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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 11:26 
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I wish he was using a technology that could be extended to orbit, but it doesn't look like that to me. So its more of an amusement park ride than real technical progress toward more manned space.


The only reason why the shuttlecock design works is because it's way sub-orbital and the speeds are relatively low. If it went much higher, it would need a heat shield for reentry. Still, on its way up the speed is nearing mach 3, a flight regime that has only been reached by a few aircraft before.

The fact that this one was made by civilians and that the proof of concept system (SpaceShip 1/White Knight) was developed on a shoestring budget compared to most programs is a significant advancement in technology. There's just isn't much application beyond amusement rides right now.


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 11:37 
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The ideas about colonizing Mars are, however, misguided.


Concur!

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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 12:27 
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Blue Origins technology can lead to orbit - even if they are just doing short hops for now.

Can it? I wasn't sure that was the case. Orbit is *way* harder and requires a completely different set of tradeoffs than suborbital.

It won't be too long before SpaceX can put a bunch of people into orbit on a Starship "hotel". They probably can do that for less cost per seat than Virgin and deliver a far more interesting experience.

New Glenn will be an orbital vehicle if they can ever get the rocket motors worked out.

No need to wait for Starship for orbital tourism, SpaceX will let you rent a Dragon capsule for you and several friends for just a few million dollars. If I had the wallet for it, that's where I'd spend my money. The vertical toss & drop would be fun, but as you say, not worth the squeeze.

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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 12:37 
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It looked like the total zero G time was less than 2 minutes. You can get way more than that in the vomit comet, but in 30 second blocks, for a hell of a lot less cost. Plus you can take 15 or 20 of your friends.

Vince


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 12:52 
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It looked like the total zero G time was less than 2 minutes. You can get way more than that in the vomit comet, but in 30 second blocks, for a hell of a lot less cost. Plus you can take 15 or 20 of your friends.

But the view doesn't even come close :D

The shuttlecock concept, as an engineering solution to this mission requirement, is equal parts stroke of genius and very, very specific to the flight profile.


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 13:08 
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It looked like the total zero G time was less than 2 minutes. You can get way more than that in the vomit comet, but in 30 second blocks, for a hell of a lot less cost. Plus you can take 15 or 20 of your friends.

But the view doesn't even come close :D

The shuttlecock concept, as an engineering solution to this mission requirement, is equal parts stroke of genius and very, very specific to the flight profile.


Most of Burt’s designs were highly inspired from others but I give him full credit for the shuttlecock design. Brilliant!

Best,

Tom

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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 13:22 
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Username Protected wrote:
The only reason why the shuttlecock design works is because it's way sub-orbital and the speeds are relatively low. If it went much higher, it would need a heat shield for reentry. Still, on its way up the speed is nearing mach 3, a flight regime that has only been reached by a few aircraft before.


Unless one carried enough fuel for a de-orbit burn (perhaps combined with a limited amount of atmospheric friction) that brought the craft speed WAY down before re-entry.

Seems laughable, but who would have thought someone would carry enough extra fuel to vertically land and re-use boosters?

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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 14:49 
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Orbit is around 9km/second. That is an enormous delta-V, would need aobout 90% fuel mass with chemical rockets.

Username Protected wrote:
The only reason why the shuttlecock design works is because it's way sub-orbital and the speeds are relatively low. If it went much higher, it would need a heat shield for reentry. Still, on its way up the speed is nearing mach 3, a flight regime that has only been reached by a few aircraft before.


Unless one carried enough fuel for a de-orbit burn (perhaps combined with a limited amount of atmospheric friction) that brought the craft speed WAY down before re-entry.

Seems laughable, but who would have thought someone would carry enough extra fuel to vertically land and re-use boosters?


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 14:53 
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Blue origins has a plan to have a 2 stage rocket, that could do orbit. The virgin spac plane really doesn't have any follow on path to orbit. its not designed for high mass ratio, or for reentry.

I wish Musk the best on putting people on Mars. I think its unlikely he will succeed, but he does have $100B to spend if he wants (and he wants). Maybe he will make it.

Its difficult to imagine NASA doing it in my lifetime. The US doesn't have the will to do this anymore.


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I wish he was using a technology that could be extended to orbit, but it doesn't look like that to me. So its more of an amusement park ride than real technical progress toward more manned space. No problem if people are willing to pay, but its not very exciting to me.

I concur. It is a very short joy ride that is basically a few minutes of zero G. I predict the suborbital space business will be short lived and fade away. The juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

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Blue Origins technology can lead to orbit - even if they are just doing short hops for now.

Can it? I wasn't sure that was the case. Orbit is *way* harder and requires a completely different set of tradeoffs than suborbital.

It won't be too long before SpaceX can put a bunch of people into orbit on a Starship "hotel". They probably can do that for less cost per seat than Virgin and deliver a far more interesting experience.

The ideas about colonizing Mars are, however, misguided.

Mike C.


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 15:08 
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Orbit is around 9km/second. That is an enormous delta-V, would need about 90% fuel mass with chemical rockets.

Yep- it's a fun thought experiment. Picture the entire space shuttle assembly on the launch pad (orbiter + big fuel tank + boosters). Picture the whole assembly, fully fueled and in orbit, using all that fuel to de-orbit. Use all that fuel in the tank and boosters to come to an almost dead stop, a couple hundred miles straight up, and then have the orbiter "shuttlecock" almost straight down, with some retro burns to keep the Mach number from getting ridiculously high in the thinnest reaches of the atmosphere.

Here's the fun part: ask yourself how big a booster stage you'd have to build to lob that entire thing in orbit in the first place.

It could happen and it's technically feasible—with enough money—but the physical proportions (payload to propulsion) would be quite "interesting" compared to, say, the old Apollo rockets.

As you said, "with chemical rockets." We have yet to invent a propulsion system or a super fuel with greatly improved thrust:mass. I'm sure we will, one day, but I don't think that day will be anytime soon. The next logical question in this thought experiment is to ask for this hypothetical, futuristic super fuel, what specific impulse is required to enable such a launch and recovery vehicle?


Heat shields and using aerodynamic drag to dissipate (most of) the energy is still the only practical system.


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 13 Jul 2021, 18:06 
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Yea, that exponential gets ugly fast.

I just said "chemical rockets" for completeness. Nuclear thermal might be a win with such a large total Delta-V, but not clear, and the costs and risk make it insane. I don't see anything else that is a path toward higher ISP at high thrust. Scramjets sound nice, but they are only useful for a pretty limited range of speeds even if they are able to work.

But a nice high thrust 2000 second ISP rocket would do it - but I don't see any path to that that isn't insane in some other way (eg Orion).


Heat shields are the way to go. That worries me about BFR (spaceship whatever...) Musk is planning a very unusual reentry system for that and that is probably the most challenging part of the whole project. It doesn't have the glide ratio of the shuttle to spread out the heat time, but it still needs a lot of are covered in shielding.



Username Protected wrote:
Orbit is around 9km/second. That is an enormous delta-V, would need about 90% fuel mass with chemical rockets.

Yep- it's a fun thought experiment. Picture the entire space shuttle assembly on the launch pad (orbiter + big fuel tank + boosters). Picture the whole assembly, fully fueled and in orbit, using all that fuel to de-orbit. Use all that fuel in the tank and boosters to come to an almost dead stop, a couple hundred miles straight up, and then have the orbiter "shuttlecock" almost straight down, with some retro burns to keep the Mach number from getting ridiculously high in the thinnest reaches of the atmosphere.

Here's the fun part: ask yourself how big a booster stage you'd have to build to lob that entire thing in orbit in the first place.

It could happen and it's technically feasible—with enough money—but the physical proportions (payload to propulsion) would be quite "interesting" compared to, say, the old Apollo rockets.

As you said, "with chemical rockets." We have yet to invent a propulsion system or a super fuel with greatly improved thrust:mass. I'm sure we will, one day, but I don't think that day will be anytime soon. The next logical question in this thought experiment is to ask for this hypothetical, futuristic super fuel, what specific impulse is required to enable such a launch and recovery vehicle?


Heat shields and using aerodynamic drag to dissipate (most of) the energy is still the only practical system.


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 14 Jul 2021, 10:57 
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How high do you have to be to do a full blown reentry like the space shuttle did?


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 14 Jul 2021, 11:41 
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How high do you have to be to do a full blown reentry like the space shuttle did?

Have a look at the profiles of the Mercury flights- they went between 100 and close to 200 miles up between the first, sub-orbital flights and the orbital ones; the Space Shuttle flew to similar altitudes. Yuri Gargarin went up to about 100 miles on his famous flight.

Neil Armstrong famously "skipped" the X-15 off the atmosphere while descending from about 40 miles up (I had to look up the details on this one); the X-15 would get very hot and it "flew" similarly to how the Space Shuttle used to return to earth, so that airplane and that flight in particular makes a good example of what's not quite what we think of as a full reentry.

The Virgin spaceships go higher than that but the design cleverly sidesteps the reentry heating. I'm sure they've done a lot of cocktail napkin math about "what if" they wanted to fly to 100 or 150 miles up instead of 50 or 62, what would that require of the motor and what would that require of the recovery phase. The numbers on SpaceShip III seem to be close hold right now- higher/faster, bigger, evolved and refined from lessons learned from the earlier ships?

:shrug:


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 14 Jul 2021, 11:59 
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How does the Virgin ship sidestep the entry heating? I'm sure the space shuttle was coming in at a much higher speed than the Virgin ship and they had to slow down somehow.


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 Post subject: Re: Virgin Orbit Success, designed in Long Beach, CA.
PostPosted: 14 Jul 2021, 12:02 
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How does the Virgin ship sidestep the entry heating?

Um, read the previous 5-10 posts on this page...


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