1.
Scaled Composites
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Scaled Composites is an American aerospace company founded by Burt Rutan and currently owned by Northrop Grumman that is located at the Mojave Spaceport, Mojave, California, United States. It is known for designs, for its use of non-metal, composite materials. Scaled Composites was established in 1982 and purchased by the Beech Aircraft Corporation in 1985, in 1988, Beechs parent company, Raytheon, sold Scaled back to Rutan, who then sold it to Wyman-Gordon. After Wyman-Gordon was acquired by Precision Castparts Corp, Rutan and ten investors re-acquired the company as Scaled Composites, LLC. Northrop Grumman, a shareholder in the company with a 40% stake. Both companies said Northrop Grummans acquisition would not affect Scaled Composites strategy or involve replacing Burt Rutan as senior manager, the acquisition by Northrop Grumman was completed on August 24,2007. Before forming Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan had designed several aircraft for amateur builders, including the VariEze and he also designed the Beechcraft Starship, which was, however, a commercial failure. These aircraft were distinctive because of their configuration, winglets. Before SpaceShipOne, Rutan was best known for his Voyager aircraft, which his brother, Dick Rutan, the company announced in April 2003 that it was working on a privately funded spacecraft, in an attempt to win the Ansari X PRIZE for the first private, manned spaceflight. This experimental rocket-powered spacecraft was given the name SpaceShipOne, on December 17,2003, they announced SpaceShipOnes first supersonic flight, the first flight of its kind by a privately funded aircraft. SpaceShipOne successfully made this flight, reaching 68,000 feet and 930 mph, the craft was taken aloft by the White Knight carrier aircraft. On the same day, Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, on April 1,2004, the U. S. Department of Transportation issued the company what it called the worlds first license for a sub-orbital manned rocket flight. The Mojave Airport, operating part-time as Mojave Spaceport, is the point for SpaceShipOne. SpaceShipOne performed the first privately funded human spaceflight on June 21,2004, Flight 16P on September 29,2004 and Flight 17P on October 4,2004 won the X-Prize for Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne. Scaled Composites Model 351, is being built for Stratolaunch Systems to provide a platform from which air-launch space missions can be staged, with a wingspan of 117 m, the design has the longest wingspan of any airplane to date. Each of the twin fuselages of the aircraft is 238 feet long and will be supported by 12 main landing gear wheels and it will require 12,000 feet of runway to lift-off. This model which utilized a slightly longer fuselage, larger span, the Rutan Aircraft Factory sold over 600 plan sets for the VariViggen to homebuilders, and eventually about 20 of the aircraft were built. Following the crash of one in New Brunswick, Canada in September 2006 due to wing tank fuel contamination, the prototype aircraft, N27VV, was donated to the EAA AirVenture Museum in 1988
2.
Virgin Galactic
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Virgin Galactic is a spaceflight company within the Virgin Group. It is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists, Virgin Galactic plans to provide orbital human spaceflights as well. SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactics suborbital spacecraft, is air launched from beneath a carrier known as White Knight Two. As part of Bransons promotion of the firm, he has added a variation of the Virgin Galactic livery to his business jet. The Spaceship Company was founded by Branson through Virgin Group, and Lee Family from Hong Kong owned 30%, to build commercial spaceships, by July 2014, TSC was only halfway through the completion of a second SpaceShipTwo, and had commenced construction of a second WhiteKnightTwo. In July 2008, Richard Branson predicted the maiden voyage would take place within 18 months. In October 2009, Virgin Galactic announced that flights would take place from Spaceport America within two years. Later that year, Scaled Composite announced that White Knight Twos first SpaceShipTwo captive flights would be in early 2010, both aircraft did fly together in March 2010. When I joined in 2010 we were mostly a marketing organisation, right now we can design, build, test and fly a rocket motor all by ourselves and all in Mojave, which I don’t think is done anywhere else on the planet”. On December 7,2009, SpaceShipTwo was unveiled at the Mojave Spaceport, Branson told the 300 people attending, each of whom had booked rides at $200,000 each, that flights would begin “in 2011”. However, in April 2011, Branson announced further delays, saying “I hope 18 months from now, we’ll be sitting in our spaceship and heading off into space”. By February 2012, SpaceShipTwo had completed 15 test flights attached to White Knight Two, and an additional 16 glide tests, a rocket-powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo finally took place on April 29,2013, with an engine burn of 16 seconds duration. The brief flight began at an altitude of 47,000 feet, while the SS2 achieved a speed of Mach 1.2, this was less than half the 2,000 mph speed predicted by Richard Branson. However, Branson still announced his spaceship would be capable of launching 100 satellites every day, maybe I’ll dress up as Father Christmas, Branson said. Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said “We are progressively closer to our target of starting commercial service in 2014. Interviewed by The Observer at the time of her 90th birthday in July 2014, Branson’s mother, Eve, asked when that might be, she replied, “I think it’s the end of the year”, adding after a pause, “It’s always ‘the end of the year’ ”. Tom Bower, author of Branson, The Man behind the Mask, told the Sunday Times, They spent 10 years trying to one engine. They are now trying to use a different engine and get into space in six months, BBC science editor David Shukman commented in October 2014, that enthusiasm and determination undoubted
3.
Scaled Composites White Knight
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The Scaled Composites Model 318 White Knight is a jet-powered carrier aircraft used to launch the Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne experimental spacecraft. It was developed by Scaled Composites as part of its Tier One program, the aircraft was subsequently offered by Scaled on a contract basis as a research testbed, and was used for drop tests of the Boeing X-37 spaceplane from June 2005 until April 2006. It is also the predecessor to White Knight Two, the Scaled Composites model number for White Knight is 318. White Knight is registered with the Federal Aviation Administration as N318SL, the White Knight carrier airplane was designed around the twin afterburning J-85 engines, which were selected for their availability and low cost. The aircraft was a new independent design. White Knight first flew on August 1,2002, the flight was aborted shortly after takeoff due to a problem with the outboard wing spoilers. These trailing edge spoilers were designed to increase the glide slope so that the White Knight vehicle could act as a flying simulator for training of SpaceShipOne pilots. During the first flight, the mechanical over-center torque was insufficient to maintain the spoilers in the closed position, the spoilers deployed into the free stream and began a limit cycle forcing the pilot to abort. The spoilers were subsequently disabled completely and the desire for a glide slope matching SpaceShipOne was abandoned. White Knight next flew on August 5,2002, and this time performed well, development proceeded over the next few months. With White Knight developed and evaluated, on April 18,2003, White Knight, subsequently, White Knight flew as part of the Tier One program that won the Ansari X Prize on October 4,2004. Afterwards, White Knight was used to carry and launch DARPAs experimental X-37 spaceplane for its approach and it was followed up by the White Knight Two, which has a similar but larger design. Flights of White Knight are numbered, starting with flight 1 on August 1,2002, flights where SpaceShipOne was carried also get one or two appended letters. An appended C indicates that the flight was a captive carry, if the flight actually flown differs in category from the intended flight, then two letters are appended, the first giving the intended mission and the second the mission actually performed. White Knight was contracted to perform both captive carry and drop test flights of the DARPA/Boeing X-37, first captive carry flight was on June 21,2005, and first drop was on April 7,2006. In late 2006, White Knight flew a seven-flight test program of the Adaptive Compliant Wing developed by FlexSys Inc with funding by the Air Force Research Laboratory. A laminar flow test article was mounted vertically under White Knights centerline pylon for the 20-flight-hour research program that tested the flexible wings aerodynamic characteristics. In July 2014 White Knight made its final planned flight, arriving at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, to become part of the Flying Heritage Collection
4.
Aircraft registration
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In accordance with the Convention on International Civil Aviation, all civil aircraft must be registered with a national aviation authority using procedures set by each country. Every country, even those not party to the Chicago Convention, has a NAA whose functions include the registration of civil aircraft, an aircraft can only be registered once, in the one jurisdiction. The registration identifier must be displayed prominently on the aircraft, most countries also require the registration identifier to be imprinted on a permanent fireproof plate mounted on the fuselage in case of a post-fire/post-crash aircraft accident investigation. Military aircraft typically use tail codes and serial numbers, although each aircraft registration identifier is unique, some countries allow it to be re-used when the aircraft has been sold, destroyed or retired. For example, N3794N is assigned to a Mooney M20F and it had been previously assigned to a Beechcraft Bonanza. Also note that an aircraft may be assigned different registrations during its existence. This can be because the aircraft ownership, jurisdiction of registration. The first use of aircraft registrations was based on the radio callsigns allocated at the London International Radiotelegraphic Conference in 1913, the format was a single letter prefix followed by four other letters. The major nations operating aircraft were allocated a letter prefix. Smaller countries had to share a single letter prefix, but were allocated exclusive use of the first letter of the suffix and this was modified by agreement by the International Bureau at Berne and published on April 23,1913. The agreement stipulated that the nationality marks were to be followed by a then a group of four letters that must include a vowel. This system operated until the adoption of the system in 1928. The International Radiotelegraph Convention at Washington in 1927 revised the list of markings and these were adopted from 1928 and are the basis of the currently used registrations. The markings have been amended and added to over the years, upon registration, the aircraft receives its unique registration, which must be displayed prominently on the aircraft. Annex 7 to the Chicago Convention describes the definitions, location, the aircraft registration is made up of a prefix selected from the countrys callsign prefix allocated by the International Telecommunication Union and the registration suffix. Depending on the country of registration, this suffix is a numeric or alphanumeric code, a supplement to Annex 7 provides an updated list of approved nationality and common marks used by various countries. When painted on the fuselage, the prefix and suffix are usually separated by a dash, when entered in a flight plan, the dash is omitted. In some countries use a number suffix rather than letters, like the United States, South Korea, and Japan
5.
SpaceShipTwo
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The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo is an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It is manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic, SpaceShipTwo is 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 glides back to Earth and performs 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 three years of unpowered testing, the first one constructed successfully performed its first powered test flight. The spaceplane could also be used to carry payloads for NASA. On 31 October 2014 during a test flight, VSS Enterprise, a preliminary investigation suggested the feathering system, the crafts descent device, deployed too early. One pilot was killed, the other was treated for a shoulder injury after parachuting from the stricken spacecraft. The second SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, VSS Unity, was unveiled on 19 February 2016, the vehicle is currently undergoing flight testing. The SpaceShipTwo project is based in part on technology developed for the first-generation SpaceShipOne, the Spaceship Company licenses this technology from Mojave Aerospace Ventures, a joint venture of Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, the designer of the predecessor technology. SpaceShipTwo is a low-aspect-ratio passenger spaceplane and its capacity will be eight people — six passengers and two pilots. SpaceShipTwo will reach 4,200 km/h, using a hybrid rocket engine — the RocketMotorTwo. It launches from its ship, White Knight Two, at an altitude of 15,000 metres. After 70 seconds, the engine cuts out and the spacecraft will coast to its peak altitude. SpaceShipTwos crew cabin is 3.7 m long and 2.3 m in diameter, the wing span is 8.2 m, the length is 18 m and the tail height is 4.6 m. SpaceShipTwo uses a feathered reentry system, feasible due to the low speed of reentry, in contrast, other orbital spacecraft re-enter at orbital speeds, closer to 25,000 km/h, using heat shields. SpaceShipTwo is furthermore designed to re-enter the atmosphere at any angle and it will decelerate through the atmosphere, switching to a gliding position at an altitude of 24 km, and will take 25 minutes to glide back to the spaceport. SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two are, respectively, roughly twice the size of the first-generation SpaceShipOne and mother ship White Knight, SpaceShipTwo has 43 and 33 cm -diameter windows for the passengers viewing pleasure, and all seats will recline back during landing to decrease the discomfort of G-forces. Reportedly, the craft can land safely even if a failure occurs during flight
6.
Scaled Composites White Knight Two
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The Scaled Composites Model 348 White Knight Two is a jet-powered cargo aircraft that is used to lift the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft to release altitude. It was developed by Scaled Composites from 2007 to 2010 as the first stage of Tier 1b, WK2 is based on the successful mothership to SpaceShipOne, White Knight, which itself is based on Proteus. Virgin Galactic has ordered two White Knight Two vehicles, together, WK2 and SS2 form the basis for Virgin Galactics fleet of suborbital spaceplanes. As of 2015, it is not clear how many SS2, the first White Knight Two is named VMS Eve after Richard Bransons mother Eve Branson, it was officially unveiled on July 28,2008, and flew for the first time on December 21,2008. The second is expected to be named VMS Spirit of Steve Fossett after Bransons close friend Steve Fossett, during 2012–2014, Virgin Galactic was also considering use of the WhiteKnightTwo as the air-launch platform for a new two-stage liquid-fueled rocket small satellite launcher called LauncherOne. In the event—by late 2015—they decided to use a carrier aircraft for the job. White Knight Two is roughly three times larger than White Knight in order to perform a flight with the larger SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. The WK2 is similar in wingspan to a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, White Knight Two is a very modern aircraft, as even the flight control cables are constructed of carbon fiber, using a new patented design. WK2 will provide preview flights offering several seconds of weightlessness before the suborbital event and it is intended to have a service ceiling of about 60,000 ft, offering a dark blue sky to passengers. This will allow tourists to practice before the real flight, White Knight Two is of twin fuselage design with four jet engines mounted two on each wing. One fuselage is a replica of that of SpaceShipTwo. The design is different from the White Knight, both in size, use of tail, engine configuration and placement of cockpit. The White Knight uses two T-tails, but the White Knight Two uses two cruciform tails, engine configuration is also very different. White Knight Two has four engines hung underneath the wings on pylons while White Knights pair of engines are on side of its single fuselage. Virgin Galactic contracted aerospace designer Burt Rutan to build the mothership, on January 23,2008 the White Knight Two design was revealed. On July 28,2008 the completion and rollout of the first aircraft, Eve, Branson predicted that the maiden space voyage would take place in 18 months, It represents. The chance for our ever-growing group of astronauts and other scientists to see our world in a completely new light. On March 22,2010 the VMS Eve completed its 25th flight, in a flight of 2 hours 54 minutes, it ascended to an altitude of 45,000 ft
7.
Richard Branson
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Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He founded the Virgin Group, which more than 400 companies. Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age, at the age of sixteen his first business venture was a magazine called Student. In 1970, he set up a mail-order record business, in 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores. Bransons Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s, as he set up Virgin Atlantic airline, in March 2000, Branson was knighted at Buckingham Palace for services to entrepreneurship. For his work in retail, music and transport, his taste for adventure, in 2002 he was named in the BBCs poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. In January 2016, Forbes listed Bransons estimated net worth at $5.2 billion, Branson was born in Blackheath, London, the eldest of three children of Eve Branson, a former ballet dancer and air hostess, and Edward James Branson, a barrister. His grandfather, the Right Honourable Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson, was a judge of the High Court of Justice, Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School, a prep school in Berkshire, before briefly attending Cliff View House School in Sussex. His third great-grandfather, John Edward Branson, left England for India in 1793 and his father, Harry Wilkins Branson, later joined him in Madras. On the show Finding Your Roots, Branson was shown to have 3. 9% South Asian DNA, Branson attended Stowe School, an independent school in Buckinghamshire until the age of sixteen. Branson has dyslexia and had poor performance, on his last day at school, his headmaster, Robert Drayson. Bransons parents were supportive of his endeavours from an early age, One of her most successful ventures was building and selling wooden tissue boxes and wastepaper bins. Branson started his business from a church where he ran Student magazine. Branson interviewed several prominent personalities of the late 1960s for the magazine including Mick Jagger, Branson advertised popular records in The Student and it was an overnight success. Trading under the name Virgin, he records for considerably less than the High Street outlets. Branson once said, There is no point in starting your own business unless you do it out of a sense of frustration, the name Virgin was suggested by one of Bransons early employees because they were all new at business. At the time, many products were sold under restrictive marketing agreements that limited discounting, Branson eventually started a record shop in Oxford Street in London. In 1971, Branson was questioned in connection with the selling of records in Virgin stores that had been declared export stock, the matter was never brought before a court because Branson agreed to repay any unpaid tax and a fine
8.
Virgin Group
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Virgin Group Ltd. is a British Multinational corporation venture capital Conglomerate founded by entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson and Nik Powell. Virgin Groups date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, the net worth of Virgin Group was estimated at £5-5.5 billion as of November 2014. The brand name Virgin arose when Richard Branson and Nik Powell formed a record shop and they considered themselves virgins in business. Branson has described the V in the logo as an expressive tick, Virgin Group announced the establishment of Virgin Cruises on December 4,2014 with financial backing from Bain Capital. The cruise line would be lead by CEO Tom McAlpin, would have two new ships built and be based in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. Virgin Group has its headquarters at The Battleship Building in the Paddington district of the City of Westminster, previously it was in The School House in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The Virgin Group of companies have a structure that contains elements of a generic conglomerate. Examples of licensing are Virgin Records and Virgin Media, in mid-May 2013, the Virgin Group expressed its intention to seek out opportunities in Australias healthcare industry to consolidate on the Groups Australian fitness centers. It operated for 14 years, until November 2010
9.
Nose art
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Nose art is a decorative painting or design on the fuselage of an aircraft, usually on the front fuselage. The appeal, in part, came from nose art not being officially approved, because of its individual and unofficial nature, it is considered folk art, inseparable from work as well as representative of a group. It can also be compared to sophisticated graffiti, in both cases, the artist is often anonymous, and the art itself is ephemeral. In addition, it relies on materials immediately available, Nose art is largely a military tradition, but civilian airliners operated by the Virgin Group feature Virgin Girls on the nose as part of their livery. In a broad sense, the art of several airlines such as the Eskimo of Alaska Airlines, can be called nose art. There were exceptions, including the VIII Bomber Command, 301st Bomb Group B-17F Whizzer, placing personalized decorations on fighting aircraft began with Italian and German pilots. The first recorded piece of art was a sea monster painted on an Italian flying boat in 1913. This was followed by the practice of painting a mouth beneath the propellers spinner. The cavallino rampante of the Italian ace Francesco Baracca was another well-known image, Nose art of that era was often conceived and produced not by the pilots, but rather the aircraft ground crews. Another World War I examples included the Hat in the Ring of the American 94th Aero Squadron, three decades later, the British pilots spotted it on German planes during World War II. At the height of the war, nose-artists were in high demand in the USAAF and were paid quite well for their services while AAF commanders tolerated nose art in an effort to boost aircrew morale. The U. S. Navy, by contrast, prohibited nose art, the work was done by professional civilian artists as well as talented amateur servicemen. In 1941, for instance, the 39th Pursuit Squadron commissioned a Bell Aircraft artist to design, in November 1941, AVG pilots saw a 112 Squadron Tomahawk in an illustrated weekly and immediately adopted the shark-face motif for their own planes. This work was done by the pilots and ground crew in the field, however, the insignia for the Flying Tigers - a winged Bengal Tiger jumping through a stylized V for Victory symbol - was developed by graphic artists from the Walt Disney Company. Similarly, when in 1943 the 39th Fighter Squadron became the first American squadron in their theatre with 100 kills, tony Starcer was the resident artist for the 91st Bomb Group, one of the initial six groups fielded by the Eighth Air Force. Starcer painted over a hundred pieces of renowned B-17 nose art, a commercial artist named Brinkman, from Chicago, was responsible for the zodiac-themed nose art of the B-24 Liberator-equipped 834th Bomb Squadron, based at RAF Sudbury, England. It was also believed by the crews that the nose art was bringing luck to the planes. Some World War II era nose art was commemorative or intended to honor certain people such as the B-29 Superfortress, in the Korean War, nose art was popular with units operating A-26 and B-29 bombers, C-119 Flying Boxcar transports, as well as USAF fighter-bombers
10.
Mojave, California
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Mojave is a census-designated place in Kern County, California, United States. Mojave is located 50 miles east of Bakersfield, at an elevation of 2762 feet, the town is located in Antelope Valley, at the southwestern region of the Mojave Desert, below and east of Oak Creek Pass and the Tehachapi Mountains. The population was 4,238 at the 2010 census, up from 3,836 at the 2000 census, telephone numbers in Mojave follow the format 824-xxxx and the area includes three postal ZIP Codes. The town of Mojave began in 1876 as a camp on the Southern Pacific Railroad. From 1884 to 1889, the town was the terminus of the 165-mile, twenty-mule team borax wagon route originating at Harmony Borax Works in Death Valley. It later served as headquarters for construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, located near Edwards Air Force Base, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, and Palmdale Regional Airport, Mojave has a rich aerospace history as well. Besides being a public airport, Mojave has three main areas of activity, flight testing, space industry development, and aircraft heavy maintenance. The closet airfield to the city, formerly known as the Mojave Airport, is now part of the Mojave Air, in 1935, Kern County established the Mojave Airport a half mile east of town to serve the gold and silver mining industry in the area. The airport consisted of two dirt runway, one of which was oiled, but it lacked any fueling or servicing facilities, in 1941, the Civil Aeronautics Board began improvements to the airport for national defense purposes that included two 4,500 x 150-ft. Kern County agreed the airport could be taken over by the military in the event of war, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U. S. Marine Corps took over the airport and expanded it into Marine Corps Auxiliary Air Station Mojave. The two existing runways were extended and a third one added, barracks were constructed to house 2,734 male and 376 female military personnel. Civilian employment at the base would peak at 176, the Marines would eventually spend more than $7 million on the base, which totaled 2,312 acres. Many of the Corps World War II aces received their training at Mojave. During World War II, Mojave hosted 29 aircraft squadrons, four Carrier Aircraft Service Detachments, at its peak, the air station had 145 training and other aircraft. Mojave also had a 75 x 156 foot swimming pool that was used to train aviators in emergency water egress, the bases 900-seat auditorium hosted several USO shows that featured Bob Hope, Frances Langford and Marilyn Maxwell. With the end of WWII, MCAAS was dis-established on Feb.7,1946, the Navy used the airport for drone operations for less than a year, closing it on Jan. The base remained closed for four years until the outbreak of the Korean War, Mojave was reactivated as an auxiliary landing field to MCAS El Toro. The airport was recommissioned as a MCAAS on Dec.31,1953, Squadrons used Mojave for ordnance training when El Toro had bad weather
11.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
12.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
13.
Mojave Air and Space Port
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The Mojave Air and Space Port, also known as the Civilian Aerospace Test Centre, is located in Mojave, California, at an elevation of 2,791 feet. It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, in 1935, Kern County established the Mojave Airport a half mile east of town to serve the gold and silver mining industry in the area. The airport consisted of two runways, one of which was oiled, but it lacked any fueling or servicing facilities. In 1941, the Civil Aeronautics Board began improvements to the airport for defense purposes that included two 4,500 x 150-ft. Kern County agreed the airport could be taken over by the military in the event of war, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States Marine Corps took over the airport and expanded it into Marine Corps Auxiliary Air Station Mojave. The two existing runways were extended and a third one added, barracks were constructed to house 2,734 male and 376 female military personnel. Civilian employment at the base would peak at 176, the Marines would eventually spend more than $7 million on the base, which totaled 2,312 acres. Many of the Corps World War II aces received their training at Mojave. During World War II, Mojave hosted 29 aircraft squadrons, four Carrier Aircraft Service Detachments, at its peak, the air station had 145 training and other aircraft. Mojave also had a 75 x 156 foot swimming pool that was used to train aviators in emergency water egress, the bases 900-seat auditorium hosted several USO shows that featured Bob Hope, Frances Langford and Marilyn Maxwell. With the end of World War II, MCAAS was disestablished on February 7,1946, the Navy used the airport for drone operations for less than a year, closing it on January 1,1947. The base remained closed for four years until the outbreak of the Korean War, Mojave was reactivated as an auxiliary landing field to MCAS El Toro. The airport was recommissioned as a MCAAS on December 31,1953, Squadrons used Mojave for ordnance training when El Toro had bad weather. Marine Corps reserve units were deployed to Mojave for two-week periods. MCAAS Mojave personnel peaked at 400 military and 200 civilians during this period, in 1961, after the Marine Corps transferred operations to MCAS El Centro, Kern County obtained title to the airport. In February 1972, the East Kern Airport District was formed to administer the airport, to a great extent EKAD was the brainchild of Kern County rancher and aviator Dan Sabovich, who heavily lobbied the state for the airport districts creation and ran EKAD until 2002. During the 1970s, commuter air carrier Golden West Airlines provided scheduled service operated with de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter turboprops direct to Los Angeles. On November 20,2012, the EKAD Board of Directors voted to change the name of the district to the Mojave Air, officials said that the spaceport name is well known around the world, but EKAD is not
14.
Composite material
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The individual components remain separate and distinct within the finished structure. The new material may be preferred for reasons, common examples include materials which are stronger, lighter. More recently, researchers have begun to actively include sensing, actuation, computation and communication into composites. The most advanced examples perform routinely on spacecraft and aircraft in demanding environments, the earliest man-made composite materials were straw and mud combined to form bricks for building construction. Ancient brick-making was documented by Egyptian tomb paintings, wattle and daub is one of the oldest man-made composite materials, at over 6000 years old. Concrete is also a material, and is used more than any other man-made material in the world. As of 2006, about 7.5 billion cubic metres of concrete are made each year—more than one metre for every person on Earth. 2181–2055 BC and was used for death masks Cob Mud Bricks, concrete was described by Vitruvius, writing around 25 BC in his Ten Books on Architecture, distinguished types of aggregate appropriate for the preparation of lime mortars. For structural mortars, he recommended pozzolana, which were volcanic sands from the beds of Pozzuoli brownish-yellow-gray in colour near Naples. Natural cement-stones, after burning, produced cements used in concretes from post-Roman times into the 20th century, the glass fiber is relatively strong and stiff, whereas the polymer is ductile. Thus the resulting fiberglass is relatively stiff, strong, flexible, concrete is the most common artificial composite material of all and typically consists of loose stones held with a matrix of cement. Concrete is a material, and will not compress or shatter even under quite a large compressive force. However, concrete cannot survive tensile loading, therefore, to give concrete the ability to resist being stretched, steel bars, which can resist high stretching forces, are often added to concrete to form reinforced concrete. Fibre-reinforced polymers or FRPs include carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer or CFRP, and glass-reinforced plastic or GRP, if classified by matrix then there are thermoplastic composites, short fiber thermoplastics, long fibre thermoplastics or long fibre-reinforced thermoplastics. There are numerous thermoset composites, including paper composite panels, many advanced thermoset polymer matrix systems usually incorporate aramid fibre and carbon fibre in an epoxy resin matrix. Shape memory polymer composites are high-performance composites, formulated using fibre or fabric reinforcement and they can also be reheated and reshaped repeatedly without losing their material properties. These composites are ideal for such as lightweight, rigid, deployable structures, rapid manufacturing. Although high strain composites exhibit many similarities to shape memory polymers, Composites can also use metal fibres reinforcing other metals, as in metal matrix composites or ceramic matrix composites, which includes bone, cermet and concrete
15.
Burt Rutan
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Elbert Leander Burt Rutan is a retired American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. With his VariEze design, Rutan is responsible for popularizing the canard configuration, Rutan has five aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. United States, SpaceShipOne, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, Voyager, Quickie, born in 1943 in Estacada, Oregon,30 miles southeast of Portland, and raised in Dinuba, California, Burt Rutan displayed an early interest in aircraft design. By the time he was eight years old he was designing and building model aircraft and his first solo flight piloting an airplane was in an Aeronca Champ in 1959. In 1965 he graduated third in his class from the California Polytechnic State University with a BS degree in aeronautical engineering and he left to become Director of Development of the BD-5 aircraft for Bede Aircraft in Newton, Kansas, a position he held until 1974. In June 1974, Rutan returned to California to establish the Rutan Aircraft Factory, in this business he designed and developed prototypes for several aircraft, mostly intended for amateur builders. His first design, executed while he was still at Bede, was the VariViggen, the canard would become a feature of many Rutan designs, notably the very popular VariEze and Long-EZ. In April 1982, Rutan founded Scaled Composites, LLC, which has one of the worlds pre-eminent aircraft design. Scaled Composites is headquartered in Mojave, California, at the Mojave Air & Space Port and that same year, Beechcraft contracted Rutans Scaled Composites to refine the design and build the prototype Beechcraft Starship. In a 2010 interview, Rutan articulated his motivation for developing suborbital technology projects with SpaceShipOne and he was developing suborbital spaceflight technology because in this we can achieve some breakthroughs, making such flight orders of magnitude safer and orders of magnitude more affordable. Rutan is married to Tonya Rutan and he retired from Scaled Composites in April 2011. That same year, he recognized as a Living Legend of Aviation. In 2012, Rutan spoke on Innovation and the Space Race to the World Affairs Council, flying magazine ranked him at number 18 on their 2013 list,51 Heroes of Aviation. Rutan was also a recipient of the prestigious Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in 2015, in a 45-year career, each of Rutans designs have often been quite dissimilar from their predecessors. His airplanes and spacecraft take on all types of shapes and sizes. In all, Rutan has come up with 367 individual concepts — of which 45 have flown, VariViggen and VariViggen SP In 1968, he began building his first design, the VariViggen, which first flew in April 1972. It had the wing, forward canard, and pusher configuration design elements which became his trademarks. In lieu of wind tunnel testing, Rutan developed aerodynamic parameters for the VariViggen using a model rigged atop his station wagon, the VariViggen was the Rutan model 27
16.
Fatigue (material)
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In materials science, fatigue is the weakening of a material caused by repeatedly applied loads. It is the progressive and localized damage that occurs when a material is subjected to cyclic loading. The nominal maximum stress values that cause such damage may be less than the strength of the material typically quoted as the ultimate tensile stress limit. Fatigue occurs when a material is subjected to repeated loading and unloading, if the loads are above a certain threshold, microscopic cracks will begin to form at the stress concentrators such as the surface, persistent slip bands, and grain interfaces. Eventually a crack will reach a size, the crack will propagate suddenly. The shape of the structure will affect the fatigue life. Round holes and smooth transitions or fillets will therefore increase the strength of the structure. ASTM defines fatigue life, Nf, as the number of cycles of a specified character that a specimen sustains before failure of a specified nature occurs. Engineers have used any of three methods to determine the life of a material, the stress-life method, the strain-life method. One method to predict fatigue life of materials is the Uniform Material Law, UML was developed for fatigue life prediction of aluminium and titanium alloys by the end of 20th century and extended to high-strength steels, and cast iron. Macroscopic and microscopic discontinuities as well as component design features which cause stress concentrations are common locations at which the process begins. Fatigue is a process that has a degree of randomness, often showing considerable scatter even in seemingly identical sample in well controlled environments, Fatigue is usually associated with tensile stresses but fatigue cracks have been reported due to compressive loads. The greater the applied stress range, the shorter the life, Fatigue life scatter tends to increase for longer fatigue lives. Materials do not recover when rested, some materials exhibit a theoretical fatigue limit below which continued loading does not lead to fatigue failure. High cycle fatigue strength can be described by stress-based parameters, a load-controlled servo-hydraulic test rig is commonly used in these tests, with frequencies of around 20–50 Hz. Other sorts of machines—like resonant magnetic machines—can also be used, to achieve frequencies up to 250 Hz, low cycle fatigue is associated with localized plastic behavior in metals, thus, a strain-based parameter should be used for fatigue life prediction in metals. Testing is conducted with constant strain amplitudes typically at 0. 01–5 Hz,1837, Wilhelm Albert publishes the first article on fatigue. He devised a test machine for conveyor chains used in the Clausthal mines,1839, Jean-Victor Poncelet describes metals as being tired in his lectures at the military school at Metz
17.
Wayback Machine
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The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It. Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing. The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
18.
Space.com
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Space. com is a space and astronomy news website. Its stories are syndicated to other media outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo. Space. com was founded by former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs and Rich Zahradnik, at that time, Dobbs owned a sizeable share of the company, and, in an unexpected move, left CNN later that year to become Space. coms chief executive officer. The move came as a surprise to many and was the source of media speculation. The company struggled to turn a profit in its days. Co-founder Rich Zahradnik had left his position as president less than two months after the start of the company, former astronaut Sally Ride took his place, as it expanded, it acquired other web sites such as Starport. com and Explorezone. com. It also acquired Sienna Software and Space News, despite some growth, Space. com was never able to achieve what Dobbs had hoped for and in 2001, he returned to CNN. He remains on its board and still owns a minority stake, Space. com has enjoyed the participation of several key space-related public figures, Neil Armstrong, Alexei Leonov, Eugene A. Cernan, and Thomas Stafford. In 2003, for its coverage of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, in May 2004, Space. coms parent company changed its name from Space. com to Imaginova and in 2009 sold Space. com and other properties to Purch, an online publishing company. Media Life Magazine 2 January 2001 Imaginova. com About Us Space. com ouramazingplanet. com
19.
George T. Whitesides
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George Thomas Whitesides is CEO of Virgin Galactic, a firm developing commercial space vehicles. From 2004 to 2008, Whitesides served as the Executive Director of the National Space Society and he is the co-creator of Yuris Night. He has served as Senior Advisor to Virgin Galactic, Richard Bransons space tourism company, Whitesides was the Chairman of the Reusable Launch Vehicle Working Group of COMSTAC, the advisory committee for the FAAs Commercial Space Transportation Division. He was a member of Astronomers Without Borders and the Space Generation Foundation. He has served as a coach for Zero Gravity Corporations parabolic flight service, George is married to Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, and they plan to be the first couple to honeymoon in space. His father is George M. Whitesides, a professor of chemistry at Harvard University and his brother is the lead singer of The Joggers, a Portland, Oregon-based band. George attended Princeton University, graduating from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and he served for four years on Princetons Board of Trustees upon graduation. He has an MPhil in Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing from Kings College, Cambridge and he was Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia
20.
Will Whitehorn
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Will Whitehorn was the President of Virgin Galactic until December 2010, a company which plans to offer space tourism flights to the paying public. Whitehorn was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe and he attended Edinburgh Academy and Aberdeen University. Whitehorns early career was as a crewman on North Sea helicopters, in 1987, Whitehorn joined the Virgin Group after being talent spotted by Sir Richard Branson. He had suggested a number of ideas to Virgin the previous year, in 1986 and he rose to become the head of Virgins public affairs department. In that role, where he was effectively the official spokesperson for the company and he was, until recently, president of Virgins space program Virgin Galactic but had to leave due to the relocation of the testing area. Whitehorn became Chairman of the Transport Systems Catapult project in March 2013, archived from the original on 8 February 2008. Virgin Galactic and the future of commercial spaceflight
21.
Steve Isakowitz
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Steve Isakowitz is the President and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation assuming the position on October 1,2016. The Aerospace Corporation is an architect for the nation’s national security and civil space programs with more than 3,600 employees. He is the co-author of the AIAA International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems, Isakowitz was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a devoted Cleveland Browns fan and he earned his bachelors and masters degrees in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Isakowitz became President and CEO of Aerospace Corp. in 2016, leaving the post of President at Virgin Galactic, prior to Aerospace Corp, Isakowitz was President of Virgin Galactic from 2013 to 2016. He served as Chief Technology Officer of Virgin Galactic from 2011 to 2013, at Virgin Galactic, his responsibilities included the development of privately funded launch systems, human spaceflight vehicles, advanced technologies, and other new space applications. In 2007, he was appointed as the United States Department of Energy Chief Financial Officer by President George W. Bush where he was confirmed to his post unanimously by the U. S. Senate and he was selected to continue in his position under President Barack Obama. Isakowitz has received awards and citations, among them NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal
22.
David Mackay (pilot)
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David William Donald Mackay AFC is the Chief Pilot of Virgin Galactic, and a former test pilot. David Mackay was born in Scotland, and lived in Helmsdale, davids father was a police officer. He would see aircraft flying from RAF Lossiemouth, david studied Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Glasgow. He first piloted an aircraft in 1977 and he joined the RAF in 1979. He flew the Harrier GR3 in Germany and the Falklands, in 1986 he was selected for test pilot training. In 1988 he graduated from the French test pilots school, École du personnel navigant dessais et de réception - EPNER and he became Commanding Officer of the RAFs Fast Jet Test Flight in 1992 at RAF Boscombe Down. The fastest speed he reached was Mach 1.4 in a French Mirage and he conducted trials on the Harrier GR7, the Sea Harrier FA.2, and the Tucano. He flew with the Fixed Wing Test Squadron and he was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1992. He joined Virgin Atlantic in 1995, flying Boeing 747s as a Captain from 1999 and he finished his flying career with over 11,000 hours flying. He joined Virgin Galactic in 2009, and is now the Chief Pilot, the suborbital spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, will reach a height of 360,000 feet. On its journey into space, the SS2 spacecraft will reach Mach 3.5, the first SS2 spacecraft to fly, of which he was one of the pilots, was the VSS Enterprise, the second SS2 spacecraft is called VSS Unity. He has lived in Salisbury, Wiltshire, but has now moved to California and he is married to Sue, and they have a son and daughter. BBC July 2011 Telegraph August 2011 Telegraph October 2010 West FM96.7 in July 20122009 interview with Flightglobal. com Interview in July 2012 with Flightglobal on YouTube
23.
Frederick W. Sturckow
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Frederick Wilford Rick Sturckow is an Engineer, retired United States Marine Corps officer, former NASA astronaut, and commercial spacecraft pilot. Sturckow is a veteran of four Space Shuttle missions and he flew on STS-88 and STS-105 as a pilot and STS-117 and STS-128 as a commander. All four missions docked with the International Space Station, making Sturckow one of two people to visit the four times. Sturckow later was assigned to the Johnson Space Center as a CAPCOM and he left NASA in 2013 to become a pilot for Virgin Galactic. Sturckow was born La Mesa, California, but considers Lakeside, California and he is married to the former Michele A. He enjoys flying and physical training and his father, Karl H. Sturckow, resides in Lakeside and his mother, Janette R. Sturckow, resides in La Mesa. He was a member of the Marine Corps Association and a member of Society of Experimental Test Pilots. Sturckow has the nickname CJ, which stands for Caustic Junior and it was given to him when he was a young Marine, because he resembled a squadron commander who was appropriately called “Caustic”. Sturckow graduated from Grossmont High School, La Mesa, California and he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 1984, and a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2000. Sturckow was commissioned into the U. S. Marine Corps in December 1984, an honor graduate of The Basic School, he earned his aviator wings in April 1987. Following initial F/A-18 training at VFA-125, he reported to VMFA-333, MCAS Beaufort, while assigned to VMFA-333 he made an overseas deployment to Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines and was then selected to attend the Navy Fighter Weapons School in March 1990. In August 1990, he deployed to Sheik Isa Air Base, Sturckow flew a total of forty-one combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. In January 1992 he attended the U. S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, in 1993 he reported to the Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division, NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, for duty as the F/A-18 E/F Project Pilot. Sturckow also flew a variety of projects and classified programs as an F/A-18 test pilot. Sturckow retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel, in September,2009 and he has logged over 6,500 flight hours in more than 60 different aircraft. Selected by NASA in December 1994, Sturckow reported to the Johnson Space Center in March 1995 and he completed a year of training and evaluation and was assigned to work technical issues for the Vehicle Systems and Operations Branch of the Astronaut Office. He served as pilot on STS-88 in 1998, and on STS-105 in 2001, Sturckow was the commander of the STS-117 mission in 2007, and of the STS-128 mission launched on August 28,2009. Sturckow was also the launch CAPCOM for STS-130 in February 2010, on January 13,2011, NASA named Sturckow as the backup commander for STS-134
24.
RocketMotorTwo
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RocketMotorTwo is a family of hybrid rocket engines that are being developed for the Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane. The first-generation engine was developed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, from the late 2000s to May 2014 and it was first ignited in flight during a SpaceShipTwo test launch in April 2013. This engine design was flown in only two additional flight tests during 2013 and January 2014. The second-generation RocketMotorTwo engine is a variant of the earlier SNC basic design, the second-generation engine is now made in-house by Virgin Galactic rather than by SNC. The design makes use of lessons learned during the development of the SpaceShipOne hybrid rocket motor, as of March 2013, Sierra Nevada had performed over 300 hybrid rocket test firings. The company also developed the engine for the first private spacecraft to reach space, SpaceShipOne. Sierra Nevada is also developing a hybrid engine, the Dream Chaser rocket engine. On 26 July 2007, during the early vehicle subsystem testing phase, the test included filling the oxidizer tank with 4,500 kg of nitrous oxide, followed by a 15-second cold flow injector test. The test did not ignite the engine and no solid fuel was involved. Three Scaled employees were killed and three injured, two critically and one seriously, by flying shrapnel when the nitrous oxide oxidizer spontaneously ignited and exploded, Scaled Composites performed a series of subscale rocket hot-firings between June 2005 and April 2009, before choosing a full-scale rocket motor design. News reports in early 2009 reported that the hot fire tests had been completed, by December 2012,21 full-scale hot-fire ground tests had been carried out on RocketMotorTwo. On 20 June 2012, the first hot-fire test under the control of SpaceShipTwos proprietary Rocket Motor Controller was successfully conducted, SpaceShipTwo conducted its first gliding test flight with the engine fully installed in December 2012. Additional ground rocket tests continued into March 2013 as the company prepared for powered test flights, VSS Enterprise conducted its first powered flight on 29 April 2013, marking the first flight test of RocketMotorTwo. The RM2 control system opened the oxidizer valve and fired the igniters inside the fuel case. The burn was completed at an altitude of 55,000 feet, by which point Enterprise was supersonic, SNC stated after the test that The rocket motor ignition went as planned, with the expected burn duration, good engine performance. The engineering and development work of the engine was done in-house. The plastic fuel was projected to have better performance and was expected to allow SpaceShipTwo to make flights to a higher altitude. On 31 October 2014, the new polyamide engine fuel formulation was used in flight for the first time in the powered test flight no.4 of SpaceShipTwo, at 10, 12am PDT, VSS Enterprise suffered a malfunction, and subsequently broke up in mid-flight
25.
LauncherOne
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LauncherOne is an orbital launch vehicle under development by Virgin Orbit in the 2010s. It is an air launch to orbit rocket, designed to launch payloads of 200 kilograms into Sun-synchronous orbit. Launches are projected to begin in Q42016, several commercial customers had contracted for launches by 2012, including GeoOptics, Skybox Imaging, Spaceflight Services, and Planetary Resources. Both Surrey Satellite Technology and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are developing satellite buses optimized to the design of LauncherOne, Virgin Galactic began working on the LauncherOne concept in 2007, and the technical specifications were first described in some detail in late 2009. The LauncherOne configuration was proposed to be an expendable, two-stage and this would make it a similar configuration to that used by Orbital Sciences Pegasus, or a smaller version of the StratoLaunch air-launched rocket system. In October 2012, Virgin announced that LauncherOne would be designed so that it could place 200 kg in Sun-synchronous orbit, in 2015, Virgin Galactic established a 150, 000-square-foot research, development, and manufacturing center for LauncherOne at the Long Beach Airport. The company reported in March 2015 that they were on schedule to begin test flights of LauncherOne with its Newton 3 engine by the end of 2016. On 25 June 2015, the signed a contract with OneWeb Ltd. for 39 satellite launches for its satellite constellation with an option for an additional 100 launches. In December 2015, Virgin announced a change to the plane for LauncherOne to carry the heavier payload. The 747 will in turn allow a larger LauncherOne to carry the heavier payloads, the modification work on the companys 747 is expected to be completed in 2016, to be followed by orbital test launches of the rocket in 2017. It was further announced in December that the revised LauncherOne would utilize the larger NewtonTnree rocket engine on the booster stage, on 2 March 2017 Virgin Galactic announced that its 200-member LauncherOne team was being spun off into a new company called Virgin Orbit. Originally, in 2012, the stage was to be powered by NewtonOne. It was originally intended that the first stage will be powered by a design of the same basic technology as NewtonOne, called NewtonTwo. Both engines had been designed by early 2014, and first articles had been built, NewtonOne was tested up to a full-duration burn of five minutes. NewtonTwo made several short-duration firings by early 2014, ultimately, however, neither NewtonOne nor NewtonTwo would be used on LauncherOne. NewtonThree is a 260–335-kilonewton -thrust engine, and began hot-fire testing by March 2015, June 2015 reports suggested that a NewtonThree would power the first stage of LauncherOne. LauncherOne is a two-stage air-launched vehicle using two Virgin-designed and built Newton RP-1/LOX liquid rocket engines
26.
NewtonOne
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LauncherOne is an orbital launch vehicle under development by Virgin Orbit in the 2010s. It is an air launch to orbit rocket, designed to launch payloads of 200 kilograms into Sun-synchronous orbit. Launches are projected to begin in Q42016, several commercial customers had contracted for launches by 2012, including GeoOptics, Skybox Imaging, Spaceflight Services, and Planetary Resources. Both Surrey Satellite Technology and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are developing satellite buses optimized to the design of LauncherOne, Virgin Galactic began working on the LauncherOne concept in 2007, and the technical specifications were first described in some detail in late 2009. The LauncherOne configuration was proposed to be an expendable, two-stage and this would make it a similar configuration to that used by Orbital Sciences Pegasus, or a smaller version of the StratoLaunch air-launched rocket system. In October 2012, Virgin announced that LauncherOne would be designed so that it could place 200 kg in Sun-synchronous orbit, in 2015, Virgin Galactic established a 150, 000-square-foot research, development, and manufacturing center for LauncherOne at the Long Beach Airport. The company reported in March 2015 that they were on schedule to begin test flights of LauncherOne with its Newton 3 engine by the end of 2016. On 25 June 2015, the signed a contract with OneWeb Ltd. for 39 satellite launches for its satellite constellation with an option for an additional 100 launches. In December 2015, Virgin announced a change to the plane for LauncherOne to carry the heavier payload. The 747 will in turn allow a larger LauncherOne to carry the heavier payloads, the modification work on the companys 747 is expected to be completed in 2016, to be followed by orbital test launches of the rocket in 2017. It was further announced in December that the revised LauncherOne would utilize the larger NewtonTnree rocket engine on the booster stage, on 2 March 2017 Virgin Galactic announced that its 200-member LauncherOne team was being spun off into a new company called Virgin Orbit. Originally, in 2012, the stage was to be powered by NewtonOne. It was originally intended that the first stage will be powered by a design of the same basic technology as NewtonOne, called NewtonTwo. Both engines had been designed by early 2014, and first articles had been built, NewtonOne was tested up to a full-duration burn of five minutes. NewtonTwo made several short-duration firings by early 2014, ultimately, however, neither NewtonOne nor NewtonTwo would be used on LauncherOne. NewtonThree is a 260–335-kilonewton -thrust engine, and began hot-fire testing by March 2015, June 2015 reports suggested that a NewtonThree would power the first stage of LauncherOne. LauncherOne is a two-stage air-launched vehicle using two Virgin-designed and built Newton RP-1/LOX liquid rocket engines
27.
NewtonTwo
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LauncherOne is an orbital launch vehicle under development by Virgin Orbit in the 2010s. It is an air launch to orbit rocket, designed to launch payloads of 200 kilograms into Sun-synchronous orbit. Launches are projected to begin in Q42016, several commercial customers had contracted for launches by 2012, including GeoOptics, Skybox Imaging, Spaceflight Services, and Planetary Resources. Both Surrey Satellite Technology and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are developing satellite buses optimized to the design of LauncherOne, Virgin Galactic began working on the LauncherOne concept in 2007, and the technical specifications were first described in some detail in late 2009. The LauncherOne configuration was proposed to be an expendable, two-stage and this would make it a similar configuration to that used by Orbital Sciences Pegasus, or a smaller version of the StratoLaunch air-launched rocket system. In October 2012, Virgin announced that LauncherOne would be designed so that it could place 200 kg in Sun-synchronous orbit, in 2015, Virgin Galactic established a 150, 000-square-foot research, development, and manufacturing center for LauncherOne at the Long Beach Airport. The company reported in March 2015 that they were on schedule to begin test flights of LauncherOne with its Newton 3 engine by the end of 2016. On 25 June 2015, the signed a contract with OneWeb Ltd. for 39 satellite launches for its satellite constellation with an option for an additional 100 launches. In December 2015, Virgin announced a change to the plane for LauncherOne to carry the heavier payload. The 747 will in turn allow a larger LauncherOne to carry the heavier payloads, the modification work on the companys 747 is expected to be completed in 2016, to be followed by orbital test launches of the rocket in 2017. It was further announced in December that the revised LauncherOne would utilize the larger NewtonTnree rocket engine on the booster stage, on 2 March 2017 Virgin Galactic announced that its 200-member LauncherOne team was being spun off into a new company called Virgin Orbit. Originally, in 2012, the stage was to be powered by NewtonOne. It was originally intended that the first stage will be powered by a design of the same basic technology as NewtonOne, called NewtonTwo. Both engines had been designed by early 2014, and first articles had been built, NewtonOne was tested up to a full-duration burn of five minutes. NewtonTwo made several short-duration firings by early 2014, ultimately, however, neither NewtonOne nor NewtonTwo would be used on LauncherOne. NewtonThree is a 260–335-kilonewton -thrust engine, and began hot-fire testing by March 2015, June 2015 reports suggested that a NewtonThree would power the first stage of LauncherOne. LauncherOne is a two-stage air-launched vehicle using two Virgin-designed and built Newton RP-1/LOX liquid rocket engines
28.
Boeing 747
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The Boeing 747 is an American wide-body commercial jet airliner and cargo aircraft, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet. Its distinctive hump upper deck along the part of the aircraft makes it among the worlds most recognizable aircraft. First flown commercially in 1970, the 747 held the passenger capacity record for 37 years, as of January 2017, the 747 has been involved in 60 hull losses, resulting in 3722 fatalities. The four-engine 747 uses a configuration for part of its length. It is available in passenger, freighter and other versions, the 747 was expected to become obsolete after 400 were sold, but it exceeded critics expectations with production passing the 1,000 mark in 1993. By February 2017,1,528 aircraft had been built, the 747-400, the most common passenger version in service, has a high-subsonic cruise speed of Mach 0. 85–0.855 with an intercontinental range of 7,260 nautical miles. The newest version of the aircraft, the 747-8, is in production, deliveries of the 747-8F freighter version began in October 2011, deliveries of the 747-8I passenger version began in May 2012. In 1963, the United States Air Force started a series of projects on a very large strategic transport aircraft. The payload bay had to be 17 feet wide by 13.5 feet high and 100 feet long with access doors at the front. Featuring only four engines, the design required new engine designs with greatly increased power and better fuel economy. After a downselect, Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed were given study contracts for the airframe, along with General Electric. All three of the airframe proposals shared a number of features, as the CX-HLS needed to be able to be loaded from the front, a door had to be included where the cockpit usually was. In 1965 Lockheeds aircraft design and General Electrics engine design were selected for the new C-5 Galaxy transport, the nose door and raised cockpit concepts would be carried over to the design of the 747. The 747 was conceived while air travel was increasing in the 1960s, the era of commercial jet transportation, led by the enormous popularity of the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, had revolutionized long-distance travel. In 1965, Joe Sutter was transferred from Boeings 737 development team to manage the design studies for a new airliner, Sutter initiated a design study with Pan Am and other airlines, to better understand their requirements. At the time, it was thought that the 747 would eventually be superseded by supersonic transport aircraft. Boeing responded by designing the 747 so that it could be adapted easily to carry freight, in the freighter role, the clear need was to support the containerized shipping methodologies that were being widely introduced at about the same time. Standard containers are 8 ft square at the front and available in 20 and 40 ft lengths and this meant that it would be possible to support a 2-wide 2-high stack of containers two or three ranks deep with a fuselage size similar to the earlier CX-HLS project
29.
Scaled Composites Tier Two
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The Scaled Composites SpaceShipThree was a mid-2000s proposed spaceplane to be developed by Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, ostensibly to follow SpaceShipTwo. The mission originally proposed for SpaceShipThree in 2005 was for orbital spaceflight, by 2008, Scaled Composites had reduced those plans and articulated a conceptual design that would be a point-to-point vehicle traveling outside the atmosphere. Scaled was sold to Northrop Grumman in 2007, and references to further work on a conceptual Scaled SS3 ended at some point afterwards from Scaled, as of 2016, Richard Branson is still planning to have a point-to-point sub-orbital spaceliner follow-up to SpaceShipTwo. Space bomber Stratolaunch Systems Supersonic transport Space tourism companies aiming for orbit
30.
SpaceShipThree
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The Scaled Composites SpaceShipThree was a mid-2000s proposed spaceplane to be developed by Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, ostensibly to follow SpaceShipTwo. The mission originally proposed for SpaceShipThree in 2005 was for orbital spaceflight, by 2008, Scaled Composites had reduced those plans and articulated a conceptual design that would be a point-to-point vehicle traveling outside the atmosphere. Scaled was sold to Northrop Grumman in 2007, and references to further work on a conceptual Scaled SS3 ended at some point afterwards from Scaled, as of 2016, Richard Branson is still planning to have a point-to-point sub-orbital spaceliner follow-up to SpaceShipTwo. Space bomber Stratolaunch Systems Supersonic transport Space tourism companies aiming for orbit
31.
VSS Enterprise
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VSS Enterprise was the first SpaceShipTwo 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 and 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 Enterprises name was an acknowledgement of the USS Enterprise from the Star Trek television series, the spaceplane also shared its name with NASAs prototype space shuttle, 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 couldnt have gone more smoothly, Enterprise was destroyed during a powered test flight on 31 October 2014, killing one pilot and seriously injuring another. Initial projections by Virgin Galactic in 2008 called for test flights to begin in late 2009 and this schedule was not achieved, with captive carry and glide flight tests beginning in 2010, and the first test flight under rocket power was not until 2013. In October 2009, Virgin Galactic CEO Will Whitehorn outlined the flight test program for SpaceShipTwo, a second test flight was made on 16 May 2010, reaching SS2s launch altitude and lasting nearly five hours, in order to facilitate cold soak testing of SS2s avionics and pressurization system. Thereafter, a simulated spaceship descent/glide mission was made from altitude, between these two flights, the SpaceShipTwo airframe was modified by the addition of two interior fins, with one fin being added to the inside of each of the crafts twin vertical stabilizers. On 15 July 2010, VSS Enterprise made its first crewed flight, the craft remained attached to VMS Eve as planned, and underwent a series of combined vehicle systems tests. The flight lasted a total of 6 hours and 21 minutes, a second, similar crewed flight of VSS Enterprise and VMS Eve was carried out on 30 September 2010, lasting approximately 5 hours. Among the objectives of these flights was the improvement of proficiency. On 10 October 2010, VSS Enterprise made its first manned gliding test flight and it was released from VMS Eve at 13700 m feet and glided to a safe landing at the Mojave Air and Spaceport. A second gliding test flight took place on 28 October 2010, as of December 2010, Scaled reported that the flight test program is exceeding expectations. The fourth test flight took place on 13 January 2011, while the fifth and sixth glide flights occurred on 22 and 27 April 2011, respectively. Following this, the feathered reentry configuration was tested in flight on 4 May 2011, on 9 June 2011, SS2 failed to separate from White Knight Two during its 11th planned glide flight due to a technical problem. Testing resumed with five successful flights in June 2011. In July 2011, after 15 successful glide flights, flight testing of SS2 was halted for two months while planned revisions to the spaceplane were made and this test was followed by another hiatus, during which some of the spacecrafts engine components were installed. In June 2012, Scaled Composites received an FAA permit to conduct rocket-powered supersonic test flights, SpaceShipTwo flight tests resumed in June 2012
32.
VSS Unity
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VSS Unity, previously referred to as VSS Voyager, is a SpaceShipTwo-class suborbital rocket-powered manned spaceplane. It is the second SpaceShipTwo to be built, and will be used as part of the Virgin Galactic Fleet, the spacecraft was rolled out on 19 February 2016, and completed ground-based system integration testing in September 2016, prior to its first flight on 8 September 2016. VSS Unity, the second SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane for Virgin Galactic, is the first SpaceShipTwo built by The Spaceship Company, the ships name was announced on 19 February 2016. Prior to the announcement, the craft was referred to as SpaceShipTwo. There was speculation in 2004 that Serial Number Two would be named VSS Voyager, the name Unity was chosen by British physicist Stephen Hawking. Hawkings eye is used as the model for the eye logo on the side of Unity. The manufacture of Unity began in 2012, the spacecrafts registration, N202VG, was filed in September 2014. As of early November 2014, the build of Unity was about 90 percent structurally complete, on 21 May 2015, Unity reached the milestone of bearing the weight of the airframe on its own wheels. The spaceship was unveiled at an event on 19 February 2016, as Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson had projected in November 2015, ground. VSS Unity is the second SpaceShipTwo to be completed, the first, after rollout and unveiling, a phase of testing called Integrated Vehicle Ground Testing began on VSS Unity in February 2016. VSS Unity will undergo a test regimen similar to VSS Enterprise, the test flights are expected to be fewer, as Enterprise has already tested the designs responses under numerous conditions. For each flight test, the White Knight Two aircraft carries Unity to altitude, Testing began with captive carry flights, in which Unity was not released from its carrier aircraft. Testing then progressed to free-flight glide testing, and will continue with powered test flights and it is possible that only 2-3 flights under each regime previously tested will be performed, instead of the 5 or 10 that Enterprise performed. On 8 September 2016, Virgin Galactic commenced flight testing of Unity with a captive-carry flight, on 1 November 2016, Virgin Galactic conducted another captive-carry flight of Unity but cancelled the glide portion of the flight because of wind speed. On 3 November and 30 November, additional captive-carry flights took place, on 3 December 2016, Unity completed its first glide flight. It completed subsequent glide tests later in December,2016, rutan Voyager Space tourism Media related to SpaceShipTwo at Wikimedia Commons
33.
Spaceport America
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It lies 89 miles north of El Paso,45 miles north of Las Cruces, and 20 miles southeast of Truth or Consequences. The site is built to both vertical and horizontal launch aerospace vehicles, as well as an array of non-aerospace events. Spaceport America is owned and operated by the State of New Mexico, via a state agency, tenants of the spaceport include Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, while UP Aerospace and Armadillo Aerospace have all operated from the spaceport. Located in in southern New Mexico, Spaceport America is the result of two decades of efforts to increase the commercial accessibility of spaceflight. The spaceports initial concept was proposed by Stanford University engineering lecturer and he wrote the initial business and strategic plans, secured US$1. In 1992, the Southwest Space Task Force was formed to advance the New Mexico space industrys commercial infrastructure, after several years of study, they focused on a 27-square-mile plot of state-owned land,45 miles north of Las Cruces, as a location for the spaceport. In 2003, the task force petitioned new Economic Development Cabinet Secretary Rick Homans who then picked up the torch, Homans presented the idea to state Governor Richardson and negotiated with the X Prize Foundation to locate the X Prize Cup in New Mexico. The spaceport was branded Spaceport America, Construction of the first temporary launch facility at the spaceport site began on 4 April 2006. Early operations of the spaceport utilized this temporary infrastructure, some of it borrowed from neighboring White Sands Missile Range, in early 2007, red tape was still in the process of being cleared and the spaceport itself was still little more than a 100-foot by 25-foot concrete slab. That slab would eventually be part of the facility for the spaceports first tenant UP Aerospace. On April 3, voters in neighboring Doña Ana County approved a tax that would go into effect upon final approval from the Spaceport America host county Sierra County. The first images of the then planned spaceports Hangar Terminal Facility were released in early September 2007, in April 2008, the voters in Sierra County approved the plan, releasing over US$40 million in funding for the spaceport. Voters in the county of Otero, however, rejected the spaceport tax during November general elections. In spite of this, Spaceport America had what it needed to move forward, in December, Gerald Martin Construction Management, from Albuquerque, was chosen to oversee construction. As of April 2009, the first of 13 bid packages for the spaceport was expected to be released later that month. The goal is to have completed in 17 months, by December 2010, the ground-breaking ceremony took place 19 June 2009 and paid tours of the facilities began in December of the same year. By February 2010, the in mid-construction budgetary estimate for completion was $198 million, on October 22, a ceremonial flypass of Spaceport America was made by SpaceShipTwo to celebrate the completion of the runway. By October 2010, with the complete and the terminal building under active construction
34.
Spaceport Sweden
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Located in Kiruna, in Swedish Lapland, Spaceport Sweden is being developed at Kiruna Airport which will be a hybrid for space and air travel as well as learning adventures, education and research. Sweden’s Minister for Enterprise and Communication, Maud Olofsson inaugurated the project as an initiative in 2007. The current CEO of the spaceport is Karin Nilsdotter, the official inauguration of the company was made on 26 January 2007 and the company started off by signing an agreement with Virgin Galactic. On 3 April 2008, a conference was held in Kiruna, and a number of astronauts in training were presented to the press. In February 2012, Spaceport Sweden hoped to have flights of SpaceShipTwo by 2015. Further, in collaboration with QinetiQ, a 2-day spaceflight preparation program is provided using a centrifuge and hypobaric chamber to simulate. In 2015 Spaceport Sweden won a Kiruna Lapland Award for the efforts to establish commercial spaceflight in Kiruna, list of Spaceports Virgin Galactic Space tourism Suborbital spaceflight Official website
35.
VSS Enterprise crash
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The co-pilot, Michael Alsbury, was killed and the pilot, Peter Siebold, was seriously injured. The vehicle in the accident, VSS Enterprise, registration N339SS, was the sole Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo test vehicle and it was the first of the five SpaceShipTwo craft planned by Virgin Galactic. There were several issues during the ship engines development in 2012 and 2013. A rocket-powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo took place on April 29,2013, the brief flight began at an altitude of 47,000 feet, and reached a maximum altitude of 55,000 feet and a speed of Mach 1.2. In order to receive a Federal Aviation Administration license to carry passengers, a second SS2 vehicle, VSS Unity, was rolled out in February 2016. On October 31,2014, VSS Enterprise crashed in the Mojave Desert near Cantil, California, the aircraft was performing a test flight, powered flight 4, from the Mojave Air and Space Port in which it was dropped from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft, VMS Eve. The flight was the aircrafts 55th, and its 35th free flight, VSS Enterprise was piloted by Peter Siebold and Michael Alsbury. According to the NTSB briefing, SpaceShipTwo dropped from the mother ship, about eleven seconds later, the space plane violently broke apart, substantially giving the appearance of an explosion, and creating a 35-mile long debris field. Witnesses reported seeing a parachute before the aircraft crashed, the co-pilot, Michael Alsbury, was killed in the crash, whereas the pilot, Peter Siebold, survived with serious injuries and was transported to Antelope Valley Hospital in nearby Lancaster. The carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, landed safely, a preliminary investigation and cockpit video subsequently indicated that the feathering system, the ships air-braking descent device, deployed too early. Two seconds later, while still under rocket propulsion, the craft disintegrated, the feathering system requires two levers to operate. Regarding the possibility of error being the proximate cause of the crash, acting NTSB chairman Christopher Hart said. We are looking at all of these issues to determine what was the cause of this mishap … We are looking at a number of possibilities. The incident resulted in the first fatality on a spacecraft in flight since the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. The survival of pilot Peter Siebold also marks the first time in history that anyone has survived the destruction of a spacecraft during a flight when others on board have died. Investigators are trying to determine how Siebold managed to get out of the plane and parachute to the ground from an altitude of roughly 50,000 feet. On November 7, Siebold told investigators that the aircraft broke up around him and he was still strapped into his seat. He released the straps and his parachute later deployed automatically, Siebold was not wearing a pressure suit during the flight
36.
The Spaceship Company
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TSC was formed to own the technology created by Scaled for Virgin Galactics Virgin SpaceShip program. This includes developments on the care-free reentry system and cantilevered-hybrid rocket motor, licensed from Paul Allen, the company is manufacturing Virgin Galactics spacecraft and will sell spacecraft to other buyers. The suborbital launch system offered will include the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and the White Knight Two carrier aircraft, Virgin Galactic was announced to be the launch customer for the SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo vehicles. Virgin placed an order for five SpaceShipTwos and two WhiteKnightTwos, with exclusive use of the systems for the initial 18 months of commercial passenger operations. By late 2010, the company had announced plans to build three WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and five SpaceShipTwo rocket planes, Virgin Galactic acquired 100% ownership of TSC in 2012, by acquiring the 30% stake still owned by Scaled Composites, which itself had been acquired by Northrup Grumman. The company had grown to 70 persons by July 2011 and to 145 by June 2013, in June 2013, Doug Shane joined TSC to become Executive VP and General Manager, ending a 31-year career with Scaled Composites, including five as President. In July 2014, Shane was named President of the company, in 2016, it was announced that TSC, Virgin Galactic, and the Virgin Group, would be collaborating with Boom Technology to develop a supersonic trans-oceanic passenger jetliner. By July 2014, TSC was halfway complete with the build of the second SpaceShipTwo—VSS Unity—and is 65 percent complete as of early November 2014, Virgin Galactic expects Voyager to be complete in 2016. As of mid-2014, a second WhiteKnightTwo was also under construction, TSC is collaborating with Boom Technology to create a new supersonic transport. The initial 1/3-size prototype would be the XB-1 Baby Boom Supersonic Demonstrator, in November 2010, TSC broke ground on a new 68, 000-square-foot aircraft assembly plant at Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. The manufacturing facility was expected to employ up to 170 people when production is in full swing, in September,2011, TSC completed construction of the new plant, on schedule, for US$8,000,000. The production of the new spacecraft—initially three WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and five of the smaller SpaceShipTwo rocket planes—was also planned to commence before the end of that month, General Branson and Rutan Form The Spaceship Company To Jointly Manufacture and Market Spaceships for the new Sub-Orbital Personal Spaceflight Industry. The Spaceship Company Virgin Galactic video on TSC, as of the opening of the second hangar facility, September,2011
37.
Northrop Grumman
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Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American global aerospace and defense technology company formed by Northrops 1994 purchase of Grumman. The company was named as the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world in 2015, Northrop Grumman employs over 68,000 people worldwide. It reported revenues of $23.526 billion in 2015, Northrop Grumman ranks No.124 on the 2015 Fortune 500 list of Americas largest corporations and ranks in the top ten military-friendly employers. It is headquartered in West Falls Church, Virginia, Northrop Grumman is made up of three business sectors, Aerospace Systems, Mission Systems, and Technology Services. Aerospace Systems, headquartered in Redondo Beach, California produces aircraft, spacecraft, high-energy laser systems and microelectronics for the US and other nations. The B-2 Spirit strategic bomber, the E-8C Joint STARS surveillance aircraft, the RQ-4 Global Hawk, the US Army uses Northrop Grummans RQ-5 Hunter unmanned air vehicle, which has been in operational use since 1995. The U. S. Navy uses Northrop Grumman-built aerial vehicles such as the BQM-74 Chukar, RQ-4 Global Hawk based BAMS UAS, Grumman C-2 Greyhound, Grumman E-2 Hawkeye, and the EA-6B Prowler. Northrop Grumman provides major components and assemblies for different aircraft such as F/A-18 Hornet, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Electronic Systems produces and maintains the AWACS aerial surveillance systems for the U. S. the United Kingdom, NATO, Japan, and others. Northrop Grumman is the contractor for the development and integration of the Air Forces $2-billion Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program. Many other smaller products are made by Northrop Grumman, such as night vision goggles, information Systems, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, supports the U. S. Vinnell, a Technical Services Northrop Grumman subsidiary, provides training and communications for the military. In 2003, it landed a $48 million contract to train the Iraqi Army, in 2005 the company won a $2 billion contract with Virginia to overhaul most of the states IT operations. Later that year, The United Kingdom paid $1.2 billion in a contract with the company to provide maintenance of the countrys defensive radar, Northrop Grumman performs various functions in the War on Drugs. The company sends planes to spray herbicides on suspected cocaine fields in Colombia, remotec, a subsidiary, is the foremost manufacturer of remote control vehicles for explosive ordnance disposal and hazardous material handling. A UK-based subsidiary, Park Air Systems, provides VHF and UHF ground-to-air communications systems for the civil, Northrop Grumman has also worked closely with Antenna Associates, Inc. a manufacturer of Identification friend or foe /Secondary Surveillance Radar antennas located in Massachusetts. In August 2007, Northrop Grumman acquired Scaled Composites in which it had owned a 40% stake. Originally formed in California in 1939 by Jack Northrop, the Northrop Corporation was reincorporated in Delaware in 1985, in 1994, Northrop Aircraft bought Grumman Aerospace, famous for building the Apollo Lunar Module to create Northrop Grumman. In 1996, the new company acquired Westinghouse Electronic Systems, a manufacturer of radar systems. In 1997, the defense computer contractor Logicon was added, which had acquired Geodynamics Corporation in March 1996, in 1998, a merger between Northrop Grumman and competitor Lockheed Martin was considered but abandoned after resistance from the Department of Defense and Department of Justice
38.
Mojave Aerospace Ventures
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Mojave Aerospace Ventures is a company founded by Paul Allen and Burt Rutan to handle the commercial spinoffs from the Tier One project. It owns the intellectual property arising from Tier One, and it is in turn owned by Paul Allen, in 2004, it signed a deal with Virgin Galactic to develop the Virgin SpaceShip, a suborbital spacecraft, for space tourism. Virgin Group and Scaled have subsequently formed a joint venture, The Spaceship Company, the structure of Mojave Aerospace Ventures appears to be the basis of the deal between Allen and Rutan for the funding of Tier One. The company owns all the property of the Tier One project, such as patents. Allen, the source of funding for Tier One, is the majority owner. Rutan, having developed the technology, owns a minority stake and this stands in contrast to the company more usually associated with Tier One, Scaled Composites, which, as of 2007, is owned by Northrop Grumman. MAV serves to separate Tier One spinoffs from Scaled Composites, Mojave Aerospace Ventures is part of Allens Vulcan Aerospace. On September 25,2004 MAV agreed on a joint venture with Richard Bransons newly formed company Virgin Galactic, the initial plan is to build five Virgin SpaceShips, based on scaling up the SpaceShipOne design. The spacecraft would be manufactured by The Spaceship Company, the designs for the Tier 1b customer suborbital spaceflight vehicles are referred to as SpaceShipTwo and its carrier aircraft is White Knight Two. A further application of the Tier One technology is for Allens Stratolaunch Systems with its Stratolaunch carrier aircraft Roc
39.
Vulcan Inc.
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Vulcan Inc. is a private company founded by philanthropist and investor Paul Allen. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the mission is to find solutions for some of the worlds toughest challenges. In 1986, Vulcan Northwest was formed to manage the affairs, investments as well as a wide range of corporate. Initially the company had a Pacific Northwest focus with headquarters in Bellevue, in 2001, the company changed its name to Vulcan Inc. to reflect the company’s burgeoning global interests. The company’s headquarters have moved to Seattle’s International District. Vulcans Real Estate division offers development and portfolio management services from site selection and urban planning to construction, leasing. Vulcan has developed 6.6 million square feet of new residential, office, retail, Vulcan Real Estate is known for the redevelopment of the South Lake Union neighborhood immediately north of downtown Seattle and along the south shore of Lake Union. Several innovative companies in technology, life sciences, global health, more than $5.7 billion has been invested in the neighborhood since 2002 for development projects and public infrastructure improvements. Vulcan advocated for the Seattle Streetcar line known as South Lake Union Streetcar, the streetcar officially started operation on December 12,2007. This development has been criticized as a real estate investment for Vulcan Inc. Its exceeded my expectations, Mr. Allen said of the South Lake Union development, formed in 2003, Vulcan Capital is the multibillion-dollar investment arm of Vulcan and is headquartered in Seattle with an additional office in Palo Alto. 4INFO, Alibaba Group, Charter Communications, DreamWorks, Magic Leap, Redfin and Tri Alpha Energy, in the fall of 2012, Peter McLoughlin was named CEO of Vulcan Sports and Entertainment after Tod Leiweke left the post to run the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Green Sports Alliance was conceived and founded by Vulcan Inc. inaugural members and partners of the Alliance include the Seattle Seahawks, Portland Trail Blazers, Seattle Sounders FC. Launched in 2015, Vulcan Aerospace was created to help achieve Paul Allen’s desire to make space travel more convenient. Vulcan Aerospace oversees the development of Stratolaunch Systems project, an air launch system capable of transporting payloads to low Earth orbit using a carrier aircraft. Initial test flights are projected to place as early as 2016. In September 2016, Vulcan Aerospace President Chuck Beames left his role and was replaced by an executive director, Jean Floyd. Both the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence were incubated at Vulcan Inc, started at Vulcan Inc. in 2001, the Allen Brain Atlas project sought to understand the connections between genes and brain functioning
40.
Sub-orbital spaceflight
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For example, the path of an object launched from Earth that reaches 100 km above sea level, and then falls back to Earth, is considered a sub-orbital spaceflight. Some sub-orbital flights have been undertaken to test spacecraft and launch vehicles later intended for orbital spaceflight, other vehicles are specifically designed only for sub-orbital flight, examples include manned vehicles such as the X-15 and SpaceShipOne, and unmanned ones such as ICBMs and sounding rockets. Flights which attain sufficient velocity to go into low Earth orbit, examples of this include Yuri Gagarins Vostok 1, and flights of the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. Usually a rocket is used, but experimental sub-orbital spaceflight has also achieved with a space gun. By one definition a sub-orbital spaceflight reaches a higher than 100 km above sea level. The US military and NASA award astronaut wings to those flying above 50 mi, during freefall the trajectory is part of an elliptic orbit as given by the orbit equation. The perigee distance is less than the radius of the Earth R including atmosphere, hence the ellipse intersects the Earth, the major axis is vertical, the semi-major axis a is more than R/2. The specific orbital energy ϵ is given by, ε = − μ2 a > − μ R where μ is the standard gravitational parameter, to minimize the required delta-v, the high-altitude part of the flight is made with the rockets off. The maximum speed in a flight is attained at the lowest altitude of this free-fall trajectory, if ones goal is simply to reach space, for example in competing for the Ansari X Prize, horizontal motion is not needed. In this case the lowest required delta-v, to reach 100 km altitude, is about 1.4 km/s, for sub-orbital spaceflights covering a horizontal distance the maximum speed and required delta-v are in between those of a vertical flight and a LEO. The maximum speed at the ends of the trajectory are now composed of a horizontal. The higher the horizontal distance covered, the greater both speeds will be, for the V-2 rocket, just reaching space but with a range of about 330 km, the maximum speed was 1.6 km/s. Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo which is under development will have a similar free-fall orbit, for larger ranges, due to the elliptic orbit the maximum altitude can even be considerably more than for a LEO. It should be noted that any spaceflight that returns to the surface, including sub-orbital ones, the speed at the start of the reentry is basically the maximum speed of the flight. The aerodynamic heating caused will vary accordingly, it is less for a flight with a maximum speed of only 1 km/s than for one with a maximum speed of 7 or 8 km/s. Let θ be half the angle that the projectile is to go around the earth, the minimum-delta-v trajectory corresponds to an ellipse with one focus at the centre of the earth and the other at the point halfway between the launch point and the destination point. Longer ranges will have lower apogees in the minimal-delta-v solution and we see that the Δv increases with range, leveling off at 7.9 km/s as the range approaches 20000 km. The minimum-delta-v trajectory for going halfway around the world corresponds to a circular orbit just above the surface, see lower for the time of flight
41.
Space tourism
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Space tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. To date only orbital space tourism has taken place provided by the Russian Space Agency, some space tourists have signed contracts with third parties to conduct certain research activities while in orbit. Orbital tourist flights were set to resume in 2015 but one planned was postponed indefinitely, as an alternative term to tourism, some organizations such as the Commercial Spaceflight Federation use the term personal spaceflight. The Citizens in Space project uses the term citizen space exploration, the Soviet space program was aggressive in broadening the pool of cosmonauts. The Soviet Intercosmos program included cosmonauts selected from Warsaw Pact members and later allies of the USSR. Most of these cosmonauts received full training for their missions and were treated as equals, the European Space Agency took advantage of the program as well. The U. S. space shuttle program included payload specialist positions which were filled by representatives of companies or institutions managing a specific payload on that mission. These payload specialists did not receive the training as professional NASA astronauts and were not employed by NASA. In 1983, Ulf Merbold from ESA and Byron Lichtenberg from MIT were the first payload specialists to fly on the Space Shuttle, in 1984, Charles D. Walker became the first non-government astronaut to fly, with his employer McDonnell Douglas paying $40,000 for his flight. NASA was also eager to prove its capability to Congressional sponsors, senator Jake Garn was flown on the Shuttle in 1985, followed by Representative Bill Nelson in 1986. During the 1970s, Shuttle prime contractor Rockwell International studied a $200–300 million removable cabin that could fit into the Shuttles cargo bay, the cabin could carry up to 74 passengers into orbit for up to three days. Space Habitation Design Associates proposed, in 1983, a cabin for 72 passengers in the bay, passengers were located in six sections, each with windows and its own loading ramp, and with seats in different configurations for launch and landing. Another proposal was based on the Spacelab habitation modules, which provided 32 seats in the bay in addition to those in the cockpit area. The presentation also forecast flights to orbit within 30 years. As the shuttle program expanded in the early 1980s, NASA began a Space Flight Participant program to allow citizens without scientific or governmental roles to fly, Christa McAuliffe was chosen as the first Teacher in Space in July 1985 from 11,400 applicants. 1,700 applied for the Journalist in Space program, including Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Tom Wolfe, an Artist in Space program was considered, and NASA expected that after McAuliffes flight two to three civilians a year would fly on the shuttle. After McAuliffe was killed in the Challenger disaster in January 1986 the programs were canceled, McAuliffes backup, Barbara Morgan, eventually got hired in 1998 as a professional astronaut and flew on STS-118 as a mission specialist. A second journalist-in-space program, in which NASA green-lighted Miles OBrien to fly on the shuttle, was scheduled to be announced in 2003
42.
Composite aircraft
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A composite aircraft is made up of multiple component craft. It takes off and flies initially as a aircraft, with the components able to separate in flight. Typically the larger aircraft acts as an aircraft or mother ship. The first composite aircraft flew in 1916, during World War I, experiments continued into the jet age, with large aircraft carrying fully capable parasite fighters or reconnaissance drones, though none entered service. A composite configuration is usually adopted to provide improved performance or operational flexibility for one of the components, thus it need not be compromised by the requirements for takeoff, climb and initial cruise, but may be optimised for the later stages of the mission. In another form the larger carrier aircraft conducts the main operational mission, a third variant comprises a small piloted jockey component coupled with a larger unpiloted component. This arrangement is used as an attack aircraft in which the larger component is loaded with explosives. The slip wing component may or may not be powered and/or manned, during and after World War I, a number of efforts were made to develop airship-plane composites, in which one or more aeroplanes were carried by an airship. The first British effort, undertaken in 1916 with a non-rigid SS class airship, was aimed at the anti-Zeppelin role, the airship was to provide fast climb to altitude, while a B. E. 2c aeroplane would provide the speed and manoeurvability to attack the Zeppelin. It ended in disaster when the attachment point released prematurely. Both crew were killed in the ensuing disaster, by 1918 larger rigid airships were available and a Sopwith Camel was successfully released by HMA23 in July 1918, but the armistice halted work. The idea was revived in 1925 when the airship R33 was used to launch and then recapture a DH53 Hummingbird light monoplane aircraft and, in 1926. The first parasite fighter was a German Albatros D. III which flew from Zeppelin L35 in January 26,1918. The LZ129 Hindenburg later conducted trials using parasite aircraft in the days before it crashed at Lakehurst, in 1923 the TC-3 and TC-7 non-rigid airships launched and recovered a Sperry Messenger biplane. Then in 1930, the US Navy fitted the USS Los Angeles with a designed to release. Successful trials with a glider and a led to the construction of the Akron and Macon airships as airborne aircraft carriers. During the 1940s a variety of plans were studied. These plans were abandoned due to weight/lift ratio of the dirigible, in parallel with early airship activity, efforts also went into carrying a fighter plane aloft on top of a second aeroplane
43.
Air launch
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Air launching is the practice of releasing a rocket, missile, parasite aircraft or other aircraft payload from a mother ship or launch aircraft. The payload craft or missile is often tucked under the wing of the mother ship. It may also be stored within a bay, beneath the main fuselage or even on the back of the carrier aircraft. One of the earliest uses of air launching used an airship as a carrier and these planes would connect to their mothership through a trapeze-like rig, mounted to the top of the upper wing, that attached to a hook dangling from the bottom of the dirigible above. Fighters could be launched and retrieved this way, giving the airship the speed and striking power of fixed-wing craft, while giving the fighters the range. With advances in technology, especially in range, the value of a dirigible mothership was reduced. The parasite fighter concept was revived several times, in an attempt to solve the problem of how to protect bombers from fighter attack. Air launch is used for rocket-powered craft, allowing them to conserve their fuel until lifted to altitude by a larger aircraft. The B-29, B-50, and B-52 have all served in the role for research programs such as the Bell X-1. In the 1960s the SR-71 aircraft was used to launch the Lockheed D-21/M-21 drone to speeds of up to Mach 3, however, this added a degree of difficulty due to the shock wave pattern around an aircraft at supersonic speeds. After three successful tests, the resulted in a collision with the carrier aircraft, in which both craft were destroyed and one crew member drowned. These aircraft were used throughout the Space Shuttle Program to transport the shuttles across long distances. The Pegasus launch vehicle became the first air-launched orbital rocket when it was launched on April 5,1990 by the private company Orbital Sciences Corp. from a NASA-owned B-52 Stratofortress and it has flown more than 40 times since, launched mostly from the companys own Lockheed L-1011. Building on its success, Orbital Sciences is developing the Pegasus II launcher that will drop from a launch aircraft called the Roc. Capacity to low-earth orbit is projected to be 13,500 pounds In the early 2000s, recently, the air launch method has gained popularity with commercial launch providers. The Ansari X-Prize $10 Million purse was won by a led by Burt Rutans Scaled Composites. AirLaunch LLC developed QuickReach small satellite launch system that validated the concept by dropping a test payload in-flight from the bay of an unmodified C-17 aircraft. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011
44.
Parasite aircraft
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A parasite aircraft is a component of a composite aircraft which is carried aloft and air launched by a larger carrier aircraft or mother ship to support the primary mission of the carrier. The carrier craft may or may not be able to recover the parasite during flight. The first parasite aircraft flew in 1916, when the British launched a Bristol Scout from a Felixstowe Porte Baby flying boat, the idea eventually developed into jet bombers carrying fully capable parasite fighters. With the advent of fighters equipped with air-to-air missiles, and aerial refueling. Until the middle of the 20th century there was military interest in parasite fighters – fighter aircraft intended to be carried into a combat zone by a larger aircraft, if the bomber were threatened, the parasite would be released to defend it. Parasite fighters have never been successful and have seldom been used in combat. A major disadvantage of an aircraft was that it reduced the payload capacity of the carrier aircraft. Projects for this type were designed to overcome the great disparity in range between bombers and their escort fighters, development of aerial refueling has made parasite fighters obsolete. The first parasite fighters were launched and recovered from trapezes mounted externally to military airships, in 1915 Neville Usborne and another British officer worked on a plan to lift a BE. 2C fighter under a SS-class non-rigid airship. This would allow the fighter to reach the height of a raiding Zeppelin rapidly while also conserving fuel, in the first experimental flight on 21 February 1916, the envelope lost pressure and the plane was prematurely separated from it at 4,000 feet. Both the officers were killed and there was no further experimentation with small airships, in May 1916 a Bristol Scout flown by Flt. Lt. M. J. Day was mounted above the top wing of a Porte Baby flying boat flown by Sqn. Ldr John Cyril Porte, although successful the scheme, intended to provide long-range defence against Zeppelins, was not pursued. In 1918 the Royal Air Force experimented with launching Sopwith Camel fighters from HM Airship 23, although the single trial, made on 25 January 1918, was successful the experiments were not continued. The airship was piloted by Lieutenant George Crompton, Dirigible Officer at NAS Rockaway, the British Imperial Airship Scheme of 1924 envisaged a commercial airship that could also carry five fighter aircraft if put into military use, but this requirement was abandoned. In 1925 first the DH.53 light aeroplane and then Gloster Grebes had been launched from the airship R.33, in 1930, the US Navy airship USS Los Angeles was used to test the trapeze system developed to launch and recover fixed wing aircraft from rigid airships. The tests were a success, and the purpose built airships USS Akron, the airships could carry up to five single-seat Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawks for scouting or two-seat Fleet N2Y-1s for training. In 1934, two two-seat Waco UBF XJW-1 biplanes equipped with skyhooks were delivered to the USS Macon, the temporary system was removed from the Los Angeles, which never carried any aircraft on operational flights. In 1930, the Los Angeles also tested the launching of a glider over Lakehurst, although operations of these parasite aircraft were quite successful, the ultimate loss of both airships put an end to the program
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