadohnt
In the grand scheme of things, this isn't a very big deal? Actual "space"
flight requires many multiples of this speed. And isn't the main goal of
Virgin Galactic to ferry tourists into space?

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Gravityloss
If suborbital tourist and scientific flights to 100 km happen every day, they
could conceivably use some technologies and operations approaches that are
also relevant to orbital launch.

Think of how you attack a complex problem - you can't solve everything at
once, but you try to break it into smaller ones. If you build a complex piece
of software, you try various concepts on a proof level, then rewrite them
until you have something workable, then integrate that to your big software.
If you are smart, you also use libraries that were first started for projects
that did something totally different but had to create libraries on the side.

Same here too. In my opinion, hybrid rockets will not be relevant for cheap
space launch in the long term, but commercial construction and operations of
carrier airdrop, the shuttle cock re-entry and gliding return are something
that probably will be fine tuned a lot by Virgin Galactic (operator) and The
Spaceship Company (builder).

They have picked a path with a high dry mass penalty (glider wings) and quite
a lot of complication (a whole extra aircraft) but they certainly are in a
very exclusive club, having flown safely to 100 km, twice, with a human pilot.
Their approach makes sense for an airplane company. A rocket company would
build a normal liquid rocket engine that could do it from the ground and come
back and land vertically again.

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sidcool
I almost read 'faster than speed of light', my jaw dropped...But then it was
sound. A great feat, nevertheless.

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spiritplumber
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket)> This is arguably cooler.

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rpmcb
Not really a legitimate comparison. Pegasus is Orbital Science's unmanned
cargo vehicle. Virgin Galactic is building a space tourism company. Very
different.

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porterhaney
Meh. I saw a guy break the sound barrier just by falling.

