Posted on 09/12/2007 3:31:09 PM PDT by Freeport
Virgin Galactic's suborbital rocket glider SpaceShipTwo (SS2) could have a low wing and its carrier aircraft, White Knight II (WK2), a 43m (140ft) wingspan and four engines, chief designer Burt Rutan has said.
Rutan, chief executive of Scaled Composites and a director of the Virgin Group-Scaled WK2/SS2 intellectual rights joint venture The Spaceship Company, revealed the possible design changes at the Responsibility for the Future Exploration and Development of Space Symposium, held at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on 25 August.
In Virgin Galactic's conceptual images, SS2 has a mid-wing, unlike its predecessor SpaceShipOne (SS1), and WK2 has two engines, like SS1's carrier aircraft White Knight.
The low wing is a possible solution to SS1's dihedral effect-induced spin on its ascent.Rutan declined to elaborate but did not deny he made the comments, while Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn told Flight International, flightglobal.com's sister publication: "We will unveil the design of WK2 and SS2 next January in New York and work progresses at Scaled. Both vehicles are well progressed but you will have to wait for the surprises. We have never confirmed a definitive schedule but are still hopeful of achieving our 2008/9 testing.
"Rutan's comments were reported by US blog site The Space Review on 27 August. It also reported that Rutan said there would be a "significant delay" to the start of rocket-powered SS2 flight tests because of the recent fatal injector test accident.
Previously Virgin Galactic's leadership has indicated a WK2/SS2 flight testing period from May 2008 to the third quarter of 2009, with SS2 altitude release and rocket firings in the latter half of next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
Space ping
The glider looks like those plastic bottle rockets I had as a kid, you know, where you fill the rocket with water then use a pump to fill it with air causing it to launch.
BMFLR
What I remember is a newspaper article that Neil Armstrong's son managed to shoot himself in the eye with one.
Now that I'm older and wiser, I'm sure he was probably egged on by some Algor type "journalist".
Somewhere, Chesley Bonestell is smiling...
The first show we saw, once Dad had installed everything, was "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe!" I was thrilled and Mom and Dad delighted that this 12 episode movie had been spliced together.
In the era before Star Wars toys at WalMart my concept of a rocket ship was a peach pit. I carried it around in my pocket and drew endless pictures which, (I still have some books with my ad hoc art) look very much like those Rutan renderings.
I was 9 when I mixed my first batch of gunpowder. The metal pipe rocket ship just spun around on the ground and never achieved lift off! Dad made me get rid of the gun powder and I poured it down the sewer. A passerby threw a match into the sewer, by accident, and the fire dept had to respond! Boy the hair brush got alot of action!
I got one of the first water rockets and a space geek was born, Launched!!!
New design, more passengers, still suborbital, and a toy for “fool and his money” crowd.
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