What's happening in space (that's interesting)

[JMR]

I had no idea the Russian Venera probes recorded sound from Venus. Check this out:

This Is What The Surface Of Venus Sounds Like! Venera 14 Sound Recording 1982 (4K UHD)

[schurem]

Heh somehow my tired dumb brain read that as “Evidence of GeoPolitical activity found on Venus” and I was like whu wha?

[Canuck]

So apparently Richard Branson is supposed to be taking off into space today? At 1030 am EST I believe. It sounds like he’s jumped the gun to beat Jeff Bezos, who’s set to go up July 20th. I was surprised and disappointed to hear that they’re only going 80km up and only for a few minutes. I suppose they’ll technically be in space but it’s not what I had in mind. Anyways, very exciting stuff!

[Ginger_Yellow]

The launcher plane has taken off. Official feed here, Nasa Spaceflight is doing their thing too.

WATCH LIVE: Virgin Galactic Unity 22 Spaceflight Livestream

[Ginger_Yellow]

Branson brown-nosing is getting pretty obnoxious on the main feed.

[Ginger_Yellow]

Six minutes to go supposedly

[belouski]

Yeah, but it does sound like so many sci-fi shows with the commercialization of it all.

[Ginger_Yellow]

And safely down.

[KallDrexx]

Shows how advanced SpaceX is just in streaming technology. They are able to live stream high quality video of not only the rockets going up, and landing (up until the last moment of landing though). Virgin couldn’t even manage audio only feed at 280k miles up.

That whole thing was amazingly underwhelming. I thought it was interesting when they said researchers could get minutes of zero g time for research, but then they were only in zero g for 1.5 minutes so, is that really going to be helpful?

[dgallina]

Nah. The Virgin Galactic stuff is all about exploitation for tourism. No greater purpose.

[schurem]

I’d like to think that tech will scale up to something actually useful.

[Ginger_Yellow]

Not really, at least not in the near to medium term, though it’s possible the flights will get a little longer. Virgin Orbit is the “useful” bit of Virgin’s space business. Virgin Galactic has always been about space tourism for super rich people. If you look at what they’re telling investors, it’s all about the space tourism. There’s some handwavy stuff in there about the potential for their tech to be adapted to high speed point-to-point travel, but nothing concrete. Their plans for after they start actually taking customers to space are all about adding more space planes in the existing design and more spaceports, and lowering costs.

Our Strategy
Using our proprietary and reusable flight system and supported by a distinctive, Virgin-branded customer experience, we seek to provide affordable, safe,
reliable and regular transportation to space. To accomplish this, we intend to:
8
Table of Contents
• Launch our commercial program for human spaceflight. In December 2018, we flew our first spaceflight using our current SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity. This marked the first-ever flight of a vehicle designed for commercial service to take humans into space and was the first crewed space launch from U.S. soil since 2011. In February 2019, we flew VSS Unity to space for a second time and, in addition to the two pilots, carried a crew member in the cabin.
The crew member was able to unbuckle her seatbelt and float around the cabin in weightlessness – another first for a commercial space vehicle. All five crew members flown across these two flights were thereafter awarded official U.S. government commercial astronaut wings in recognition of having traveled more than 50 miles above sea level. We are now in the final phases of readying our commercial spaceflight program. As part of this preparatory work, we have transitioned our operational headquarters to our purpose-built facility at Spaceport America in New Mexico and completing the final work on VSS Unity for commercial service, including the installation of the cabin interior. The interior furnishings and fixtures have been installed at Spaceport America, along with finalizing everything needed to prepare our first future astronauts for flight. We expect to conclude the final portion of the flight test program from Spaceport America and expect successful completion of those tests.
• Expand the fleet to increase our flight rate. We will commence commercial operations to our SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, and our mothership carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, which together comprise our spaceflight system. We believe these craft will be sufficient to meet our initial operating plan. We have two additional spaceship vehicles, which we refer to as our SpaceShip III vehicles, under construction, as well as additional motherships undergoing design engineering. We plan to expand the fleet of SpaceShip vehicles, which will allow us to increase our annual flight rate. Beyond that, we plan to identify opportunities to expand to additional spaceports.
• Lower operating costs. We are focused on developing and implementing manufacturing and operating efficiencies in an effort to decrease the manufacturing cost per spaceship, mothership and propulsion systems. Additionally, we expect that, as we commence commercial operations, our staff will become more efficient in various aspects of operations and maintenance to reduce associated operating costs.
• Leverage our proprietary technology and deep manufacturing experience to augment our product and service offerings and expand into adjacent and international markets. We have developed an extensive set of vertically integrated aerospace development capabilities and technologies. While our primary focus for the foreseeable future will be on commercializing human space flight, we intend to explore the application of our proprietary technologies and our capabilities in areas such as design, engineering, composites manufacturing, high-speed propulsion and production for other commercial and government uses. Among other opportunities, we believe our technology could be used to develop high-speed vehicles that drastically reduce travel time for point-to-point international travel. By leveraging our technology and operations, we believe we will also have an opportunity in the future to pursue growth opportunities abroad, including by potentially opening additional spaceports or entering into other arrangements with different international government agencies. We also expect to continue and expand our government and research payload business, in addition to developing additional commercial partnerships.

[Canuck]

It sounds like Bezos is going 100km up as opposed to 80. Not a huge difference but still some bragging rights. He’s going up in a rocket ship as well which is definitely cooler. I wonder how long he’ll be staying up there.

[lordkosc]

Bezos’s rocket is also Alexa equipped, there is a giant light ring around the module just like most Echo devices!

[Strollen]

@KallDrexx

Shows how advanced SpaceX is just in streaming technology. They are able to live stream high quality video of not only the rockets going up, and landing (up until the last moment of landing though). Virgin couldn’t even manage audio only feed at 280k miles up.

That whole thing was amazingly underwhelming. I thought it was interesting when they said researchers could get minutes of zero g time for research, but then they were only in zero g for 1.5 minutes so, is that really going to be helpful?

If SpaceX didn’t exist, I might have been excited. I think the design of the spaceplane is pretty neat. However, after SpaceX it is decidedly underwhelming. I personally will spend a big chunk of money for a real (i.e. orbital) space flight, but these joy rides have little interest to me.

[Matt_W]

@Strollen

I personally will spend a big chunk of money for a real (i.e. orbital) space flight

Much harder. Orbital space flight is about 7x faster than these suborbital hops, and reentry requires a heat shield. There’s a reason NASA pays SpaceX $55 million per astronaut instead of the $250,000 that Branson is charging.

[Strollen]

@Matt_W

Much harder. Orbital space flight is about 7x faster than these suborbital hops, and reentry requires a heat shield. There’s a reason NASA pays SpaceX $55 million per astronaut instead of the $250,000 that Branson is charging.

I know it took me a while to get to orbit in Kerbal. If that cost can drop a hundreds or even thousand dollars a pound, that’d would make a big difference.

[Destarius]

I believe SpaceX trips are planned for 4 days as opposed to 4 minutes for Virgin.

edit: I would add that given the fossil fuel expenditure, I’m not sure joy rides to space should be allowed especially for 4 minutes a pop.

[mjgreeny75]

@Ginger_Yellow

Branson brown-nosing is getting pretty obnoxious on the main feed.

This, and very much this,

@KallDrexx

That whole thing was amazingly underwhelming. I thought it was interesting when they said researchers could get minutes of zero g time for research, but then they were only in zero g for 1.5 minutes so, is that really going to be helpful?

Space now accessible for everyone! Sure, if you are willing to sell a house for 1 minute in space… I just couldn’t stand it anymore when the presenting lady said something like ‘remember where you were, who you were watching this with, because this is history in the making and will change the nature of space flight forever’. I turned of the feed. Come on… It’s a gimmick, for a select group of very rich people. Nothing more, nothing less, which is fine, but I would have preferred they just present it that way…

Also, Stephen Colbert really wasn’t funny at all and totally the wrong choice…

[Strollen]

@Destarius

edit: I would add that given the fossil fuel expenditure, I’m not sure joy rides to space should be allowed especially for 4 minutes a pop.

In the past I’m might have disagreed with you, but the spectacle this last month was somewhere between obscene and embarrassing.

This Atlantic article summarized it nicely

Space Billionaires, Please Read the Room

Could there be a worse time for two über-rich rocket owners to take a quick jaunt toward the dark? Especially in the United States, the climate crisis is now actually starting to feel like a crisis . The western U.S. is in the thick of fire season, experiencing record-breaking drought and temperatures. Last week, Bezos’s hometown of Seattle hit 108 degrees. Hurricane season is starting early, and a once-in-200-years flood just ravaged northern Mississippi. Oh yeah, then there’s the pandemic that is very much still not over. Anyone would want a break from this planet, but the billionaires are virtually the only ones who are able to leave.

Leaving Earth right now isn’t just bad optics; it’s almost a scene out of a twisted B-list thriller: The world is drowning and scorching, and two of the wealthiest men decide to … race in their private rocket ships to see who can get to space a few days before the other. If this were a movie, these men would be Gordon Gekko and Hal 9000—both venerated and hated. Maybe, I don’t know, delay the missions a bit until people around the world are no longer desperately waiting for vaccines to save them from a deadly virus.

After skimming through the Virgin Galactic stream, I came out of the experience thinking worse of Branson and Virgin Galactic. The ship isn’t designed to further space exploration isn’t just about making space the ultimate space mountain Disney ride.

I understand why Elon’s launching his Tesla roadster into orbit around Mars, pissed off lots of people.
But there were good engineering/scientific reasons for it. It was the first launch of the Falcon Heavy, and Elon, seldom a pessimist, put the odds of success at no better than 50%. So there was no way you could but a valuable payload, so the roadster was in place of lead ballast. For us space enthusiasts it was a very cool event.

But even or us space enthusiasts this Billionaire battle was a disgusting spectacle.