Spaceship 2 flies free

On 10/11/2010 8:49 AM, Rick Jones wrote:

I was wondering the same thing, and suspect that the "full picture"
isn't visible unless VSS Enterprise is still attached.

Took me a while to track down a good photo of it, but it's a enlarged
version of the Virgin Galactic eye:
http://www.airportjournals.com/Photo.../0909005_5.jpg
Between portraying his mother as a pin-up girl, and that giant eye, if
Branson were in the late 1960's, we would say that he was dropping way
too much acid.
Note also the Icarus evolving into SpaceshipTwo series of illustrations
aft of the landing gear bay...yup, Kirk was right...too much LDS back at
Berkeley. ;-)

Pat

On 12/10/2010 4:13 PM, Sylvia Else wrote:
On 12/10/2010 12:30 AM, Alan Erskine wrote:
On 11/10/2010 9:21 AM, Anthony Frost wrote:
SlashDot are reporting that Spaceship 2 has made its first drop test
flight.

Anthony


Although delayed by a few decades (according to some SF authors, such as
A.C. Clarke), the future is coming. I hope SS2 is successful and leads
to the (rumoured) SS3 - orbital capability - very soon.

Despite the hype, getting a vehicle into orbit is not just an
extrapolation of a more or less vertical suborbital hop. SS3, if it
(ever) exists at all, will be quite different from SS2.

Sylvia.

Oh, no doubt about it. Nevertheless, it's a start, and if a company as
small as VG can make a go of it, then why not someone like the large
airlines for orbital ops (remember 2001, a Space Odyssey)?

Alan Erskine wrote:
Oh, no doubt about it. Nevertheless, it's a start, and if a company
as small as VG can make a go of it, then why not someone like the
large airlines for orbital ops (remember 2001, a Space Odyssey)?

OK, so Virgin Galactic in and of itself is rather small. Just like
Scaled Composites. But doesn't Virgin Galactic have some rather large
"supporters" behind it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic

And, IIRC, Scaled Composites now has NorthrupGrumman behind it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_composites

rick jones
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