13 thoughts on “Scaled’s Motor-Test Logs”

  1. As far as I can recall, large hybrid motors get tested, and tested, and tested, and tested, until the testing stops and they switch to something else. I’d suggest using a cluster of small hybrids, or go with a solid or liquid. If you designed in the proper emergency thrust termination ability for a solid (such as splitting the motor casing or opening the forward end) without compromising the airframe, it might have been an easier way to fulfill the simple flight profile that VG is looking for.

  2. This whole new space stuff is playing out just about like I expected. It’s easy to build an Estes rocket and wonder why it costs so much to launch something into space but it turns out that reality and full scale is so much different. The new space (consisting of mostly computer programmers who know little about the complicated physics of rockets or any physics for that matter) expectation was that they could do “it” for 1/10 of what old space could.

    There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that LockBoeULAMart could do things for half price if it wasn’t for ridiculous bureaucracy on both sides of the transaction. It’s also clear to me that new space will fail to reduce costs to their expectations thus there will never be a mass market. Physics require that we need high power and low weight to leave this planet. While high power and low weight can be cheap by themselves the two combined will always be expensive. Lots of energy expended over a short period of time without lots of mass to contain it is dangerous and expensive, examples abound.

    1. I could make a long rebuttal of this comment, but my brief one is SpaceX. Virgin is not representative of “New Space.” They made a couple bad design decisions early on that haunt them a decade later, partly due to the sunk-cost fallacy.

    2. Expensive? That’s just the post hoc fallacy at play. If you think it has to be expensive you will engineer in that mindset. It’s the same thing with satellites. And when you build satellites as one offs they do tend to be expensive, but when Motorolla built the Iridium satellites on an assembly line they ended up being more than an order of magnitude cheaper than they would have been otherwise.

      Meanwhile, SpaceX is showing the world that expensive access to space is not a universal law of nature, it’s just an accident of history. They have already demonstrated extremely capable launch vehicle which are revolutionarily cheaper than the competition. So much so that they are already dramatically shaking up the worldwide launch business. And they have also pioneered reusability in an extremely savvy, bold, and competent manner which will likely produce results where all other government backed efforts have failed miserably. In so doing they are likely to bring to market launch prices below $1,000/kg within the next 5 years.

    4. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that LockBoeULAMart could do things for half price if it wasn’t for ridiculous bureaucracy on both sides of the transaction”

      That would be SpaceX.

      The Hazard is SpaceX will find that bureaucracy grows and it’s uncertain to me
      if SpaceX is making money.

  3. I bet that over at Virgin Galactic a decision 10 years ago to go to a liquid rocket would be looking real good right now.
    SpaceX is the obvious counterpoint to Dr d. He might not get a very friendly reception at Xcor either.

    1. He reminds me of time the Sidewinder development team received a letter ordering them to stop work because a physicist showed it was physically impossible to make an IR homing missile – the same day a Sidewinder blew the wing off a B-17 target drone in a test. I think they had the letter framed.

      1. That reminds me of an old story about Bill Lear (an 8th grade dropout). Among his early work was the invention of a practical car radio. To do that, he had to make an induction coil of a certain rating that was small enough to fit inside a car radio. According to a famous physisist at the time, it was impossible to make such a coil. Lear did it. When asked how he did it when it was supposed to be impossible, he replied that he’d never read that physicist’s book and didn’t know it couldn’t be done. That attitude towards problems carried him through about 100 patents in radio, technology and aviation. The title of his autobiography (which I read in 1975) was “They Said It Couldn’t Be Done.”

  4. I wonder if Sir Richard Branson now regrets letting the X-Prize pick his system and wishes he just had put out a RFP on his own for a space tourist system. It is clear that, as with the original Orteig Prize, the loose rules allowed a technology to win that was really not suitable to scale to commercial success.

    Recall that the first actual Trans-Atlantic commercial service with airplanes started with seaplanes which had a very different pedigree than the single-engine monoplane that won the prize. And when land planes started providing Trans-Atlantic commercial service after the war their heritage was based on large pre-war transports not small single engine aircraft like the Spirit of St. Louis.

    As with the original Orteig Prize its clear that the X-Prize was mostly a stunt to create hype and PR, one that failed to advance the technology actually needed, and if anything, delayed the technology by sending folks down the wrong pathway for suborbital tourism.

    BTW do you recall the team that suppose to be on Burt Rutan heels in the X-Prize?

    http://space.xprize.org/ansari-x-prize/the-da-vinci-project

    Really? A V-2 clone launched from a balloon being suitable for commercial space tourism? Imagine if they had won 🙂

    1. Blue Origins has also had some difficulty despite their funding.

      The challenge of getting to 100KM and back with passengers, cheaply, is great.

  5. I have information of excellent pedigree that, yes, Virgin/Scaled has indeed had significant engine difficulties, and until recently, but they now have an engine that has exceeded impulse requirements in multiple ground firings for SS2 and passengers to reach required altitude.

    There’s no miracle here, just a lot of tries with different design approaches that’s apparently finally converged on something satisfactory. I absolutely agree that the decision to stick with hybrids was a mistake (as all the extra time required has shown) and I’m not certain that they’re completely out of the woods until they fly many times. But given their emblematic status, one can only hope that they do well.

    Personally, if I had the money for a seat on either vehicle, I’d pick the XCOR Lynx over the SS2 in a heartbeat. They’re the guys solving the basic issues for maximized durability and operability and lowest cost in a raft of technologies required for orbital multistage RLVs. And the majority of those technologies will be demonstrated in the Lynx first.

    If VG succeeds reasonably well, their PR machine can only create a big positive for people’s wider attitudes towards private space innovation and capabilities. If they fail, the result can only do injury towards that end.

Comments are closed.