Video Interview with Stephen Attenborough

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Doug Messier
on July 30, 2012, at 5:09 am
in News
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Comments: 3 responses
3 Comments

A 24-minute Euronews interview/infomercial with Virgin Galactic Commercial Director Stephen Attenborough. The highlights:

  • “much closer than we were” to commercial flights
  • “final stage of that journey”
  • “go from milestone to milestone”
  • “hope between 18 and 24 months” to begin commercial operations
  • “driven by safety”
  • “hybrid rocket motor…chose because of its reliability and safety”
  • “right partners, right technology”

It’s the same stuff they’ve been saying for years, right down to the 18 to 24 month timetable. At some point, they’re going to be right. It’s just hard to know exactly when that will happen.

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  • mr. mark

    Virgin Galactic is unfortunately in a position of running a business without even having a product. Eventually, things could catch up with them if passengers and investors don’t see progress happening.

  • Geoff Daly

    Nice to hear they have had 71 flights, how many were using the rocket motor?
    Did Space Dev and Scaled Composites ever find out why the motor exploded during the cold flow test and resulted in fatalities and injuries. Because if not N2O is nasty stuff if not handled properly; just look at the kids who blow up their car engines using N2O in bottles mounted in the trunks of there cars. What about at 50,000+ feet in the air (Parachutes anyone?).
    All seems very quite about the engine firings and flight firings, wonder why.
    Maybe Mr.Mark is assuming correctly, no progress-no more money for rides!

  • http://www.parabolicarc.com Doug Messier

    The numbers are:

    90-19-16-14-0

    90 WhiteKnightTwo flights
    19 SpaceShipTwo glide flights (no engine)
    16 WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo captive carry flights
    14 RocketMotorTwo engine tests (of various lengths)
    0 SpaceShipTwo powered flights

    Sources:

    WhiteKnightTwo: http://www.scaled.com/projects/whiteknighttwo_flight_test_summaries
    SpaceShipTwo: http://www.scaled.com/projects/spaceshiptwo_test_summaries
    RocketMotorTwo: http://www.scaled.com/projects/rocketmotortwo_hot-fire_test_summaries