Abstract
Having cornered the market for suborbital joyrides, Richard Branson is already planning space hotels and lunar jaunts. In his September 2013 speech to Virgin Galactic customers, he set out an expansive vision (Figure 9.1 and 9.2) of the future of his company’s space program which looked far beyond suborbital flights [1]. But, to realize these goals, he will need to hitch or develop a ride to low Earth orbit (LEO) and that, as any aerospace engineer will tell you, is a whole different kettle of fish.
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Notes
- 1.
To get to LEO, you have to accelerate to 28,100 km/h. Earth’s escape velocity is 40,000 km/h so, once you get into orbit, you have to add another 11,900 km/h. If you can do that, you can, as Heinlein’s quote (see page 176) says, go anywhere. In practice, it’s a little more complex, but the point is that the major effort is expended getting to LEO. Remember the Saturn V? The entire first and second stages, as well as some fuel from the third stage, were needed just to get into orbit. But, once in orbit, all that was required to send astronauts on their way to the Moon was a burn of a few minutes from the small third stage.
- 2.
The German A2 rocket was a precursor to the A4, which was subsequently renamed by Hitler as the V-2 for Vengeance (Vergeltung) weapon.
- 3.
You can read all about this pioneering company in Bigelow Aerospace, published by Springer-Praxis and written by yours truly.
Notes
http://www.educatinghumanity.com/2013/10/virgin-galactic-space-plans.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/virgin-galactic-space-hotels/
http://www.sstl.co.uk/Press/Government-investment-brings-low-cost-radar-satell?story=2044
http://www.virgingalactic.com/human-spaceflight/research-flights/
http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/tech_docs/JBIS_v60_188-196.pdf
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Seedhouse, E. (2015). Beyond Suborbital. In: Virgin Galactic. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09262-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09262-1_9
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