OM

Virgin Galactic is a private company. None of your precious tax money is being spent on this endeavor.

Wake up and smell the coffee and stop trying to peddle your politics on a science blog.

excuse me, look at the contract that was just given to them from Obama space!

This is not Obama or NASA, it is Virgin Galactic, like the airline Virgin Atlantic, but with more altitiude... This is not tax payer funded, but private investors. Did the air force have folding planes 40 years ago?

BS! NEW MEXICO put up over $200,000,000! I like the idea of private space flight and Virgin is the company to do it, no American company will because of Obama and the marxists around here, but there is Gov. money is this thing!

It is not privately funded any more, read the news, the new NASA contracts for or f***up space program

I'm fairly certain Virgin Gallactic is privately funded, aside from a state grant from New Mexico for joint construction and access to a space port. And how is space travel not a thought for the future? The space program has yielded some of the greatest technological achievements in human history. Allowing the private sector to finally compete with NASA will hopefully be a great success that advances our society even further. In short, looks awesome. Can't wait until it's affordable.

I have no problem with the private sectore being in the space program, I have a problem with tax dollars being spent relearning what we already know.

Read the news reports, they are a government contractor. And Honestly if you look at their objectives it is not for outer space fights it is for near space touriest flights.

"Virgin Galactic and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority have signed a Memorandum of Understanding setting out the terms under which Virgin Galactic would lease hangar and terminal facilities for its operations at Spaceport America in New Mexico. This represents a significant commitment by Virgin Galactic to be the anchor tenant at Spaceport America, and to help New Mexico grow a thriving new industry."

Explain to me again how that is bad for New Mexico. Please.

Did I ever say that it would no be good New Mexico! No. but is it bad for the nation! YES

It is not privately funded any more, read the news, the new NASA contracts for or f***up space program

And show me which of the contracts announced recently is directed towards Virgin Galactic? New Mexico has given them money (in the form of sales tax increases, iirc), but I haven't seen any NASA contracts sent their way, so if you could provide a source for your claims, it might help. Also, you should let Branson know they have a NASA contract, since obtaining them is one of his goals.

The recipients of the most recent round of NASA contracts are here:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/NASA-Awards-Critical-Contracts-for-Private-Spacecraft-195705.shtml

Virgin Galactic isn't on that list...

Because somehow, someway, you just had to bring up Obama to put him down and look extra stupid in the process. God I'm sick of people like Old(and stupid)American. TAKE YOUR BULL SOMEPLACE ELSE!

Oldamerican...I've tried looking up information on whether or not VG is government funded...and I found pretty much the same thing. It's a privately owned company. The only thing I could find is this article:

http://www.white-sands-new-mexico.com/spaceport_america.htm

About a quarter of the way down, it talks about the Spaceport Tax (nowhere does this say that this is under any kind of federal government contract):

WHO PAYS FOR ALL THIS? - SPACE PORT TAX
The $198 million Spaceport America being built in Sierra County is expected to be completed in 2010.

The company states that Virgin Galactic has "committed the resources required to ensure proper funding."

Virgin Galactic will receive a funding of $100 million from the State of New Mexico, so the State decided in 2006. In addition, the State will design and construct all necessary facilities.

And on top of that the people in Doña Ana County voted on Tuesday, April 3, 2007, on the subject of whether or not they are willing to pitch in by means of paying higher taxes. See final spaceport tax election results here.

However, in order to charge an additional tax two counties have to approve it. On Tuesday, April 22, 2008, Sierra County did exactly that. Doña Ana County followed suit on July 22, 2008. These fine people are now helping the spaceport out with a 0.25% sales tax. In other words, the spaceport gets 25 cents for each $100 purchased.

But not everybody is as cheerful a giver. On November 5, 2008, Otero County voted against the Spaceport America tax. 52.3 percent voted against, 47.7 percent voted for the tax. This means the spaceport project will have some $2 to $6 million less to spend.

The Spaceport Tax in Detail:
The Legislature required the formation of a tax district to collect the gross receipts taxes approved in 2008 by voters in Doña Ana and Sierra counties. Who's gonna keep track of the public cash? The Spaceport America Regional District Board.

A special inaugural meeting of the Board of Directors of the Regional Spaceport Tax District was held on Friday, January 23, 2009, in Hatch, New Mexico in order to formally begin operations of the Spaceport America Regional Spaceport District.

Via press release of March 28, 2007, the New Mexico Economic Development Department announced that Virgin Galactic signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority setting out the terms under which Virgin Galactic would lease approximately 83,400 square feet of hangar and terminal facilities at Spaceport America.

The NMSA will construct common facilities that will include runways, emergency facilities, fuel storage and delivery, perimeter security, restaurant and concessions, and visitor viewing areas. Tenants will pay User Fees to use these facilities.

In effect, the NMSA will build and own the Virgin Galactic facilities and then lease them to Virgin Galactic.

Spaceport America is expected to have the potential to create up to 5,000 new jobs and up to $1 billion in new revenue in the State.

Please post your news articles that say this is funded by anything other than this contract with New Mexico.

Excuse me because I think he has f***ed us and our children with sh*t that that are good in theroy but bills passed have to much sh*t added in to law that does not work and world history has proven it does not work. come on after the next shuttle we will be calling a taxi for our space missions. when has it ever been better to pay what their paying for a cab.

Oldamerican... what they are doing is simply a flight test of a new aircraft/space vehicle. Even though the Airforce has had jets for nearly 40 years, commercial aviation has had turbine engine driven "jumbo jets" for more than 50+ years... they still test every single new model of aircraft to see if it performs as it was engineered to.

Sure they already know these things can be done, and we've known about it for a long time... but, would you want to fly in any aircraft that hasn't been rigorously tested to work out any bugs or engineering anomalies that may show up?

I wasn't aware that state commerce in an emerging industry was damaging to the nation as a whole. In what ways is this a bad thing? Are you afraid that other states might find sources of revenue outside of federal grants and subsidies, thus reducing dependency on the federal government? That seems to contradict the very principles of conservatism.

I'm all for NASA and private space enterprises. However, everyone is right and wrong. Virgin Galactic is privately owned, as are some other companies getting into space flight, however, the government has given grants to some of these companies. I'll try to find the article later, but am having connection problems at the moment.

However, money well spent, if you ask me.

Old American you need to adjust your tinfoil hat and go to your Tea Bagger's meeting.

As many people have said before me, please, don't feed the trolls.

I don't think anyone in here is recognizing the major genius that is Burt Rutan. When you walk into the main hall at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum and see all of the jets/planes/rockets hanging in there you will notice that only one designer has two craft in the main hall...Burt Rutan. His original Voyager that flew non-stop unrefueled around the world is in there and SpaceShipOne hangs right by the front door. Scaled Composites is not some fly-by-night operation. They build many testbed crafts that are under contract from the US and it's contractors. These testbeds provide original proof of concept aeronautics data for further use by themselves and other contractors. This company and man have an impeccable record of design success and safety.

I doubt that there is another private company out there that I would trust more with a NASA contract than Scaled Composites.

Virgin Galactic will be providing joy-rides to sub-orbital space (sub-orbital spaceflight does not equal orbital spaceflight!). And yes, they are privately funded.

Since Virgin Galctic is sub-orbital only, NASA has no use for them!

See COTS, CCDEV1 and CCDEV 2. These are the programs that have awarded federal funding via NASA. Here is the complete list of winners (note that Virgin is NOT listed, nor did they or would they have ever even applied!):

Blue Origin, Boeing, Paragon, Sierra Neveda Corp, Orbital Sciences, Rocketplane Kistler, ULA, and SpaceX. That's it.

Since we defined 'space' as beginning at 100km/62.5 miles, that's when. (and yes it's arbitrary, but there;s no 'natural' line...X-15 pilots got Astronaut wings for exceeding 50 miles, nuclear weapon detonations are considered 'in space' if above 100,000 feet)

America's first two manned space flights were also suborbital, albeit about twice as high...

And other rockets went even higher, without going orbital, at least two in the early Pioneer series unintentionally became that by being launches direct to escape velocity, that didn't make it due to upper stage malfunctions. Tens of thousands of miles up before falling back...but still suborbital.

Thanks, cjsks, I keep having to go to meetings and cannot look things up. But I would still like a link to that article.

I just have to ask, oldamerican, what you would rather see tax dollars spent on? Your Medicare? Your Social Security? All the entitlements you think you're deserving of because you were told you deserve it?

Guess what, buddy, there won't be any of those entitlements for the generations coming up behind yours, and, to be honest, none of us really care to spend our tax dollars coddling you in your dotage.

So, as I see it, given the opportunity to develop the space program, or the opportunity to keep you in Depends, the choice is clear.

Move aside.

Sincerely,

a Gen-Xer who knows there won't be any Social Security for him, but is forced to pay anyway.

(You're welcome.)

Hi Tony, see the below links... these are the programs where NASA has provided subsidy to commercial space flight companies. Virgin is not listed anywhere, either as an applicant or award winner... nor would they. They are not capable of delivering crew or cargo to orbit.

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

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

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

Yeah, thanks, but I was looking for the news articles.

I'll look for them later.

Interesting, cjsks. I tried several times to post relevant URLs in the fusion thread, but the system just would not let me...

You have to be a member for a while before you are given permission to post links:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/18/6671329-watch-a-spaceship-do-the-twist?last=1305901926&threadId=3130946&sp=0&pc=25#last_1

I know what you mean, I see that message too. But I have posted here regularly for years, well before the page format changed. If there's something else I have to sign into now, I don't know what it is.

Plus, I can't seem to post even plain text from one of my computers, even though the site seems to know me by name, either way...

I think the term in question is "outer", not "space".

What does it matter whether or not it was suborbital? They were testing a re-entry concept.

Technically, you can be ORBITAL at any altitude, but atmospheric drag makes it impossible. You have to be moving about 17,500 mph (over 22x that speed of sound) to be in low-earth orbit around the earth.

SpaceShipTwo cannot achieve orbit, because it's top speed is only around 2,600 mph. Also, orbital spaceflight does not become "stable" until you are over 350km. This is roughly the altitude where the ISS resides.

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

p.s. by saying that, I don't mean to diminish what Virgin and Burt Rutan have accomplished. SpaceShipTwo is still a marvel of the modern world... All the best to them and anyone advancing human spaceflight!

However, we've seen SpaceShip 1 and SpaceShip 2. Who's to say that SpaceShip 3 won't be capable of orbit?

That was actually what they were proposing for the SpaceShipThree concept originally. But they have since dialed that back. If SpaceShipThree is developed it will likely be for point-to-point spaceflight, but still suborbital.

I had that idea decades ago. A suborbital trans-Atlantic flight would be less then an hour. Think of all the rich folks who would pay big not to have to sit in a plane for 3 or 4 or 5 hours. An instant moneymaker.

However, I have no money nor credibility to get my ideas out there.

Rocketplanes are still too expensive to replace trans oceanic flights as an alternative. Heck, Concord couldn't really hack it, and their tickets were orders of magnitude cheaper than what Virgin Galactic is probably capable of even doing at cost after they fully roll out their Spaceship#-line!

I think that perhaps when we can produce low velocity RAM/SCRAM jets will we see some major improvements in short duration commercial flights. Combine that with the NASA testing going on to create boom'less super sonic airframes and it may come sooner than expected.

However, right now, the major flaw with rocketry is that one gets no benefit from the atmosphere. A rocket is hampered by the fact that it must carry all the fuel that it is ever going to use for propulsion. A jet on the other hand only needs a combustable substance, air, and a place and means to burn it. In the case of RAM and SCRAM designs, there doesn't even need to be any moving parts, the fuel is combusted strictly thanks to the compressing forces of the airflow through the intake. Additionally, the faster the craft is moving, the more fuel efficient it becomes.

OA, should we all just get off your space lawn?

Oldamerican

Quit being ben gay and read his post. The point of his post was that we ARE 40 years behind where we SHOULD be. He is saying we could have been doing this 40 years ago if it weren't for the military and their greedy priorities. THINK before you make yourself look stupid please.

Sifu-- Hardly, just stating facts. Its not space travel.

It was established years ago that selling seats on these flights was going to help fund the project. As for advancement; "Small moves, Ellie. Small moves."

The KC-135 can't acheive the altitude of 100 km which is official altitude of where space starts. The aircraft simply flys parabolas, in which, the downward leg provides weightlessness. It's like skydiving without the wind. Spaceship2 will fly above the 100km mark which makes these flights similiar to Alan Shepards first flight.

TReed, Indeed a KC-135 operates at an altitude much lower than the proposed maximum altitude of spaceship 2. There is no arguing that 100km is the Karman line and that Virgin aims to exceed that altitude albeit by only a little bit and for only a short duration.

Spaceship 2 is simply going to fly a parabola just as the KC-135, just going to do it a little higher. To me it just seems too much like flying to an exotic, far off land and not leaving the airport. 4 Minutes of micro gravity and a brief time above 100km is just a tease. Ill wait for spaceship 3.

Just think of it as a way to get some of the money the dumb rich folks don't pay in taxes back into the economy. Virgin will hire people who will spend their wages.....and,oh yes.....pay taxes.

Ted - I guarantee you that if you ask the people that matter they will tell you that the ISS is a white elephant that provides little real science. Additionally, the shuttle is ridiculously expensive to operate mission to mission. Granted it comes in handy for things like space walks to repair the Hubble, but it would honestly have been almost cheaper to replace the Hubble than to repair it repeatedly.

If they can get the solid boosters a little better they could eventually match the space shuttle for a fraction of the cost.

Unfortunately no. The jump from suborbital flight, to orbital is HUGE. You need to be moving 17,500mph to reach orbital velocity. SpaceShipTwo does about 2,600mph. Everything becomes exponentially more difficult (propulsion, navigation, life support, re-entry, etc.) from low-earth orbit.

Although Virgin's achievements are great, they are nowhere near providing the services provided by NASA or the commercial providers under COTS, CCDEV1 and CCDEV2.

perhaps if we can get SCRAM jet tech running well on a larger scale, we could use that to launch large payloads into LEO from an airborn platform (or a ground-based linear accelerator)...THAT could potentially make launching hardware into space significantly cheaper.

As for Virgin, they're strictly space tourism, Spaceship# is nice, but should really be considered more of a commercial equiavelent to the U2 spyplane, as it just goes into the extreme upper atmosphere, not really into any sort of orbit.

CCDEV and COTS are the real interesting space-ventures. I wish the best of luck and success for those programs.

Well spoken Bry, that's the thing that OA doesn't seem to comprehend. The military is not likely to release their spaceflight program details to a foreign privately owned company or even an American privately owned company for that matter.

As far as funding goes, if the government were to invest in private commercial space flight it would be money better spent then on around 700 military bases (using a figure mentioned during the 2008 election) we have over sea's in countries that hate us. Lets use that money to get a foot hold in space and help ensure the survival of the human race.