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20/05/23/0318220 story

Virgin Orbit Schedules its First Orbital Test Launch this Weekend

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday May 23 2020, @09:08AM   
from the another-potential-way-to-get-off-this-rock dept.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

Virgin Orbit schedules its first orbital test launch this weekend – Spaceflight Now:

The first orbital test flight of Virgin Orbit's privately-developed air-launched rocket is scheduled as soon as Sunday off the coast of Southern California, the company said Wednesday.

Designed to deliver small satellites into orbit, the LauncherOne vehicle has a four-hour window Sunday opening at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT; 1700 GMT) to head into space after release from the belly of Virgin Orbit's Boeing 747 carrier aircraft. A backup launch opportunity is available at the same time Monday.

"We will only proceed with the mission if all conditions for launch are nominal," Virgin Orbit said in a press kit for the demonstration flight. "Although air-launched systems like ours are less vulnerable to bad weather than fixed ground-launch systems, we'll be watching the weather closely and being cautious for this maiden flight."

Piloted by Kelly Latimer, Virgin Orbit's chief test pilot, the 747 carrier aircraft will line up for its launch run west of San Nicolas Island, which is owned by the U.S. Navy. The targeted drop point is located roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) west-southwest of Long Beach.

Latimer will command the airplane onto climb angle of more than 25 degrees. The nearly 30-ton rocket will be released from a pylon under the 747's left wing during the pull-up maneuver at an altitude of around 35,000 feet (nearly 10,700 meters).

Around five seconds after release, the rocket's kerosene-fueled NewtonThree engine will ignite with 73,500 pounds of thrust to begin climbing into orbit.

"The instant our NewtonThree engine ignites, we will have done something no one has ever done before — lighting an orbital-class, liquid-fueled, horizontally-launched vehicle in flight," Virgin Orbit said.

"We'll continue the mission for as long as we can," the company said. "The longer LauncherOne flies, the more data we'll be able to collect. Should we defy the historical odds and become one of those exceedingly rare teams to complete a mission on first attempt, we will deploy a test payload into an orbit, take our data, and then quickly de-orbit so as not to clutter the heavens."

If everything goes as Virgin Orbit hopes, the company intends to restart the second stage's NewtonFour engine once in space, validating the rocket's ability to deliver payloads to different orbits on the same mission.

The mission profile for the first LauncherOne flight lasts 32 minutes from the time of the rocket's release from the "Cosmic Girl" jumbo jet until separation of its payload in orbit.

Unfortunately for space enthusiasts,

But the company does not plan to provide a live public webcast for the LauncherOne demonstration flight. Instead, Virgin Orbit will release updates on Twitter as the mission progresses.

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Original Submission

• Please (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2020, @09:34AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2020, @09:34AM (#998110)

  Send the beardy cnut himself up on this...

  and leave the fecker behind before you come back down.

• DOA? DOA? (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 23 2020, @12:41PM (1 child)

  by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday May 23 2020, @12:41PM (#998127) Journal

  The smallsat launch market is crowded as is, despite Rocket Lab grabbing most of the business (and SpaceX will do Starlink+rideshares soon). There is going to be a culling.

  https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/rocket-report-busy-weekend-on-the-space-coast-sls-rocket-launch-slips/ [arstechnica.com]

  Shakeout looming in smallsat launch industry. In an interview with SpaceNews [spacenews.com], Rocket Lab Chief Executive Peter Beck reiterated that the small-satellite launch industry is one of the most fragile sectors of the defense industrial base. "Too many companies are going after a market opportunity that's only really big enough for two," Beck said.

  Who will be left standing? ... A recent study by Quilty Analytics estimated there are well over 100 small-launch companies. "Nearly all of the contenders will fail, though there is room for perhaps two winners among the venture space launch field," said the study. Rocket Lab, of course, expects to be among those left standing, and this seems reasonable since it is the only company presently flying.

  --
  [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

  • Re:DOA? (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 23 2020, @12:51PM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Saturday May 23 2020, @12:51PM (#998131) Journal

    Smallsat launch services feel pricing pressure [spacenews.com]

    *SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

    
    Companies working on many of the dozens of small launch vehicles currently under development have argued that the flexibility they provide, including giving smallsat operators control over when to launch and to what orbit, is worth the higher price such vehicles have over rideshare services, where smallsats are secondary payloads on larger rockets.

    [...] “The fact that SpaceX announces such incredible prices for smallsats affects our business, affects our pricing policy up to a certain point,” said Fragnito. “We will follow, up to a certain point. We don’t want to kill ourselves. We want to make a profitable business and we still do it or the moment.”

    “But it’s clear the competition will be fiercer and fiercer,” he added. “Only a few will survive.”

    Serkin said GK Launch was working with Roscosmos on ways to lower the cost of Soyuz launches. That includes the development of a new variant of the Soyuz rocket, the Soyuz 2M, based on the Soyuz-2.1b but without the Fregat upper stage. That version will cost about $30 million and place two to three tons into sun-synchronous orbit.

    There are limits, though, of how low launch prices can go, he said. “I hope that, in a few years, we won’t start paying our customers to remain in this market.”

    Will the small launch market survive COVID-19? The Pentagon has concerns [c4isrnet.com]

    *SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

    
    on April 20, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord warned that the small space launch was one of three sectors the Pentagon was most worried about.

    The Space and Missile Systems Center elaborated on the Pentagon’s concerns in a statement to C4ISRNET.

    “There is concern that the current financial and market constraints resulting from the COVID-19 have reduced funding sources necessary to continue development and operations for the nascent small launch industry,” said Col. Rob Bongiovi, director of SMC Launch Enterprise. “Much of the industry have limited flight capability or are in the critical transition from development to flight and this funding restriction may prevent or delay these systems. The Space and Missile Systems Center is evaluating the impacts to the small launch industrial base to consider actions to enable a robust U.S. launch industrial base.”

    The small launch sector’s reliance on venture funding leaves them particularly vulnerable at this moment said Carissa Christensen, CEO of Bryce Technology, an analytics and engineering firm.

    SpaceX rideshare program putting downward pressure on prices [spacenews.com]

    *SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

    
    SpaceX advertises a base price of $1 million for launching up to 200 kilograms and $5,000 extra per kilogram.

    The rideshare program is “incredibly competitive,” Safyan told SpaceNews. He called it “one of the more significant programs for the smallsat industry especially because of the pricing, the reliability and the number of orbits.”

    Since SpaceX started offering this service there has been “more pressure on other launch providers to offer more competitive pricing,” he said. “We are seeing launch providers starting to get more creative.”

    Planet is adding six new SkySats to its existing constellation of 15 to provide mid-latitude coverage. The 53 degree inclination of the Starlink orbit “matches very well with where we wanted to put these SkySats,” Safyan said.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

    Parent

• Comment Below Threshold

  Hello Boomers (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @09:35PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @09:35PM (#998569)

  Are you enjoying COVID-19, Boomers? I hope you are, because your political response to the pandemic has completely destroyed the economy. Did we really need a Great Recession in 2008 caused by you, and a Great Lockdown in 2020 caused by you? Are you proud of yourselves for creating an economic depression even worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s? Are you proud of yourselves, Boomers? Your legacy will be economic ruin for all. You don't care as long as you Boomers continue to receive your pensions. You Boomers don't have jobs. You Boomers don't create jobs. You Boomers don't do anything for anyone ever. You Boomers are utterly worthless parasites. You don't care about anybody except yourselves. Everybody except you is forced at gunpoint to wear a facemask while you Boomers sit in your giant mansions laughing and waiting to die when you will be buried with your fortunes so nobody will ever touch your precious money.

  Boomers did COVID-19.