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RocketMotorTwo
RocketMotorTwo (RM2) is a family of hybrid rocket engines developed for the Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane. The first-generation engine was developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC),Leonard David"Virgin Galactic Pushes Private Spaceship Envelope in Test Flights" Space.com. 10 June 2011. Retrieved 19 May 2013. from the late 2000s to May 2014. It was first ignited in flight during a SpaceShipTwo test launch in April 2013. This engine design was subsequently flown in only two additional flight tests during 2013 and January 2014. SNC was a subcontractor to Scaled Composites through May 2014 when their involvement in the program ended after Virgin Galactic elected to replace SNC's version of RocketMotorTwo powered by HTPB rubber fuel, with its own internally developed hybrid motor for SpaceShipTwo. The second-generation RocketMotorTwo engine is a variant of the earlier SNC basic design. It experimented with using a polyamide plastic fuel and nitrous ox ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SpaceShipTwo
The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) was an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It was manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic. SpaceShipTwo was carried to its launch altitude by a Scaled Composites White Knight Two, before being released to fly on into the upper atmosphere powered by its rocket engine. It then glided back to Earth and performed a conventional runway landing. The spaceship was officially unveiled to the public on 7 December 2009 at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. On 29 April 2013, after nearly three years of unpowered testing, the first SS2 constructed successfully performed its first powered test flight. Virgin Galactic planned to operate a fleet of five SpaceShipTwo spaceplanes in a private passenger-carrying service and took bookings for some time, with a suborbital flight carrying a ticket price of US$250,000 in 2015. The spaceplane was also u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sierra Nevada Corporation
Sierra Nevada Corporation (also styled SNC) is an American aerospace, defense, electronics, engineering and manufacturing corporation that specializes in aircraft modification, integration and other space technologies. The corporation contracts with the Defense Department, NASA, and private spaceflight companies. The corporation is headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, and has 36 locations in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey. As of October 2020, the corporation has participated in over 500 successful space missions, including 14 missions to Mars. In 2021, the corporation created the subsidiary, Sierra Space, to continue working on the development of the Dream Chaser spaceplane and Commercial Space Station with Blue Origin The organization is a multi-billion-dollar corporation with over 4,000 employees. Its main business is working with the US Department of Defense and NASA on contracts. History The corporation was founded in 1963 by John Chisholm with a few ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dream Chaser Rocket Engine
Dream Chaser is an American reusable lifting-body spaceplane developed by Sierra Space. Originally intended as a crewed vehicle, the Dream Chaser Space System is set to be produced after the Dream Chaser Cargo System cargo variant is operational. The crewed variant is planned to carry up to seven people and cargo to and from low Earth orbit. Sierra plans to manufacture a fleet of the spaceplane. The Dream Chaser was originally started in 2004 as a project of SpaceDev, a company that was later acquired by the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) in 2008. In April 2021 the project was taken over by the Sierra Space Corporation (SSC), spun off from the Sierra Nevada Corporation as its own fully independent company. The cargo Dream Chaser is designed to resupply the International Space Station with both pressurized and unpressurized cargo. It is intended to be launched vertically on the Vulcan Centaur rocket and autonomously land horizontally on conventional runways. A proposed ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virgin Galactic
Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. is a British-American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group conglomerate, which retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company develops commercial spacecraft and provides suborbital spaceflights to Space tourism, space tourists. Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft are air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. Virgin Galactic's maiden spaceflight occurred in 2018 with its VSS Unity, VSS ''Unity'' spaceship. Branson had originally hoped to see a maiden spaceflight by 2010, but the date was delayed, primarily due to the VSS Enterprise crash, October 2014 crash of VSS Enterprise, VSS ''Enterprise''. The company did the early work on the satellite launch development of LauncherOne before this was hive-off, hived off to a separate company, Virgin Orbit, in 2017. The company also has aspirations for subor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2014 Virgin Galactic Crash
The VSS ''Enterprise'' crash occurred on October 31, 2014, when the VSS ''Enterprise'', a SpaceShipTwo experimental spaceflight test vehicle operated by Virgin Galactic, suffered a catastrophic in-flight breakup during a test flight and crashed in the Mojave Desert near Cantil, California. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed and pilot Peter Siebold was seriously injured. The National Transportation Safety Board later concluded that the breakup was caused by Alsbury's premature unlocking of the air brake device used for atmospheric re-entry. The NTSB said other important factors in the accident were inadequate design safeguards, poor pilot training and lack of rigorous oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Accident On the day of the accident, ''Enterprise'' was performing a test flight – powered flight 4 (PF04) – in which it was dropped from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, VMS ''Eve'', after taking off from the Mojave Air and Space Port.Mojave ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hybrid Rocket
A hybrid-propellant rocket is a rocket with a rocket motor that uses rocket propellants in two different phases: solid rocket propellant, one solid and the other either gas or liquid rocket propellant, liquid. The hybrid rocket concept can be traced back to the early 1930s. Hybrid rockets avoid some of the disadvantages of solid rockets like the dangers of propellant handling, while also avoiding some disadvantages of Liquid-fuel rocket, liquid rockets like their mechanical complexity. Because it is difficult for the fuel and oxidizer to be mixed intimately (being different states of matter), hybrid rockets tend to fail more benignly than liquids or solids. Like liquid rocket engines, hybrid rocket motors can be shut down easily and the thrust is throttleable. The theoretical specific impulse (I_) performance of hybrids is generally higher than solid motors and lower than liquid engines. I_ as high as 400 s has been measured in a hybrid rocket using metalized fuels. Hybrid s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VSS Enterprise
VSS ''Enterprise'' ( tail number: N339SS) was the first SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spaceplane, built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic. As of 2004, it was planned to be the first of five commercial suborbital SS2 spacecraft planned by Virgin Galactic. It was also the first ship of the Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo class, based on upscaling the design of record-breaking SpaceShipOne. The VSS ''Enterprise''s name was an acknowledgement of the USS ''Enterprise'' from the ''Star Trek'' television series. The spaceplane also shared its name with NASA's prototype Space Shuttle orbiter, as well as the aircraft carrier USS ''Enterprise''. It was rolled out on 7 December 2009. SpaceShipTwo made its first powered flight in April 2013. Richard Branson said it "couldn't have gone more smoothly". ''Enterprise'' was destroyed during a powered test flight on 31 October 2014, killing one pilot, Michael Alsbury, and seriously injuring another, Peter Siebold. This was the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of newspapers in the United States, sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. and the largest in the Western United States with a print circulation of 118,760. It has 500,000 online subscribers, the fifth-largest among U.S. newspapers. Owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by California Times, the paper has won over 40 Pulitzer Prizes since its founding. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to Trade union, labor unions, the latter of which led to the Los Angeles Times bombing, bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. As with other regional newspapers in California and the United Sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spacedev
SpaceDev, a part of the "Space Systems Business" of Sierra Nevada Corporation, is prominent for its spaceflight and Microsatellite (spaceflight), microsatellite work. It designed and built components for the hybrid rocket motors for Paul Allen's Scaled Composites Tier One, Tier One suborbital Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne, SpaceShipOne space program operated by Scaled Composites. It is also developing micro- and nano-satellites, a small expendable launch vehicle, the SpaceDev Streaker, and has designed a piloted suborbital and orbital spaceship of its own, the SpaceDev Dream Chaser, in collaboration with NASA. SpaceDev is based near San Diego in Poway, California. Its objective is to make routine commercial spaceflight possible and to help open space for all of humanity. Previously a publicly traded company (OTCBB:SPDV), on 20 October 2008 SpaceDev officials announced that the company would be acquired by Sierra Nevada Corporation, a privately owned company. The announced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States asserts sovereignty over five Territories of the United States, major island territories and United States Minor Outlying Islands, various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean. It is a megadiverse country, with the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, third-largest land area and List of countries and dependencies by population, third-largest population, exceeding 340 million. Its three Metropolitan statistical areas by population, largest metropolitan areas are New York metropolitan area, New York, Greater Los Angeles, Los Angel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supersonic
Supersonic speed is the speed of an object that exceeds the speed of sound (Mach 1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) at sea level, this speed is approximately . Speeds greater than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) are often referred to as hypersonic. Flights during which only some parts of the air surrounding an object, such as the ends of rotor blades, reach supersonic speeds are called transonic. This occurs typically somewhere between Mach 0.8 and Mach 1.2. Sounds are traveling vibrations in the form of pressure waves in an elastic medium. Objects move at supersonic speed when the objects move faster than the speed at which sound propagates through the medium. In gases, sound travels longitudinally at different speeds, mostly depending on the molecular mass and temperature of the gas, and pressure has little effect. Since air temperature and composition varies significantly with altitude, the speed of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
