Spaceport UK

[mayevora]

Keep hearing this being mentioned on News channels. Coincides nicely with 45 years yesterday since Apollo 11 launched.

http://news.stv.tv/north/282694-plans-for-first-uk-spaceport-to-be-revealed-by-government-ministers/

Be great if it happens and ready to use in 4 years.

[rfoster]

Now that is really cool. Just need some spaceships to use them now!

[Bibs]

Surely we're already there...

 

[Sparky]

You're more likely to see that than Branson's big white elephant.

[molemot]

Virgin Galactic......"Galactic", for Heaven's sake.....! This has been going on since Burt Rutan won the X prize back in 2004, and they still haven't flown the thing properly yet. Two people have died in an explosion of nitrous oxide under stupid circumstances; the final design of the rocket is still to be decided; and even the x prize winning flights were hairy in the extreme....one of them had a very high rate of roll under power and one had the feathering tail assembly stick. I hope that all goes well for their customers, who are paying a vast sum for an experience that, if you blinked, you'd have pretty much missed it.

[Bibs]

You'd want to take a Go-Pro! 

[Sparky]

The Go-Pro will be holographic and 5-sense immersive before Beardy's P.O.S. flies. And I sincerely hope the lying gobshite is on it when it does.

[molemot]

The Go-Pro will be holographic and 5-sense immersive before Beardy's P.O.S. flies. And I sincerely hope the lying gobshite is on it when it does.

 

 

Said the British Airways spokesman.....(!!!)

 

Here's the lying gobshite latest....

 

http://www.newspacejournal.com/category/business/virgin-galactic/

[Advantage]

Look at the proposed locations for the base. It will take your average London based Russian billionaire longer to get to the base than it will for the MegaSpaceThrusterGoCowboy5000 to get into orbit.

[Sparky]

Hehe!  Believe me, I was the target of much derision for years for defending Branson at BA.  Then I took a long look at exactly how he operates.  A very smart man with zero scruples, many lies, and a trail of destruction and ruined business people in his wake.  But all very cleverly marketed.

 

SS2 is pretty much the biggest farce in his pockmarked history.  It's barely achieved what Concorde routinely did across the Atlantic.  I'd give anything to go into space (although this won't really take you there) but I'd never set foot in that death trap.  And I'm confident that his promise to be on the first flight with his family will be another lie.

[molemot]

Sub orbital only.....getting into even low earth orbit is an entirely different thing from sticking your head out of the atmosphere. You have to deal with re entry from 17,500 mph rather than the 2,500 mph that SpaceShip Two can manage.....and you're not going to do that in a plastic "spaceship" with a feathering tail. There's a reason there called "Thermoplastics"...!!!

 

Thinking of it, Sparky, if you stuck a rocket  under Concorde you'd be in business straight away....hmmmm...there's one at Brooklands and a bunch of aeroengineers, too.....

[Sparky]

Yeah, but we cut the wings off to move it from Filton! Refit wasn't exactly airworthy...

[Advantage]

Never stopped you before.

[Sparky]

Trust me, Delta Golf's rebuild wasn't even up to cable tie standard.

[mayevora]

Not a problem. Filton has another just sitting there.

[softlips]

Have they said where it's going to be?

[pete]

 

 

SS2 is pretty much the biggest farce in his pockmarked history.  It's barely achieved what Concorde routinely did across the Atlantic.  I'd give anything to go into space (although this won't really take you there) but I'd never set foot in that death trap.  And I'm confident that his promise to be on the first flight with his family will be another lie.

It has crashed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29857182

[Sparky]

Very sad. Hardly a surprise.

[molemot]

Desperate stuff......very sad indeed. Now we wait for the accident investigation report....speculation is futile.

[mayevora]

That's two rockets down this week alone.

[fmxa]

Space travel is a risky business with inevitable loss of life, and it's simply not ready for tourism right now. This accident brings the total Virgin Galactic death count to 4 and not a single passenger flown.

 

http://www.knightsarrow.com/rockets/scaled-composites-accident/

[molemot]

I remember reading that report some while ago, and thinking that it was pretty damning. Nitrous oxide is very dodgy stuff; if the temperature of it goes above 100F the liquid flashes to gas and the pressure increases vastly. Hybrid rockets seem even less dependable than liquid fuel rockets, which have had far more development over the years. HTP as an oxydiser is also a very unpleasant liquid....although better understood, as it has been used in commercial rockets from the Me163 through Black Knight...which launched the only UK satellite...and the stand off bomb, Blue Steel, which formed the weapons load for the Vulcan towards the end of the V forces role as the UK deterrent....before that task went to the submarines....

 

The link above refers to further information...

 

"Since publication of this article, the team has continued to amass information regarding this accident. If the truth about the 2007 accident had come out, if a Coroner’s Inquest into the deaths had been held, if everyone had told the truth, the fatal loss of Spaceship Two on 31 October 2014 would probably not have happened. The documentation and hard evidence we have amassed can be made available, on request, to any responsible party who wants to properly understand the issues."

 

It would be interesting to see what else has come to light.

 

On the subject of the recent disaster...I have seen suggestions that the cause was an airframe failure which flipped the craft over and left it flying backwards at supersonic speed, the resulting aerodynamic loads ripping the structure completely apart and throwing the surviving pilot out; so the major culprit may yet prove to be something other than the motor.

[pete]

http://www.virgingalactic.com/statement-from-virgin-galactic/