FYI,

"Virgin's Branson Unveils Commercial Spaceship Model"
Reuters
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080123/sc_nm/virgin_spaceship_dc_2;_ylt=A
tFGWHBFjn0S4_Hp_irF9WgE1vAI

: Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled a model of
: the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying
: passengers into space on a regular basis next year.

: Branson, whose Virgin Galactic is one of several commercial
: enterprises vying to offer the ultimate in sightseeing, said
: his SpaceShipTwo will start test flights later this year.

: "Two thousand eight is going to be the year of the spaceship.
: We're excited about this, and everything it will do," said
: Branson at a media event at the American Museum of Natural
: History in Manhattan."

: Virgin Galactic, part of Branson's airline, vacation and
: retail company Virgin Group, has more than 200 people signed
: up and $30 million in deposits for the rides, which cost about
: $200,000 per person.

: The company has signed up 150 passengers, including physicist
: Stephen Hawking, former soap star Victoria Principal and
: designer Philippe Starck.

: The space trips, from a launching pad to be built in New
: Mexico, are expected to take about two and a half hours, with
: about five minutes of weightlessness.

: SpaceShipOne and its launch aircraft WhiteKnightTwo, also
: unveiled on Wednesday, were designed by Burt Rutan, whose
: SpaceShipOne collected the Ansari X Prize for privately funded
: space flight in 2004.

: Branson teamed up with Rutan shortly after to design a
: sub-orbital spacecraft for Virgin Galactic.

: Sub-orbital flight is the easiest and briefest form of space
: travel, where the spacecraft technically reaches space
: -- about 62 miles above sea level -- but then falls back to
: Earth without completing a revolution of the Earth.

: Virgin Galactic is only one of several high-profile contenders
: in the new commercial space race.

: Others include Europe's EADS Astrium; Blue Origin, started by
: Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos; Space Exploration
: Technologies Corp (SpaceX), created by PayPal founder Elon
: Musk; Rocketplane Kistler, and hotelier Robert Bigelow.

: The leader in the budding sector is Space Adventures of Vienna,
: Virginia, which started the space tourism phenomenon in 2001
: when it put U.S. businessman Dennis Tito on a Russian Soyuz
: spacecraft headed for the International Space Station for a
: reported $20 million. It has since sent another four paying
: customers into space the same way.

------------

"Virgin Galactic Unveils Suborbital Spaceliner Design"
Space.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080123/sc_space/virgingalacticunveilss
uborbitalspacelinerdesign;_ylt=AjGC7hj.YdTJXu6FihaHtH0E1vAI

: Future thrill-seekers will ride a sleek spacecraft berthed
: under a massive, twin-boom mothership to the fringe of space in
: a design unveiled Wednesday by Virgin Galactic.

: The SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier will
: begin initial tests this summer to shakedown the novel
: spaceflight system designed by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan and
: his firm Scaled Composites.

: "2008 really will be the year of the spaceship," British
: entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group,
: who unveiled a 1/16th-scale model of the new spacecraft here at
: the American Museum of Natural History. "We're truly excited
: about our new system and what our new system will be able to
: do."

: Based on Rutan's SpaceShipOne, a piloted and reusable spacecraft
: that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for suborbital
: spaceflight in 2004, SpaceShipTwo is an air-launched vehicle
: designed to carry six passengers and two pilots to suborbital
: space and back.

: But unlike SpaceShipOne, which launched from beneath its
: single-cabin WhiteKnight carrier, the new craft will drop from
: a twin-cabin high-altitude jet that can double as a space
: tourist training craft. WhiteKnightTwo carries four engines and
: a wingspan of about 140 feet (42 meters), rivaling a B-29 bomber,
: and is built to handle unmanned rockets capable of launching
: small satellites into orbit, Virgin Galactic officials said.

: Virgin Galactic is offering tickets aboard SpaceShipTwo
: spaceliners for an initial price of about $200,000, though
: Branson said the cost is expected to drop after the first five
: years of operations. The space tourism firm plans to eventual
: launch flights out of a terminal at New Mexico's Spaceport
: America, with additional trips through the aurora borealis to
: be staged from Kiruna, Sweden.

: "It's fantastic," said British advertising executive Trevor
: Beattie, one of the some 100 Virgin Galactic ticketholders
: onhand for the unveiling. "I want to go now...with each
: milestone, it's getting closer and closer."

: Rutan, whose Mojave, Calif.-based Scaled has completed
: 60 percent of the first SpaceShipTwo, said his firm is building
: at least five of the suborbital vehicles - and two
: WhiteKnightTwo carriers - for Virgin Galactic.

: "This is not a small program by any stretch of the
: imagination," said Rutan, adding that his firm hopes to build
: at least 40 SpaceShipTwos and 15 carrier craft over the next
: 12 years.

: Each spacecraft is designed to fly twice a day, with their
: WhiteKnightTwo carriers capable of up to four daily launches,
: Rutan said. Over 12 years, more than 100,000 people could fly
: to suborbital space aboard the vehicles, he added.

: A roomy flight

: Virgin Galactic passengers like Beattie and others have already
: undergone centrifuge tests to sample the experience launch and
: reentry, which can exert forces of up to six times the Earth's
: gravity on the human body.

: Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic CEO, said each SpaceShipTwo
: passenger will be equipped with a pressure suit as a safety
: precaution, be free to move about a roomy cabin equivalent to
: a Gulfstream aircraft and peer at the Earth through wide,
: 18-inch (46-cm) windows during the several minutes of
: weightlessness offered on each spaceflight.

: "Because clearly, if you're going to go into space, you're going
: to want to see the view," Whitehorn said.

: SpaceShipTwo's cabin is much larger than the three-person
: capsule used on SpaceShipOne, and each of the two
: WhiteKnightTwo carrier craft cabins are identical that of the
: spacecraft to make it a useful training tool, he said.

: Family members of passengers or other space tourists can watch
: a SpaceShipTwo launch from inside a WhiteKnightTwo cabin, each
: of which sits just 25 feet (7.6) meters from the center-mounted
: spaceship.

: While the initial round of tests is slated for sometime this
: summer and the first spaceflights pegged for 2009, Whitehorn
: stressed that safety is paramount.

: "We're in a race with nobody, apart from a race with safety,"
: Whitehorn said.

: Rutan said he is targeting a safety factor akin to that of the
: earlier airliners of the 1920s, which should still be 100 times
: better than the safety of today's manned spacecraft used by
: large governments today.

: "Don't believe anyone who tells you that the safety level of
: new spacecraft is as safe as a modern airliner," Rutan said.

: The development and testing plan for SpaceShipTwo and its
: carrier craft has been slowed by an accidental fatal blast that
: killed three Scaled workers last July at the Mojave Air and Space
: Port. Last week, California state occupation and safety
: inspectors cited Scaled for failing to provide adequate training
: for workers and fined the firm more than $25,000.

: Rutan said his firm has been working with state inspectors and
: officials to enhance worker safety, but the actual cause of the
: blast during a rocket oxidizer flow test was still unknown.
: SpaceShipTwo's rocket engine will not be finalized until the
: source of the explosion is pinned down, he said.

: Patricia Grace Smith, the FAA's associate administrator for
: commercial space transportation, lauded the commitment of Virgin
: Galactic and Scaled to safety after SpaceShipTwo's unveiling.

: "It is the entrepreneurial spirit that will take this country
: forward," Smith said. "This is going to catch like a wild fire we
: have never seen."

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"Entrepreneur Unveils New Tourist Spacecraft"
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/science/space/23cnd-spaceship.html?
ex=1358830800&en=0ab3dd63f938a217&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

: Burt Rutan took the cloak off of his new spacecraft on Wednesday.

: Mr. Rutan, the creator of SpaceShipOne, the first
: privately-financed craft to carry a human into space, traveled to
: New York to show detailed models of the bigger SpaceShipTwo and
: its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo.

: "2008 will really be the year of the spaceship," said Sir Richard
: Branson, the British serial entrepreneur, at the heavily attended
: press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in
: Manhattan. Sir Richard, who founded a company, Virgin Galactic,
: that promises to take tourists on brief trips to the edge of
: space, was there to show off the sleek pod of a spacecraft and
: its spidery carrier plane.

: WhiteKnight, a two-fuselage, four-engine plane in its new
: incarnation, will ferry the smaller spacecraft high into the sky
: and release it. The spacecraft pilot then fires the craft's
: rocket engine, which burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a
: rubber-based solid fuel, and shoots the vehicle upward to an
: altitude of more than 62 miles, the realm of black sky.

: Once there, the pilot is to activate the craft's innovative
: feathered wing, which rotates into a position that greatly
: increases aerodynamic drag and slows the craft for a glider
: landing back on earth.

: In 2004, SpaceShipOne earned Mr. Rutan and his backer, Paul
: Allen, the $10 million Ansari X Prize when it carried a pilot
: to the edge of space twice in five days. Since then, Mr. Rutan
: has been working on the follow-up vehicle for Sir Richard, under
: his customary heavy secrecy.

: Officials at the press conference said that the WhiteKnight
: aircraft is 70 percent complete and that SpaceShipTwo is
: 60 percent complete. Test flights of the planes could occur
: this year. Passenger flights are not expected to begin before
: late 2009 or 2010.

: But Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, said that
: the company would not yet set a date for the startup of
: commercial flights, which will depend not just on testing and
: manufacturing but also on government approval. "We don't want
: to make promises that we can't meet," Mr. Whitehorn said.
: "We're in a race with nobody, apart from a race with safety."

: Mr. Rutan said that the new space travel system would have to
: be "hundreds" of times safer than present space flight, which he
: put at the level of safety of the early commercial aircraft of the
: 1920s.

: "Don't believe anyone who tells you that the safety level of new
: spaceships will be as safe as the modern airliner," he said, but
: the risk must nonetheless be brought to an acceptable level for the
: customers to come.

: "This has to be such that the fear of the risk doesn't hold down
: the growth of the industry," he said.

: Mr. Rutan's company encountered tragedy last summer when an
: explosion killed three of Mr. Rutan's rocketeers. The blast
: occurred during a "cold" test of the nitrous system.

: While the cause of the blast was being investigated to ensure that
: there was some previously undiscovered risk in the nitrous-based
: fuel, Mr. Rutan shifted design resources over to the WhiteKnight
: half of the flying pair. The California Occupational Safety and
: Health Administration fined the company $25,870 for five violations
: of regulations for workplace safety.

: Today, however, the rocketeers were focused on the future — and,
: just as importantly, on the past.

: "Most people think of going to space as Saturn V or the Space
: Shuttle," said Mr. Whitehorn, the company president. But the Rutan
: model, a descendant of the record-breaking X-15 experimental craft,
: shows there is another way, he said.

: The vehicle is meant to open space to a new generation of
: spacefarers who are more creative than the classically trained
: astronauts, Mr. Rutan said. And that will bring with it a new way
: of looking at space travel, just as personal computing opened up
: the use of computers from a military and academic tool to something
: that transformed the world.

: These newcomers, he predicted, will bring "breakthroughs that will
: come, that will tell us why we're doing this," he said, "and what
: can we do with it."

: About 100 of the company's prospective passengers were on hand at
: the unveiling in Manhattan Wednesday. Stephen Attenborough, the
: company's liaison with its clients — or, as the company calls them,
: its astronauts — said that Virgin Galactic had received 200 firm
: reservations and $30 million in deposits.

: Virgin has tested 80 of those customers for the ability to
: withstand the high-G forces of space flight by taking them for a
: centrifuge ride. Of the 80 — who included the scientist James
: Lovelock, who is 88, as well as people who have had heart bypass
: surgery and limb replacement — only two were unable to take the
: forces; the company asked three customers to put off flying.

: Mr. Attenborough said that means the company's initial premise
: — that one did not need to be in absolutely top physical shape to
: go to space — is sound.

: "We've proved that ordinary people can go to space," he said, "and
: almost all of us have the right stuff."

-----------

"First Look at SpaceShipTwo"
MSNBC
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/23/601315.aspx

: The new designs for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane and
: WhiteKnightTwo mothership were unveiled in New York today, and they
: include some unexpected twists. In fact, you could be excused if
: you think you're seeing double, or even triple.

: Today's event was the most detailed look yet at the craft that will
: carry on the legacy of SpaceShipOne, the first commercially
: developed spaceship and winner of the $10 million Ansari X Prize in
: 2004.

: The biggest twist is that the WhiteKnightTwo plane has spread out
: and sprouted another passenger cabin on its 140-foot-long wing. The
: two cabins and four Pratt & Whitney jet engines straddle a central
: mount for the rocket plane, which will be carried to an altitude of
: 50,000 feet and dropped. Then SpaceShipTwo will light up its hybrid
: rocket engine for the final push to the edge of outer space.

: The twin cabins are basically carbon copies of the SpaceShipTwo
: cabin, so riding on WhiteKnightTwo will give passengers a taste of
: what the big blast to space will be like. While commercial
: astronauts are taking their trip to see the curving earth below the
: black sky of space, the passengers on WhiteKnightTwo will
: experience a lower-altitude version of the experience - including a
: bit of weightlessness.

: "You'll be doing parabolas and floating about the cabin," Burt
: Rutan, the craft's designer and head of California-based Scaled
: Composites, told scores of journalists and dignitaries at the
: American Museum of Natural History.

: SpaceShipTwo is designed to carry six passengers and two pilots
: into space, with enough headroom to allow for free floating. More
: than 100 people are already in line for spaceflights, at a cost of
: $200,000 per person, and Rutan expects there to be thousands more:
: He said the innovations incorporated into SpaceShipTwo will make
: human spaceflight "at least as safe as the airliners of the
: late '20s."

: One of the reporters was surprised at that: Shouldn't spaceflight
: ideally be as safe as commercial aviation is today?

: "Don't believe anyone who tells you that the entry level for the
: new spaceships will be as safe as the modern airliner," Rutan
: responded. He noted that the fatality rate for orbital spaceflight
: has been 4 percent, and that he was aiming for the suborbital
: SpaceShipTwo to be "100 times safer."

: When will it fly?

: Virgin Galactic has been saying that passenger flights could start
: in the 2009-2010 time frame, but that was before last July's fatal
: accident at Scaled Composites' Mojave testing ground. The
: development of SpaceShipTwo's rocket engine has been held up
: because of the accident investigation, and today Virgin Galactic is
: saying only that WhiteKnightTwo will go into flight tests later
: this year.

: Gliding drop tests of the SpaceShipTwo craft, sans engine, could
: begin this year as well, said Stephen Attenborough, Virgin
: Galactic's commercial director. "This is very unlikely to be a
: program that will be delivered on a straight line," Attenborough
: told me.

: Several would-be passengers attended today's event, and were easily
: recognizable because of their black Virgin-branded flight suits.
: Perveen Crawford, Virgin Galactic's first paid-up customer from
: Hong Kong, told me that she was ready to go anytime.

: "It doesn't matter how it looks, just take me up there," she said.

: Virgin Galactic's founder, British billionaire Richard Branson, has
: said he'll give his 89-year-old father, Edward, a ride on
: SpaceShipTwo as a sign of his confidence in its safety. "They'll
: have to do it fairly quickly, or I won't be around," Edward Branson
: told me jokingly after the news conference.

: Edward Branson hasn't yet gone through astronaut training, but
: 80 other fliers-to-be have taken practice sessions at the NASTAR
: Center in Pennsylvania. Passengers are expected to endure
: accelerations of up to 3.5 times Earth's gravity, or 3.5 G's, on
: the way up - and up to 6 G's coming down. NASTAR's centrifuge
: duplicates that flight profile for training purposes.

: In the wake of the centrifuge sessions, Attenborough said two
: fliers have withdrawn from the flight program because of health
: concerns, and three have delayed their training - which translates
: into a higher-than-expected 93 percent success rate.

: People wouldn't necessarily be the only payload: Virgin Galactic
: President Will Whitehorn said the WhiteKnightTwo air-launch system
: could also be adapted for putting satellites into orbit.

: Making their mark

: Compared with the pointy-nosed look of SpaceShipOne, the cabin
: designs for SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo look a bit more
: rounded, more like a business jet than a Looney Tunes rocketship.
: The white-and-red colors of the first commercial spaceship were
: replaced on the scale models shown today with a white, blue and
: black motif.

: The twin tails and the belly of the SpaceShipTwo craft were
: emblazoned with a design based on the iris of Richard Branson's
: eye.

: Branson had history on his mind as he addressed today's audience.

: "2008 really will be the year of the spaceship," he said. Later on,
: Branson was asked whether he hoped he'd go down in history for
: backing the first commercial spaceline. Branson quickly gave the
: credit to Rutan, but then noted that everyone would like to leave
: their mark on earth.

: "I suppose we'd all like to make our mark when we're out of Earth,
: too," Branson said.

: You can get your own look at the new design concepts at Virgin
: Galactic. And stay tuned for further updates later today, here on
: the Log.

Mark Reiff