Virgin Galactic Unveils Design For SpaceShipTwo
Erick Schonfeld
32 comments »
This morning, Richard Branson’s spaceship startup Virgin Galactic unveiled the second design of its suborbital vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two. I am blogging this from the press conference at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
SpaceShipTwo is what the passengers will actually ride in, and White Knight Two is the launch vehicle that carries it to a high altitude before releasing the rocket. (It takes less energy to launch from 50,000 feet than from the ground). The design is a little bit different than the initial SpaceShipOne and White Knight One. Both are all carbon-composite vehicles, and are designed with an open architecture so that in the future other companies can use it as a foundation to create space vehicles for unmanned missions. White Knight Two is a double-hulled launch plane with four engines from Pratt & Whitney.
Branson suggests that if Virgin Galactic can prove the commercial viability of space flight, it will unlock a “wall of investment that could rival the amount invested in mobile or the Internet.” He also suggests that at some point in the future, in addition to suborbital thrill rides, the vehicle pair could serve as a superfast transport for point-to-point international travel here on Earth. (Forget about supersonic flight, this would be much faster). Looking much further out to a day when next-generation vehicles are flying commercially that can actually deliver small satellites and other payloads, he waxes about the possibilities:
One day we might be able to use space for energy production. While I believe aviation has to get more carbon efficient, seemingly benign industries like IT have outpaced aviation in carbon output. [One promise of a commercial space industry is] the ability to launch low-earth satellites that could literally take some of the heat out of the planet, by serving as a repository for information technology.
Although the flight rate will be low to start, the vehicle is designed to handle high flight rates several years from now. “The spaceship is being designed so that it can be flown twice a day and the launch plane can be flown three times a day,” says designer Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites. Virgin Galactic has ordered five spaceships from Scaled Composites, with an option of seven more. Rutan predicts that if Virgin Galactic is able to build 40 to 45 spaceships over first twelve years, with 15 launch planes, they could fly 100,000 people in the first twelve years of operation.
Virgin Galactic hopes to begin test flights this summer, but no mention of when commercial flights will actually start. With recession fears in the air, you’ve got to wonder what kind of impact that might have on demand for such premium-luxury travel.
And you thought Web 2.0 startups were risky.
On the initial $200,000 price per flight, Branson notes:
Within five years of launching, we hope that price will come down dramatically. We accept that $200,00, even though the dollar is not worth much anymore, is still too expensive for the majority of people.
By comparison, a trans-Atlantic flight in 1939 between New York and England cost the equivalent of $47,000 in today’s dollars. That was one-way and coach.
Seems like Virgin is going into a market where it isn’t easy to compete. And that plane design looks like it would take up a lot of space in an airport.
I love it. Richard Branson is awesome. There are not many entrepreneurs like him out there.
I don’t think its meat to be at “any” airport, at least right now
compete against who?
@Yasser: Looking at the “windows” and the engine size, I doubt the launch vehicle has the wingspan of a 757.
Looks nice.
http://technoq.blogspot.com
“And you thought Web 2.0 startups were risky.”
Virgin and Spaceship 2 is NOT web 2.0 product. This is Poor journalism.
I think you waste people’s time read this unrelated web 2.0 product.
How do you define web 2.0, Erick?
– This Virgin news belongs to Crunchgrear. You should’ve give to Biggs.
Huh…. What is this doing with techcrunch?
Will TechCrunch have some beta invites for this trip?
No indicators for how much the price will be and if us mere mortals will be able to afford “suborbital thrill rides”, but if Branson can dream about commercialising space flights, we can dream about affording one…
I don’t see recession coming to the luxury market any time soon…
@Yasser: Have you ever actually been to an airport? With the big airplanes? You know, the 747, the A380, etc…
thanks for the web 2.0/internet/computing technology update! OH… wait…
I don’t know man. The ship doesn’t look safe to me. It’s kind like another rutans’ explosion that killed three people and another pilot killed in newly design planes. Forget it. I won’t ride if I were billionaire or millionaire.
I rather ride competitor planes build by russians, Lockheed, Boeing, NASA, and 100 years tested & government certified spaceship. I would never ride risk uncertified spaceship and thin oxygen tanks.
You died in second. your eyes balls will turn all black. This virgin spaceship is too new and dangerous. “Licenses to kill in space.”
Ig that ship killed any passgners. I hope the U.S congress should ban uncertified spaceship built by competitors and overseas technology.
I see it… Steriod spaceship 2008.
For 200K, I’d seriously consider doing this. Realistically I’ll probably wait another 10 years for the price to come down to about 50K though. Hell, maybe 20 years when it’s only 25K.
Either way, the innovation that new space travel will throw off for 1) general consumer aviation, 2) green tech and 3) cars (Aptera, for example) will be significant.
#7, I think you are the only one who is confused.
Very cool…I want one…
Great coverage! Thanks for covering this story Eric.
People should not be confused. While this is not a “Web 2.0″, it is certainly merited because Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites are true innovators. Just looking at this as a luxury ride is a narrow perspective.
Personal spaceflight is only the first ripple in what will be a wave of innovation that will follow in sub-orbit, orbit and beyond.
I have flown several times on G-force One (www.gozerog.com) and I will be in line for a flight on SpaceShipTwo.
Beautiful! Looks like 2001: a space odyssey will be about 10 years late, but better late than never!
The design looks like something straight out of star trek! http://www.PlanetSpace.com
Branson is tough to bet against. I think he found a good market here. The only thing is he has to deliver on safety. If there is any fatal incident, this project will fail. There is also a risk that governments will block this kind of travel for national security reasons.
To 13 Compared to $20mln Russians are asking for super safe travel this is much cheaper, so he has an advantage there. I wonder how much each plane costs though. 30mlns?
Erick. Are you talking about startup 2.0 website or something in general?
Spaceship is not something made out web 2.0. If that spaceship is made out HTML, javascript, AJAX, web 2.0 graphics that would be great.
I’m not the one who got confuse with term web 2.0.
You just put it there by accident.
Give that to “Crunchgear” next time.
Steve Fossett would have been thrilled. I spent time online looking for him looking through Amazon TURK images. I would hope a similar on demand hyperspectral imagery might someday aid search-and-rescue, on this platform, perhaps. The overlays I saw of satellite imagery were not “registered” and one-over-another, showed off locations. If it’s what’s used in military intelligence, it should somehow be stopped, though Italy was invaded after the photogrammatic coverage by the German High Command, and they knew where every building was. I worked for a short time in close-range photogrammetry with a Rollei system. Canada looked into it after a US military crash in Gander, Newfoundland got them a drubbing from the US, because it was not recorded before the blizzard came, I was taught, while due to language misunderstandings, Avianca 052 crashed nearby on Cove Neck, NY after it ran out of fuel. The Rollei system would allow measurable 3D distances from photos, “photogrammetric” from helicopter flyover after operator and desktop programming with documented optics, why not “edge-of-space” photogrammetry?
Erick. Can I give you an idea?
Virgin group was founded somewhere in 1970s. Today, do you find virgin group a young startup company?
Richard Brandson brought Spaceship two and hosting new website. You called web 2.0 startup?
For example, http://www.space.com.
Do you called that web 2.0 website?
I had a chance to visit the Virgin Galactic headquarters in London and talk to the head of operations, Alex Tai, about the vision for Galactic which is basically to revolutionize transportation as we know it today (1 hour flight from London to Sydney). Not a small task, but I really admire Branson for thinking big (huge!) and putting his own personal money behind these seemingly crazy bets.
I recorded the interview as a podcast for iinnovate (podcast on innovation and entrepreneurship) and you can see it here: http://iinnovate.blogspot.com/.....irgin.html
This is not going to operate from a traditional airport. He is building a spaceport in the desert of New Mexico.
This isn’t crazy at all. It just hasn’t been done. NASA is no longer the leader in space exploration and technologies, it will be private companies leading the way.
Sir Branson and Mr. Rutan are visionaries. Wait until the price comes down to $30K and there will be millions more people saving up for their space shot or maybe remortgaging their houses.
Aviation pioneering killed a lot of people. This will be no different.
When suborbital flight becomes reality, the first industries to feel the impact will not be airlines or space agencies. It will be the private jet market which caters to Branson’s target demographic for now, for lack of a better alternative.
Hi Erick, your post got me over to the Natural History Museum this evening where I was able to score this video with Richard Branson. The full version comes out tomorrow morning.
http://www.popsnap.net/story.p.....rah_Meyers
#7, #21 — learn to read. the author isn’t labeling virgin galactic a web 2.0 startup; instead, he’s comparing the riskiness of virgin’s venture to that of web 2.0 startups. if you can’t keep up with the writing style, i suggest you move on to something lame(lamer) like crunchgear.
Propose taking space shuttle round trip to Mars,
144 days ! - 67,000,000 miles/hr !
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/14705
Now that’s Traveling !!!!
This format is what would have been used had saner minds prevailed at NASA. The “Do it now” pols had their day, and we got the Shuttle. Imagine
where we would be now had we had some patience, Mars? Maybe not.
It’s been almost 40 years since we’ve been to the moon ! Seven Million pounds of propellant to Orbit a Truck; Two Billion dollars for an orbital mission to clean toilets at ISS. Government and Science are not a compatible pair.