Sir Richard Branson has a low-cost satellite launcher going through the final phases of ground testing before attempting its first outing. Called simply enough LauncherOne, this 21m-long booster will be carried to cruising altitude by an old Virgin Atlantic jumbo, before then being released to power skywards. The rocket is designed to take spacecraft weighing up to 300-500kg into low-Earth orbit. If analysts are correct, the future will be dominated by satellites in this class, and smaller.
Walking around Virgin Orbit, as I did in the autumn, you see a mass of tanks, composites and propulsion motors in various stages of dress. The current timeline calls for the first fully assembled rocket to be flight-tested in the first six months of this year. Assuming that goes well, the production and flight rate will be ramped up sharply. There is capacity to make 24 LauncherOnes a year in Long Beach.
But it's not just the flexibility that this new breed of small rockets is playing off - it's also price, says Vector chief executive Jim Cantrell. After a couple of limited-altitude flights in 2017, his Arizona-based company's rockets will likely make their orbital debut this year as well. Vector is offering rides for payloads weighing up to some 50kg that cost no more than $1.5m.
"The smaller it is, the simpler you can make it," he told me. "Our rocket, for example, has 1,000 parts, and SpaceX's rocket - we estimated at about 26,000 parts. Think about the supply chain behind each of those parts. Each of those parts has someone who's making something or a machine is making it. It's a combination of all these things that's really made it possible to sell rockets for what seems like a ridiculously low price."
Small rockets are cool, but it's the heavy lifters that really interest me. Can't have space colonises without heavy lifting - or much in the way of planetary probes, or telescopes. As the launch cost falls, I wonder how much of an effect this will have on the price of the satellites themselves.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42780872
Question: has Virgin Galactic ceased manned flights? I've lost track of that.
ReplyDeleteIf you have reliable inexpensive launching on heavy lifters, you can implement a "railroad" model where you just schedule a slot for your cubesat, and the rocket just goes up on schedule. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Electron's manufacturing is certainly an advance, but can they get the cost per cubesat competitive for a future RR model?
ReplyDeleteGregg Taylor As I understand it, they are still conducting manned flights with SpaceShip Two, but they haven't yet attempted a suborbital flight.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.space.com/g00/36679-virgin-galactic-spaceshiptwo-unity-feather-system-test-flight.html?i10c.encReferrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8%3D&i10c.ua=1