The White Knight is pretty fraggle not built for even mild
aerobatic maneuvers and they probably went over every possible scenario to
extract as much altitude as possible. If 100KM was most likely not possible
with 4 passengers and maybe not even with one. Besides in the US, 50 miles
was always the astronaut qualifier,
1--KM came much later. And just maybe they can and will do that for a 2nd
record, smart marketing.
Ken
On Sun, Jul 11, 2021 at 11:58 AM Brian Feeney <alaiadesign@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I just looked at the video of the flight again:
The spacecraft looks to have dropped a little under 400 feet from release
which is less than I thought it would be.
Vertical flight looks like its achieved around 17 seconds from beginning
of the burn and about Mach 1.4
It's too bad the carrier aircraft can't perform a pitch-up maneuver. The
air is pretty thin and not much excess energy / thrust to play with.
I wonder if the carrier aircraft went into a shallow dive and picked up
speed, then pulled up. Trade some more altitude to add some early vertical
velocity to the spacecraft so it could achieve a higher altitude (above 100
kms and a little more zero g time). Sort of like a fighter aircraft tossing
a bomb by way of a dive and pitch-up. Maybe a little dangerous in terms of
flight dynamics and safe separation of the spacecraft.
Any experienced high altitude higher performance aircraft people out there
can comment on a dive / pitch-up maneuver at these high altitudes without
the benefit of excess afterburner thrust to achieve the same.
Cheers
Brian
On Sun, Jul 11, 2021 at 2:19 PM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Back in the 70s, Steve Jobs was a schoolkid. He had no serious money
until the 80s.
On 7/11/21 10:34 AM, roxanna Mason wrote:
Yeah, like back in the 1970's when Bob Truax almost had Steve Jobs
convinced to invest 1 M$ in the Volksrocket/Project Private Enterprise to
launch the world's first private astronaut. But cold feet prevailed.
Ken
On Sun, Jul 11, 2021 at 8:48 AM Doug Jones <rocketplumber@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Glad to see they did well, wish we could have joined forces back in the
day, this moment could have come sooner.
On Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 8:41 AM Peter Fairbrother <peter@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Down and safe now.
Considering the publicity aspects youd'a thunk they could do a better
downlink...
Peter Fairbrother
On 11/07/2021 16:14, Peter Fairbrother wrote:
live stream:
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
Peter Fairbrother
