Paul Allen's new Stratolaunch Systems Endeavour

Billionaire Paul Allen and Burt Rutan announched a new venture for manned space travel. It will be the largest aircraft ever built based off of the carrier/space booster plan profile that the White Knight/SpaceShipOne was.

Broken down, you have the giant carrier aircraft which will built by Rutan's Scale Composites. The other part of the system is the multi-stage booster to be built by Elon Musk's SpaceX. The Mating and integration system that can handle up to 490,000 pounds will be built by Dynetics.

Quote: Stratolaunch Systems will bring airport-like operations to the launch of commercial and government payloads and, eventually, human missions. Plans call for a first flight within five years. The air-launch-to-orbit system will mean lower costs, greater safety, and more flexibility and responsiveness than is possible today with ground-based systems. Stratolaunch's quick turnaround between launches will enable new orbital missions as well as break the logjam of missions queued up for launch facilities and a chance at space. Rutan, who has joined Stratolaunch Systems as a board member, said he was thrilled to be back working with Allen. "Paul and I pioneered private space travel with SpaceShipOne, which led to Virgin Galactic's commercial suborbital SpaceShipTwo Program. end quote.

The new carrier aircraft if huge. It will have a wingspan of 380 feet which is longer than that of a football field. Quoting Burt Rutan: "You should never show this airplane, or a model of it, without right next to it, showing a plane that we know how big it is, like a little 747." end quote.

The carrier will have six turbofn engines - the type use of Boeing 747s. It will have a take-off weight of 1.2 million pounds and it will need a runway of 12,000 feet long to get off the ground. More than likely, it will have to take off from the Space Shuttle runway at the Kennedy Space Center.

Initially, Stratolaunch Systems will focus on cargo flights, but human flights quote: "will follow after safety, reliability, and operability are demonstrated."

First flight should take place before the end of the decade. Also, if you have problems viewing the video, just click on it to watch it on YouTube.

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Ref.

1. NSS Blog. "Stratolaunch Systems: New Space Launch System Announced by Paul Allen" December 13, 2011. (http://blog.nss.org/?p=3167).

2. cnet.com. "Paul Allen's Stratolaunch: Grand plan for next-gen space travel" by Daniel Terdiman. December 13, 2011. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-57342415-52/paul-allens-stratolaunch-grand-plan-for-next-gen-space-travel/). image from article.

3. Stratolaunch website (http://www.stratolaunch.com/)

4. New Space Journal.com. "Paul Allen to unveil Stratolaunch Systems today" December 13, 2011. (http://www.newspacejournal.com/2011/12/13/paul-allen-to-unveil-stratolaunch-systems-today/).

Burt Rutan - Manned Space Flight For the Future

Please check out my post about Burt Rutan on my other blog - The Shanks Dimension. And the recent email/letter he sent out. (http://www.theshanksdimension.com/2010/02/burt-rutan-recent-letter-to-the-new-media/). NOTE: Just in case you don't know who Burt Rutan is, he's the guy on the right standing next to Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic. The mothership and VG's first passenger carrying spacecraft in the background.

Private Sector Space Dreams

The American bureaucracy of which NASA is a part of, has by force of congressional decree and presidential inattention except in election years, become affraid to take any bold moves in manned spaceflight.

They talk a good game, the public takes it hook, line, and sinker, and nothing really ever becomes of it. The shuttle was just suppose to be a part of a shuttle-station program. Towards the end of its career, it finally did that job. But in the beginning, it was nothing more than a glorified dump truck.

And it was paid for by the American taxpayer.

Back in the 1990s, there was a chance to replace the shuttle with a newer spacecraft. The VentureStar from Lochkeed Martin or the DC-X vertical take-off/landing, single-stage to orbit spacecraft. The DC-X was a sub-scale, flight tested piece of hardware. The VentureStar was a computer animation only. Guess which one the Clinton Administration went with? That's right: VentureStar.

Then Columbia broke up on reentry.

President Bush proposed shutting down the shuttle program and replacing it with the Apollo on steroids program known as Constellation. Now President Obama will cancel even that and hope that the private sector will take over.

Well, I (slightly) agree with President Obama that it would be better for the private sector to come into its own as far as transporting folks up into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). But, the government should have kept the Constellation Program going.

I remember in a Air Force ROTC classroom in my college days, my instructor was describing the problem faced by FDR in the Pacific War. He had General MacArthur promoting a campaign that would go through the Philippines. Admiral Nimitz wanted to go straight across the Pacific to the China coast cutting the Japanese supply line in two.

President Roosvelt decided that it would be in the best interest of the war effort to go with BOTH strategys.

I submit to the reader that the same thing could have been applied to the Constellation Program. I'm on record opposing the idea of Super-Apollo, but NO American manned spaceflight program is even worse to think about.

So where this this lead us to? Private Space Industry.

In fact, I think it is going to be up to men like Bigelow and Rutan to get American civilians back up into space (without government aid). And more important, get them to the surface of the moon and back to Earth on a regular flight schedule.

Eventually, a lunar base will be built. And maybe then, NASA will get funding from Congress to lease a base on the moon.

So, are there enough deep pockets in the worldwide civilian sector to make it possible for the non-government space program to make it to the moon and Mars ? And do it before the Chinese gets there.

Check out the article "Moon dreams" from The Economist website(February 18, 2010) for the article that inspired me to write this posting.

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Ref. The Economist, February 18, 2010, "Private-sector space flight. Moon dreams" (http://www.economist.com/science-technology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15543675).

Virgin Space Ship (VSS) ENTERPRISE!

Sir Richard Branson - founder of Virgin Galactic, and Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShip 2 (SS2) revealed that ship to the public today.

This is a big milestone for Virgin Galactic's mission to be the first civilian commercial space line.

SS2 draws a great deal from its history from SpaceShip1(SS1) that had its first successful flight in 2004. SS1 won the famous Ansari X-Prize for completing the world's first manned private space flight. SS2 can carry 6 passengers and 2 pilot astronauts into sub-orbital flight.

The unvealing took place at the Mojave Air and Spaceport.

The flight profile will have SS2 attached to the White Knight 2 carrier craft nickname EVE after Sir Branson's mother. The WK2 will carry the SS2 up to 50,000 feet before it is dropped and fires off her rocket motors.

What I found special about this article is the news of what they intend to name this first spaceliner... Governors Schwarzenegger of California, and Governor Richardson of New Mexico, christened the SS2 as the Virgin Space Ship (VSS) ENTERPRISE. This is in line with the tradition of using the word Enterprise in the naming of Royal Navy, US Navy, NASA spacecraft - and of course of a certain science fiction tv series.

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Ref. Commercial space watch, December 7, 2009. (http://www.comspacewatch.com/news/viewpr.rss.html?pid=29757).

photo of Sir Branson and Burt Rutan December 7, 2009 (http://www.virgin.com/travel/inside-virgin-travel/virgin-galactic-unveils-spaceshiptwo-1/)

WhiteKnightTwo Has Maiden Flight This Month

Virgin Galactic's carrier aircraft known as WhiteKnightTwo (or as SpaceShipTwo Carrier) made a successful maiden test flight on December 21, 2008 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The aircraft designed by Scale Composites lifted off with its four Pratt and Whitney PW308A turbofan engines at 8:17 am. The maiden test flight ended at the same runway at about 9:17am PST.

Virgin Galactic has on order five of the SpaceShipTwo rocket planes and two of the carriers (WhiteKnightTwo Carrier). Burt Rutan told Space.com "Overall, 99% on target and everybody is really happy. You get an airplane that's this weird and get it up and get it down.. and it's safe on deck."

Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic added, "White Knight Two is the world's largest all carbon composite aviation vehicle. And of course she really is also a first stage space launch system capable of carrying enormous weight to the edge of the atmosphere, training astronauts with her zero to six G flying capability and being a scientific payload at the same time."

In other Virgin Galactic news, on December 15, 2008, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) announced that Spaceport America has received its Record of Decision and license for verticle and horizontal launch operations from the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. The Gerald Martin Construction Management of Albuquerque, New Mexico, will oversee the construction of Spaceport America. The NMSA is expected to have a signed lease agreement with Virgin Galactic by the end of the month. Terminal and hangar facility construction will began in 2009 and hopefully completed by late 2010.

Ref. Article on Space.com by Leonard David, "SpaceShipTwo Carrier Craft Makes Successful First Flight"Posted on December 21, 2008. photo taken by and posted to Space.com: Bill Deaver (Mojave Desert News).

White Knight Two Unveiled!

The twin fuselage four engine jet plane known as the White Knight Two was unveiled on July 28, 2008 at Scaled Composites. That facility is located in Mojave, California. Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites designed and built the Virgin Galactic's mothership, nicknamed “Eve” after Sir Richard Branson's mother. Eve Branson was also present for the debute of the large aircraft. Burt Rutan, the aircraft designer and is also still working on SpaceShipTwo. SpaceShipTwo is a larger version of the famous SpaceShipOne that tested the sub-orbital vehicle concept several years ago. SpaceShipTwo will be able to carry eleven people up into sub-orbit.
But the WhiteKnightTwo can also launch other spacecraft such as satellites, and other projects (manned and unmanned) in the future. SpaceShipTwo will ride between the twin fuselages of the mothership.
(ref. Space.com article by Leonard David posted on July 31, 2008).