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Thursday, July 1, 2021

“It's Game On” - Richard Branson to Attempt Flight Before Jeff Bezos

Back in mid-June, I said to "Set Your Alarm" for July to keep up with what seemed to be race developing between Sir Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos.  The essence of the story was that Bezos had announced the date of his flight, July 20th, and a rumor had surfaced that Branson was planning to fly this weekend to beat him into space.

This weekend is out, but news broke late this afternoon that Virgin Galactic said that in the rivalry of the billionaires, Sir Richard, will attempt to go to space next Sunday, July 11.  


In this stock photo from JIM WATSON / AFP / Getty Images, Sir Richard Branson takes off his button-front shirt to don a T-shirt that says "Future Astronaut Training Program" while Air and Space Museum Director Ellen Stofan looks on. The tee is given to him by Virgin Galactic Test Pilot Mark "Forger" Stucky.  The photo is from February, 2019.

Dubbed the "Unity 22" mission, this flight on the VSS Unity spacecraft will carry a full crew of two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, and four mission specialists, including Branson. "Building on the success of the company's most recent spaceflight in May, Unity 22 will focus on cabin and customer experience objectives," the company said in a statement.

Branson added:

I truly believe that space belongs to all of us... After more than 16 years of research, engineering, and testing, Virgin Galactic stands at the vanguard of a new commercial space industry, which is set to open space to humankind and change the world for good. It's one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all; it's another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality. As part of a remarkable crew of mission specialists, I'm honored to help validate the journey.  

Today had been a great day for Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin until this.  Blue Origin was getting praised after they announced they were inviting Wally Funk to join Bezos on the New Shepard flight on July 20.  Funk, 82, was member of the privately funded "Mercury 13" program for women in the 1960s, but ultimately none of those women were selected to go into space.  She is seen as someone who really, really deserves to go to space.  

Now the second guessing and quipping begin.  For example, responding to the news Thursday afternoon, former flight director and space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale tweeted the following: "Talk about schedule pressure! Hope nobody cuts any corners."  To which one BO fan quipped, "I'm not sure there are any corners left to cut at VG."

If Richard Branson gets to space before July 20, as now seems likely, he will have beaten Jeff Bezos both in launching cargo to orbit—with his Virgin Orbit rocket company—as well as personally flying to space, despite starting four years later and spending a fraction of the money.

I don't particularly care who gets to space first, it's just a mildly entertaining diversion from the rest of the news.  Unlike Bernie, AOC and the leftist idiot commenters at Ars Technica, I think billionaires are a net good for the world and while it's still off the distance, Musk, Bezos and Branson (in that order) are doing important things to build the future and a better world. 

Meanwhile, the SpaceX crew at Boca Chica transported Booster B3 to the launch complex where it's expected to undergo testing, and they've added the 7th section to the Orbital Launch Integration Tower.  One more to go.  I've not read how many Raptor engines B3 has, if any, but the first flights to orbit are expected to use 29.  If they static fire 29 Raptors, they'd better have a good water flood system. 


 

 

9 comments:

  1. Still waiting for the inevitable delays on Blue Origin's launch. And where is the BE4?

    Hope everything goes well with VG. At this point, private aerospace is in the hands of Branson and Bezos to screw up everything.

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  2. I just don't think that SpaceX will be test firing all 29 Raptors on Test Stand A. I don't think there is any way to cool it and I don't think it could mechanically take it. Maybe they will mount and fire the inner 9 engines. I believe that a full test fire will have to wait until the Orbital Launch Mount is functional.

    Of those three billionaires, I am least comfortable with Bezos based on the wokeness of Amazon. Also the performance of Blue Origin has been so sadly lacking. The only thing he might do is to try to throw monkey wrenches into SpaceX's progress.(Is monkey wrench politically incorrect?)

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  3. Yup - in that order. Bezos would certainly be able to pull ahead, but he needs to start sprinting at some point.

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  4. Just enjoy the competitive private "space rush."

    If we waited for government to take the next significant steps into space, we'd have to wait for a hot war to give them the incentive.

    These are the first heady days of expanding off planet. There will be successes, there will be tragedies. But there is a lot of courage.

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  5. I like the idea of a space race between billionaires, each trying to up the other. VG will beat Bezos' flying penis to the punch and I think thats healthy.

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    1. Heh... He said 'penis.' hehehehehehehehehe

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  6. I accidentally tuned in to the Nerdle Cam just as B3 started rolling away from the highbay. It captured me until it got to Pad A. How ridiculous is it to get excited over a giant grain elevator rolling down a backwater road a couple miles from Mexico? Sheesh ;-)

    Branson and Bezos are the sideshows in this glorious 3-ring circus, but sometimes the clowns and bears are a good addition to the skilled tightrope acrobats making it all look easy under the whip of the Ringmaster. Everybody needs some competition.

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  7. 29 Raptor engines to power that beast into flight? The Soviet N1 rocket had 30 engines and suffered from unequal boost causing the crash and explosion of several of the test rockets. Granted the technology today is better than that of the late 1960's but that is a lot of motor to keep coordinated.

    I say the technology is better but we still haven't figured out how to get back to the Moon or Mars...and they went to the Moon with little more than slide rulers to compute the issues.

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    1. Well, I have to seriously disagree with your opinion here. We could go to the Moon tomorrow if we wanted to (well, in a couple of months). The technology today isn't just "better than the 60's" but one and in some cases two orders of magnitude better. Going to the Moon and Mars is a matter of economics and political will, not technology.

      The Raptors have proven to be very controllable on the test stand (by the 100's) and in flight. It is the most advanced rocket engine in history. The issues of the first few flights of Starship had to do with fuel delivery, not engine design, and they have solved those problems just as the test program was designed to do.

      As for the Soviet N1, it was very poorly designed and would have succeeded in overcoming its engine issues had they had a better control system. They ran out of money and political will to finish the job after the US got to the Moon first.

      The huge F1 engines on the first stage of the Saturn V had serious stability and vibration problems. These were not entirely solved by the time they started actually flying them. We got lucky that we didn't lose any more than we did.

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