The Orange County Register gave Sunday a travel agent working with Virgin Galactic an opportunity to talk about the suborbital spaceflight experience. Tom Jackson has the basics of a suborbital spaceflight down, but he hasn’t captured all of the details. A few examples:
The technology is proven with the successful winning of the X-Competition [sic] at Mojave in September of 2004.
[…]
Once at 350,000 feet the power is dissipated and the craft powers upward and then slowly returns to earth in a glide controlled by its wing configuration and the two pilots. [The “power is dissipated” and yet it “powers upward”?]
[…]
The satellites that circle our Earth today circumnavigate the planet in 45 minutes at the speed of 17,500 miles per hour as there is no resistance at those altitudes. [Er, more like 90+ minutes]
Hardly egregious errors, but it makes you wonder…
How hard is it to go to the Discovery (channel) Store and purchase the X Prize documentary, watch it and (perhaps not fully understand space flight but…) write down and memorize the facts.
I will admit that there is a bit of editing even in this “scientific documentary” with technical explanations dumbed down and such to protect Scaled Composites secrets…
…But it is kinda scary that a Virgin Galactic travel agent hasn’t even taken the time to do their research (at least watch the video!). I don’t know about you… but I ALWAYS do my research before I open my trap!
PS: The “power” (rocket motor) actually shuts off halfway up (160,000 ft or so) and it takes another 150,000 ft or so to slow from Mach 3 to apogee (stop, come back down) given the gravity (1g) of Earth. It would be insane to attempt to control the spacecraft with the rocket motor still “powered” at 350,000 ft… There’s little atmosphere for the wing’s control surfaces to stabilize the craft (NaySay’s Space Shuttle has $$$ motor vectoring for stabilization).
Scary thing is… I could go on further… and I’m NOT even an engineer… the power of research… Do IT!