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When I visited Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, and Scaled Composites’ founder Burt Rutan at the manufacturing facility in the Mojave Spaceport, Burt relayed the exciting news that the new plastic propellant is performing very well in ground testing. They chuckled about that famous line in The Graduate about “plastics.” SpaceShipTwo had been using a rubber-nitrous hybrid motor and it was proving to have insufficient thrust to be able to lift a full passenger payload to the designed altitude. So they switched the rubber for a novel plastic that has never flown before.

Unfortunately, for unrelated reasons, the flight failed dramatically about 12 seconds after ignition yesterday. More below.

5 responses to “Rutan updating Branson on the new plastic propellant in SpaceShipTwo”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Continuing the conversation… full sizeIMG_1642 SpaceShip Two, almost ready to fly Last sight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwoAnd then… moreScreen Shot 2014-11-01 at 10.28.34 AM

    Reply
  2. m.p.moody Avatar
    m.p.moody

    Motor failure visible in last image or did it occur after ?

    Reply
  3. altsmoosh Avatar
    altsmoosh

    …that’s Dean Kamen, right?

    Reply
  4. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Yes, on the far right, and George Whitesides in the white shirt.

    [https://www.flickr.com/photos/15752486@N07] — The latest, from Aviation Week (Note the 11 second time to failure): "The NTSB-led investigation team probing the cause of the Oct. 31 crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo says 2 sec. before beginning to break up in midair, the vehicle’s two moveable tail booms unexpectedly began to deploy into a "feathering" position.

    Revealing the findings, NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart says camera footage and telemetry show that around 9 sec. after ignition of the hybrid rocket, the mechanism that controls the stowage of the moving tails moved from "lock" to "unlock."

    The NTSB also reports that the fuel and oxidizer tanks as well as the hybrid rocket motor were all intact and showed no signs of burn through or of "being breached." The findings support photographic evidence of the mishap which clearly indicated a successful ignition and continuing rocket burn before the catastrophic structural breakup.

    The flight was the fourth powered test of SS2 and the first to use a new plastic-based fuel aimed at a more powerful, smoother acceleration. While the switch to the new fuel led to speculation that this would form the initial focus for the investigation, the latest findings now indicate the inquiry will shift to the inadvertent deployment of the feathering mechanism and the impact of excessive aerodynamic loads on the structure."

    Reply
  5. m.p.moody Avatar
    m.p.moody

    Thanks for the detailed response, sadly I lost my youngest son in a plane crash last Aug 13, 2013 and still don’t have an NTSB report

    Reply

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