Virgin Galactic to Delay Commercial Space Travel Service, Won’t Conduct Further Test Flights This Year

Virgin Galactic said on Thursday it is delaying its commercial space travel service to the fourth quarter of 2022 and will not conduct another planned test flight this year.

Virgin Galactic said "commercial service is now expected to commence in Q4 2022." Shares in the company fell 13 percent in afterhours trading.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on September 2 had barred Virgin Galactic from flying its SpaceShipTwo pending completion of a report into the flight of the Virgin Galactic rocket plane that carried British billionaire Richard Branson to the edge of space.

Branson was among six Virgin Galactic employees who took part in the July flight, soaring more than 50 miles (80km) into space.

The FAA on September 29 closed its mishap investigation into the July 11 Virgin Galactic Unity 22 launch, which deviated from assigned airspace on descent, and lifted a grounding order it had imposed earlier.

Virgin Galactic had said in September it was planning another SpaceShipTwo flight from New Mexico, Unity 23, pending technical checks and weather. The company said last month the earliest it expected "to open its flight window for Unity 23 is mid-October."

But Virgin Galactic on Thursday said it will now begin its planned enhancement programme first and will conduct the Unity 23 test flight after this work is complete and before starting commercial service.

The enhancement programme is designed to improve vehicle performance and flight-rate capability.

The company said on Thursday one recent laboratory-based test "flagged a possible reduction in the strength margins of certain materials used to modify specific joints."

The company added the "new lab test data has had no impact on the vehicles, our test flight protocols have clearly defined strength margins, and further analysis will assess whether any additional work is required to keep them at or above established levels."

Burt Rutan -- who designed the Stratolaunch (a/c in the photo) -- was an early pioneer of composite construction and remains one of the most important. He's also the only engineer I've ever known about who has a weight obsession on par with Colin Chapman's.

Chapman's motto was "Simplificate, then add lightness." Rutan would check in on a junior engineer who was building some component or other for him and ask to see the new part. Then he'd toss it in the air and if it came down, he'd tell the engineer, "Too heavy, make it lighter."

Probably the most amazing bit of engineering in the Stratolaunch is the 105-foot-long center wing section, because it's designed to support a 550,000-lb external payload. When you factor in that lift tries to bend the two outboard wings upward, and the payload tries to bend the center wing downward, the two forces combine to create a bending moment of 800 million inch-lbs in the middle of the center wing, all trying to make it fold up like a suitcase.

To stop that happening they use four carbonfiber wing spars, each about 210 feet long, the largest single components ever in any aircraft. Those spars are so massive that between the four of them they make up almost half of the nominal weight of the entire airplane.

And that to me is the most amazing part. The weight of the whole rest of the airplane, the two 240-foot-long fuselages, the 385-foot wingspan, the six Boeing 747 jet engines, 28-wheel landing gear, flight controls and all the rest (no fuel or payload), only weigh about 4% more than just the spars alone.

So those four spars aside, everything else on the a/c is astonishingly light.

“Aviate,
Navigate,
Communicate!”

You’re in a Glider, returning from 50 miles up, and the FAA gets miffed because you didn’t say, “Mother may I”, before flying outside your assigned “Box”.

Also, you are a economic threat to Biden’s BFF, Jeff Bozo.

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