Article

2014-11-01 -Short Attention Span Theater-

Pilot of Virgin Galactic space plane runs out of airspeed and ideas.

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Posted by Besoeker 2014-11-01 00:00|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top

#1 A long post about the root causes via Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings. TL;DR: you gotta walk before you fly.

Posted by SteveS 2014-11-01 00:39|| 2014-11-01 00:39|| Front Page Top

#2 There's a reason test pilots are paid so much; it's in direct proportion to, every now and then, one of them not living long enough to spend it.

Posted by ed in texas 2014-11-01 07:52|| 2014-11-01 07:52|| Front Page Top

#3 Krauthammer had it right last week when he essentially said, "these civilian launch pad explosions and tragic air crashes are the result of the U.S. [under the Champ] totally walking away from space research and development."

Posted by Besoeker 2014-11-01 07:59|| 2014-11-01 07:59|| Front Page Top

#4 No, Besoeker, in one it's the result of Virgin Galactic making a bad design choice in selecting an engine some twelve years ago, and when they got dissatisfied with the subcontractor, they decided to go ahead and try to make it themselves, which they had no experience with. They made a lot of these bad decisions back when Bush was president.

Likewise, I think Antares, like the people making Atlas, had been making their Bad Decision regarding Russian engines back when _Clinton_ was President.

We still have at least two rocket companies with US built, liquid fueled engines, that ain't perfect but at least involve the US having an industrial base.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-11-01 09:14|| 2014-11-01 09:14|| Front Page Top

#5 BTW the two companies with US made engines are Boeing and SpaceX.

Posted by 3dc 2014-11-01 09:18|| 2014-11-01 09:18|| Front Page Top

#6 Interesting. Thanks for the backgrounder Snowy.

Posted by Besoeker 2014-11-01 10:33|| 2014-11-01 10:33|| Front Page Top

#7 Not to mention Xcor and Blue Origin, but I think they're still trying to work things out.

Thought for the week: when SpaceX has an explosion (like the recent testbed loss they suffered) they can just take another engine cluster off the assembly line and build another one.

With Antares they're burning through a stockpile, and there aren't any after this.

I hadn't been paying much attention to Virgin Galactic, anyway, I suggest going over to Rand Simberg's blog, he'll probably have the leading rumors as they develop. Reportedly they got dissatisfied with the hybrid engines they were getting from Sierra Nevada, so they decided the problems were the contractor rather than the motors.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2014-11-01 13:41|| 2014-11-01 13:41|| Front Page Top

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