Virgin Galactic has moved back the estimated launch dates for suborbital space flights from New Mexico so many times that company executives hesitate to offer new timelines.
Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson’s latest speculation is early 2015. However, company President George Whitesides appears reluctant to commit to that.
At the annual International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces this month, Whitesides would only say that 2015 could be “the year people remember for a long time.”
But while the countdown to the world’s first space tourism venture continues, Virgin is making steady progress on final testing and development of the rocket, dubbed SpaceShipTwo, that will eventually carry paying passengers to space from Spaceport America.
In addition, it’s now building a copy of SpaceShipTwo to be part of a fleet of suborbital rockets at the Spaceport. And, it’s developing a completely new vehicle to launch satellites into orbit in a venture separate from space tourism that the company also hopes to operate largely from New Mexico.
“We’re doing great things in the Mojave Desert, although it’s less in the spotlight than our testing of SpaceShipTwo,” Whitesides told the Journal . “Over the course of a few years, we’ve set up a world-class manufacturing operation that will be crucial to our services in New Mexico.”
The launch of commercial flights hinges on actually flying SpaceShipTwo into space in ongoing testing at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Southern California. Virgin has done three powered test flights to date of the rocket, which hit 71,000 feet in its last flight in January. That’s still a long way from the internationally accepted boundary of space at 327,000 feet, or 62 miles up.
And since then, no more powered flights have occurred, because in May the company decided to switch from a rubber-based rocket fuel to a plastics-based one. That happened because the current SpaceShipTwo model – which is based on the SpaceShipOne rocket that the vehicle’s founder, Scaled Composites, flew to space in 2004 – is larger than the original. Developers encountered fuel-burn stability and power issues as they tried to scale the motor for the new rocket model up to the proper size.
The motor modifications, however, are now complete, and the last ground-based “qualification” test firing was done in early October. That paves the way for powered flights to restart this fall, Whitesides said.
Under Virgin’s system, the rocket is flown on the underbelly of a mothership, WhiteKnightTwo, to 50,000 feet, at which point SpaceShipTwo breaks away and fires its rockets to climb to space. On each test flight, the rocket is expected to go higher and faster until reaching suborbit.
Once that happens, rocket creator Scaled Composites will hand the ship over to Virgin, which would then transfer it to New Mexico for some on-site testing before launching commercial flights with passengers, Whitesides said.
Meanwhile, Virgin has set up a wholly owned subsidiary in Mojave, The Spaceship Co., to produce replicas of both SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo.
Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo taxis on the tarmac of Spaceport America on Sept. 10.
“We’re already about 60 percent done with building the second SpaceShipTwo,” Whitesides said. “All of the outside structure and most of the internal structure is now finished.”
That first copy will be added to operations in New Mexico by 2016. And production of a second WhiteKnightTwo is planned to begin next year.
The company envisions a fleet of five rockets and two motherships, although the number depends on flight demand. To date, Virgin has taken deposits from more than 700 people to reserve seats, which cost $200,000 each.
Some of the rockets in the fleet will be used to fly research payloads to suborbit from Spaceport America as a Virgin business separate from passenger flights. NASA and commercial space companies are expected to tap those services.
Virgin Galactic is one of four firms selected in September to provide payload flights under NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, which pays commercial aerospace companies for suborbital flights to test new technologies in space. UP Aerospace has been flying payloads under that NASA program from Spaceport America’s vertical launch pad since last year.
Virgin’s flights, however, will allow larger and heavier experiments to reach suborbit since its spacecraft is much bigger than UP’s vehicle.
“Virgin will serve a different market niche with much larger payloads that require a significant amount of power,” said Wayne Hale Jr., a veteran of NASA’s Space Shuttle Flight program and now director of human spaceflight and international programs at the Colorado-based consulting firm Special Aerospace Services. “Virgin Galactic has been marketing aggressively in that space for some time. Once they start flying, I believe they could dominate that market for some time.”
The company is also preparing to carve out a big niche in the satellite launch market. It’s now building a new space vehicle in Mojave, Launcher One, that, like SpaceShipTwo, will be carried on a WhiteKnight mothership and then cut free to shoot into orbital space.
The company will target small satellite launches, a technology trend that’s emerging in the global space industry to lower the costs for launching and operating satellites while offering more capabilities.
“We’ve designed a vehicle that we think is perfect for those small satellites,” Whitesides said. “We’re well along the way to constructing it. We’ve built the first- and second-stage engines and we’re now testing them.”
The company is borrowing from the experience of building its other vehicles to innovate with the Launcher One design. It’s applying composite structures, for example, to the new vehicle’s tankage.
“Other vehicles have metal tanks,” Whitesides said. “We’re working on composite tanks to make the vehicle lighter and more affordable to operate.”
Launcher One won’t be able to rocket into orbit from Spaceport America, which is only licensed for suborbital flights by the Federal Aviation Administration. But the vehicles and much of the operations and administration could be based here, with the craft flown on the WhiteKnight to coastal areas or elsewhere for satellite launches.
“Satellite launches today constitute a multibillion-dollar annual market,” Whitesides said. “We believe the small satellite portion of that will grow to hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, over the next five to 10 years.”
Notwithstanding the company’s overall progress, all eyes remain riveted on the promise of paid passenger flights to space.
“They’re working hard, but it’s been a longer road thajon I think was foreseen,” Hale Jr. said. “They were originally talking about doing this in four years, and now it’s been 10. But I believe they are truly on the cusp, and if they do indeed start flying paying customers in 2015, I think New Mexico will see a substantial return on its investment in the Spaceport.”
Spaceport America Executive Director Christine Anderson said New Mexico is anxiously waiting for that to happen.
“We’re still in the pre-operational, preparatory period,” Anderson said. “Once Virgin Galactic launches here, the adrenaline across the board will rise and the Spaceport will move into fully operational mode. That’s the history-making day were waiting for.”
By: Kevin Robinson-Avila (Albuquerque Journal)
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