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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 27 2017, @07:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-new-caber-toss dept.

Scotland: the land of mist and mountains long associated with kilts, bagpipes, haggis ... and now space launches. Timed to coincide with the Queen's Speech to Parliament, British startup Orbex announced that it will build a new 2,000 m² (21,500 ft²) rocket production facility in Scotland and is scouting for a launch site on the north coast of the country to send small payloads into low Earth orbit.

The announcement comes on the tails of Orbex making a private presentation of its launch technology to potential investors at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport. It already has a 1,200 m² (12,900 ft²) factory in England, where it is building launch vehicle subsystems, and is now seeking to expand north of the border for the assembly and launching of the completed rocket.

The goal is to create a booster that can lift payloads of up to 150 kg (330 lb) into low Earth orbit (LEO) and, eventually, to send up payloads of up to 220 kg (485 lb) into LEO, polar, or sun-synchronous orbits at altitudes of up to 1,250 km (775 mi). To help achieve this, Orbex is working with regional and national agencies to draft detailed development proposals in line with the UK government's 2017 Spaceflight Bill intended to promote launch sites in the British Isles.

The inaugural rocket will carry the tartan of which clan?


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  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday June 27 2017, @07:48PM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 27 2017, @07:48PM (#532087) Journal

    If they launch it anywhere from the Highlands and Islands [wikipedia.org] it'll gain a coating of squashed midgies [wikipedia.org] on the way up.

  • (Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday June 27 2017, @08:27PM (2 children)

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Tuesday June 27 2017, @08:27PM (#532110)

    Doesn't it rain about five days out of seven in Scotland?

    • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday June 27 2017, @08:45PM

      by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 27 2017, @08:45PM (#532116)
      They are going to install windscreen wipers on the nose assembly.
    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:25PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:25PM (#532134)

      The rockets, like the locals, will ignore the weather, once they're filled to the top with alcohol.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:32PM

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:32PM (#532141)

    These guys [rocketlabusa.com] are doing pretty much the same thing from Mahia Peninsula [voyagemahia.com] in New Zealand.

    They have had a successful test launch and want to launch weekly (I think).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:48PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:48PM (#532150)

    I suppose Faslane is right out, then.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ese002 on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:55PM (2 children)

    by ese002 (5306) on Tuesday June 27 2017, @09:55PM (#532154)

    Unless you are going for a polar orbit, Scotland is a pretty terrible place to launch. Too far from the equator to get much of a rotational boost. Energy conserving Eastern trajectory covers heavily populated regions, some of which are a little jumpy about rockets headed their direction.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:57PM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:57PM (#532405)

      How much of a boost do you really get though? Equatorial groundspeed is 1180km/hr or ~0.33km/s, versus a Low Earth Orbit speed of ~7.5km/s, so you're talking about a contribution of 0.33^2/7.5^2 = 0.2% of the total kinetic energy. Granted that translates into a larger percentage loss of payload due to rocket non-linearities, but in an age where rockets routinely launch with far less than maximum payload that's not so important.

      As for a bias towards polar orbits, or at least tilted ones, well that's exactly what you need to best serve high latitudes, isn't it? Equatorial orbits aren't much use for anyone hidden from them beyond the curve of the Earth. Besides, your orbital path is mostly much decided after you're in vacuum - equatorial launches routinely end in highly-inclined orbits, and there's no reason the opposite can't hold just as true.

      Now, folks being touchy about overhead launches might be a bit bigger issue. But Russia is over 1000 miles to the east, plenty of time for the flight path to be fairly well resolved. And heck, they might even enter the market for counter-rotating satellites and launch to the west - after all they don't have all that equatorial groundspeed working against them.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:40PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 28 2017, @01:40PM (#532428) Journal

        Equatorial groundspeed is 1180km/hr or ~0.33km/s, versus a Low Earth Orbit speed of ~7.5km/s, so you're talking about a contribution of 0.33^2/7.5^2 = 0.2% of the total kinetic energy.

        Rockets are about delta-v not energy. You can get a significantly higher payload with that small velocity boost. Keep in mind that you're not just increasing the velocity of your payload, but also the velocity of the entire, fully fueled rocket at launch, which is typically 30 to 50 times the mass of the payload! So that 0.2% is more like 6-10% of the total kinetic energy of the payload in orbit.

  • (Score: 2) by gman003 on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:12AM (1 child)

    by gman003 (4155) on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:12AM (#532206)

    Are there any known details of Orbex's lift vehicle? All I can find is that they apparently use a "novel, sustainable fuel strategy", which is more a pile of buzzwords than an actual description.

    Based on that, and their claim of a low inert-mass fraction, I would guess they're burning metholox in either gas-gen or expander cycle, and being a "micro-launch service", I imagine it's a two-stage-to-orbit deal like Falcon 1, Electron, or any of the other light lift vehicles. Metholox isn't exactly "novel" right now, but it hasn't technically flown to orbit yet so they aren't technically lying if so. Also possible is some sort of biofuel version of RP-1, or maybe a new "clean" hypergol.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @12:27AM (#532211)

    the one that killed mary queen of scots. och.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @11:09AM (#532368)

    Sing me a song of a lad that is gone
    Say could that lad be I?
    Merry of soul, he flew on a day
    Over the sea to sky.

    Earth was below, falling away,
    Voices of ground control
    Gravity's well, losing its grip
    Free floats body and soul.

    (maybe I'll write a few more verses later)

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