A lot of rumors that it will be happening today. Jeff Foust has the story, with some broader context:
While Virgin may make a flight test of a crewed suborbital vehicle as soon as Monday, another company isn’t far behind. Just down the flightline from Virgin and Scaled at the Mojave airport, XCOR Aerospace is continuing work on its Lynx suborbital spaceplane, with plans to begin an incremental series of tests later this year.
“The concept design is done. I know what the approach is, I can put the numbers together,” Greason said of XCOR’s orbital vehicle plans.“We’re not done yet,” said Jeff Greason, CEO of XCOR, said of Lynx in a presentation at the Space Access ’13 conference in Phoenix earlier this month. “It’s not because of any particular roadblock, but it’s just the usual 90-90 rule of project management: the first 90 percent takes the first 90 percent of the time, and the last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent of the time.”
While development of SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket motor is widely believed to have been the major cause of that vehicle’s delays, Greason said propulsion is not an issue for Lynx. “Propulsion-wise, we’re in great shape,” he said, saying that the four engines, powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene, are now integrated into the fuselage of the Lynx Mark I prototype.
Instead, Greason said, XCOR has been working on a variety of other issues with the Lynx, including tweaks to the vehicle’s aerodynamics, avionics, and landing gear, as well as the production of the vehicle’s wings and a second fuselage. Flight tests are slated to begin in the second half of this year.
It just occurs to me that while the biggest difference is that XCOR was funding-constrained while (as far as I know) Virgin Galactic was not, both have also been delayed for symmetrical problems. XCOR is a propulsion company trying to build an airplane, while Scaled was an aircraft company trying to develop a rocket engine. So it’s natural that both companies have their core competency well in hand, but are being held up by the problem that’s not so much in their wheelhouse.
[Update a while later]
The implication, of course, is that if they’d teamed up, there might have been a suborbital vehicle flying years ago. That they didn’t certainly wasn’t XCOR’s fault.
[Update a few minutes later]
Apparently it was a successful test, and they went supersonic.
This may be the first prediction that Sir Richard has ever made that met schedule.
[Afternoon update]
Clark Lindsey has a roundup of links, including the congratulatory press release from XCOR.
According to his twitter feed, it was a 16 second burn…already on the ground.
It looks like they completed a successful 16 second burn like they did on SS1’s first powered flight on Dec 17, 2003 (100th anniversay of the Wright Brothers). Successful landing with more info to follow.
The implication, of course, is that if they’d teamed up, there might have been a suborbital vehicle flying years ago. That they didn’t certainly wasn’t XCOR’s fault.
While I would’ve loved to see the team up, that route was no guarantee of success, either. Aviation history is littered with failed projects where a new aircraft design depended on a new engine design. It’s possible Scaled believed hybrid engines were safer (debatable) or they believed they knew them well enough that they didn’t want to risk SS2 with liquid engines of unknown reliability. Personally, I think XCOR would’ve done a great job but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Better to have more than one operator so there can be some competition between them.
Providing an engine to Scaled would not have precluded XCOR from developing their own vehicle later. In fact, it might have accelerated it, because they would have had more funding earlier.
Providing an engine to Scaled would not have precluded XCOR from developing their own vehicle later.
But it would have provided a reason for them to remain in bed with Virgin, why develop your own system to compete with the one you’re involved with when the competition would be undermining the more profitable monopoly?
But it would have provided a reason for them to remain in bed with Virgin, why develop your own system to compete with the one you’re involved with when the competition would be undermining the more profitable monopoly?
Because a) that’s not their business philosophy (Jeff wants to build an industry that drives down costs, not a monopoly) and b) it wouldn’t be a monopoly. XCOR and VG are not in direct competition with each other — while they have some market overlap, they each provide unique capabilities at a different price point.
Because a) that’s not their business philosophy (Jeff wants to build an industry that drives down costs, not a monopoly)
Great! Maybe that’s one of the reasons the merging of skills never happened.
b) it wouldn’t be a monopoly. XCOR and VG are not in direct competition with each other — while they have some market overlap, they each provide unique capabilities at a different price point.
The core business for both of them for the near future is suborbital passenger flights.
If XCOR keeps their price at $95k Virgin will have to come back to that price to keep flying.
The miracle of the competitive market place!
Great! Maybe that’s one of the reasons the merging of skills never happened.
No, XCOR would have been happy to sell an engine to them. The reason it didn’t happen was a) Burt was enamored of hybrids at the time (not sure what he thinks now) and b) he didn’t think that XCOR had enough of a track record to be trusted with the job. I suspect that a lot of people at Virgin are now regretting that decision.
The core business for both of them for the near future is suborbital passenger flights.
If XCOR keeps their price at $95k Virgin will have to come back to that price to keep flying.
They’re very different experiences, and different markets. It may be that Virgin will eventually drop their price, but it will be more likely to maximize profits by expanding the customer base than to compete with XCOR per se.
Rand,
Actually the mistake that was made was Burt Rutan trying to build his own engine instead of going with the SpaceDev/SNC one used on SpaceShipOne, which the way they ended up going with after the accident.
Also this does actually advance human spaceflight as it is the same engine to be used on the Dream Chaser, so SNC will be getting a lot of experience with hybrids as a result.
Had XCOR developed a liquid engine for SS2, it likely would’ve been a good candidate to use in LauncherOne.
I wish it had happened.
Jeff Greason is such a great public speaker you almost wish he didn’t have a company to run. It seems to me it’s much easier to put an engine in a vehicle than it is to wrap a vehicle around an engine. Once you have weight distribution and thrust, any engine that fits that spec. should work.
Center of gravity is not a minor consideration. It is critical for any aircraft, especially one that must fly both subsonic and supersonic (with manual controls) and is significantly lighter at the end of flight than it is at takeoff.
That’s one of the advantages of liquid fuels. You can pump it to where you need the weight and the tanks can be shaped to fit the space available. When I say wgt. distribution I mean cg.
You’re a lot more constrained by tank design than you might think, especially at the typical flow rates of a rocket. Build the tank in too weird a shape and you can have difficulty getting the liquid out of it, plus developing working slosh dampers (slosh is a Big Freakin’ Deal for liquid rockets) can be a problem, and if you don’t solve the slosh, that’s a big GNC problem.
Ken,
That is true today in the airplane industry, but wasn’t in the early days of aviation which is where rocket travel is today. The X-15 was so successful simply because it was a vehicle wrapped around an engine.
O/T
There’s a poll up at NSF some here might be interested in:
POLL: NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) Opinion Poll – April, 2013
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31783.0
Most of the apologists for SLS on there are making the exact same arguments as the apologists for the Shuttle did back in the 70s. Anyone who uses the word “compromise” to positively describe the design of a launch vehicle has failed to study history.
Rand,
[[[This may be the first prediction that Sir Richard has ever made that met schedule.]]]
That is because he now owns TSC 100% since he bought off Scaled Composites, and its clear TSC is learning how to operate the Virgin way. Look for more milestones to fall now that Sir Branson is actually running the show. Unlike Burt Rutan, Sir Branson is not afraid to take risks. Its how he made his fortune.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100666375
Six Things I Learned From Richard Branson
1. Be First
2. Be Better
3. Pay Attention to Detail
4. Make Failure an Option
5. Approach Charity Like a Business Opportunity
6. The Best Investments Are Priceless
The first four could well describe NASA in its early days, before Congress started beating it around the head for every mistake it made….