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Wednesday morning a rather unusual aircraft would fly over Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. Unlike the warplanes endemic to the region, it was a large Boeing 747 large carrier, whose bright red tail was adorned with one word: VIRGIN. A 70-foot rocket was tied under his left wing and about 30 minutes after the pilot took off, Kelly Latimer launched the rocket and sent it to the ground, 35,000 feet below.
Although the rocket is "fully loaded", as the company said, its engines never fired – they were not supposed to. Instead, the rocket fell freely on Earth so that society could see how it behaved during its first few seconds of free fall. This was the last major test of the Virgin Orbit airlift system, which will launch rockets from an ejected jumbo jet, called Cosmic Girl, to propel small satellites into orbit. It is a complicated maneuver, but one that could dramatically reduce the cost of traveling in space.
A significant fraction of the mass of a vertically propelled rocket is fuel, most of which is needed to combat the atmospheric drag and gravity of the Earth near the surface. Having a plane carry a rocket at high altitude can save a lot of that fuel. Unlike rockets, airplanes do not need oxidizer to fly at high altitude, which also reduces the weight of the rocket and reduces the cost of an orbital launch. Indeed, Virgin estimates that a journey in orbit around its rocket LauncherOne will cost only about $ 12 million, which is almost a change of pocket in the space industry.
The benefits of an airlift system have been known for decades, but it is only recently that the space industry has begun to be interested in the concept. Orbital ATK, which became the first company to use an air-launched rocket to put a satellite into orbit in 1990, is an exception and continues to use the system to this day. The concept has sparked renewed interest over the past decade, attracting new space companies such as Stratolaunch, XCOR and Generation Orbit, as well as former subcontractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Even SpaceX briefly evoked the idea of an airlift system for a modified Falcon 9 rocket before dropping the project in 2012. But among the new guardian, only Virgin has completed his system air launch.
Virgin Orbit
Now that Virgin Orbit has passed its fall test, the next step will be a launch test in orbit, which could take place this fall. If this succeeds, Virgin Orbit will officially open its doors as a newcomer to the market of small and increasingly crowded launches. It seems that Virgin Orbit will have no problem attracting customers. He has already signed launch agreements worth $ 400 million with organizations such as OneWeb, NASA and the US Air Force. Unlike SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 rockets can boost up to 50,000 pounds in low Earth orbit, Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket is limited to payloads of 660 pounds or less. This represents a slightly higher payload mass than the current leader in the small rocket launcher market, Rocket Lab, whose Electron rocket is designed to carry satellites weighing up to 500 pounds.
Virgin Orbit is one of three space companies owned by billionaire Richard Branson. In 2017, Virgin Orbit was separated from Virgin Galactic, which specializes in space tourism. The company made history last December by becoming the first company to fly a private passenger on a rocket aircraft manufactured by Branson's other space company, the Spaceship Company.
Branson's journey into space has been long. He founded Virgin Galactic in 2004 and initially expected commercial flights to begin in 2009, but technical problems and manufacturing issues have steadily delayed the schedule. In 2014, his space plane powered by a rocket exploded in flight, killing one of the two test pilots on board. The motorized flight tests only resumed in April 2018, but by the end of the year, two Virgin pilots had acquired their astronaut rights when they had piloted the aircraft. aircraft at an altitude of 51.4 miles, just beyond the limits of space. Since then, three other members of the Virgin crew have also visited the space.
Branson's perseverance seems to be paying off. Earlier this week, he announced that Virgin Galactic was merging with Social Capital Hedosophia, a partnership between two venture capitalists. Branson tweeted that the motivation for the merger was to become the "first manned spaceflight company ever listed." Initial estimates estimated the combined company at about $ 1.5 billion. At the same time as the burgeoning market of small launchers, Branson could soon turn into cosmic money.
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