The article is pretty biased as well. They had great succes flying Unity, the world’s first and only working spaceplane, and are expanding on that gained knowledge. I guess that’s an ArsTechnica problem though, if you’re not one of the small number of special people, you can never do good.
Definitely successful from a technological standpoint, but not necessarily financially successful. Virgin Galactic is a business, and needs to be profitable to survive.
Virgin Galactic is a business, and needs to be profitable to survive.
No, small businesses need to be profitable. Huge companies can easily spend decades in the red, and can even have huge market caps and be worth billions without making a penny in profit. It took Amazon 9 years to show black numbers, Uber took 15, SpaceX took 20 (but nobody can actually check). Epic turned 34 and still hasn’t shown consistent profit. There’s no need for Virgin to be profitable yet, or even at all.
There have been plenty of other spaceplanes.
All of which, with the exception of X-15, were traditional rocket-cargoes that were only “spaceplanes” in the sense that they returned as a glider.
Those rocket borne planes can reenter from orbital speed. Actually the X-15 and spaceships 1 and 2 can’t launch to very high altitude on their own either, they were all carried much of the way by a jet
At least the others get or got boosted high and fast enough by their boosters to not fall back down until they chose to
Yeah, the top image is just an X-37B. The bottom image appears to be a prototype used for glide tests in 2007. I’m not aware of any images of the current version.
Presumably they finish building and fly their replacement. The title makes it sound like they’re shutting down.
The article is pretty biased as well. They had great succes flying Unity, the world’s first and only working spaceplane, and are expanding on that gained knowledge. I guess that’s an ArsTechnica problem though, if you’re not one of the small number of special people, you can never do good.
Definitely successful from a technological standpoint, but not necessarily financially successful. Virgin Galactic is a business, and needs to be profitable to survive.
Was there an additional qualifier you intended to add? There have been plenty of other spaceplanes.
No, small businesses need to be profitable. Huge companies can easily spend decades in the red, and can even have huge market caps and be worth billions without making a penny in profit. It took Amazon 9 years to show black numbers, Uber took 15, SpaceX took 20 (but nobody can actually check). Epic turned 34 and still hasn’t shown consistent profit. There’s no need for Virgin to be profitable yet, or even at all.
All of which, with the exception of X-15, were traditional rocket-cargoes that were only “spaceplanes” in the sense that they returned as a glider.
Those rocket borne planes can reenter from orbital speed. Actually the X-15 and spaceships 1 and 2 can’t launch to very high altitude on their own either, they were all carried much of the way by a jet
At least the others get or got boosted high and fast enough by their boosters to not fall back down until they chose to
“Spaceplane” is a bit rich. It doesn’t do orbit, it can’t do reentry from orbit were it to be boosted to orbital speed
By many reckonings it doesn’t even reach “space” in normal operation
At best it’s a high altitude parabolic free fall flier, giving a bit more continuous falling than the vomit comet
There’s also this space plane that’s flying currently, x37.
There’s also dream chaser that’s launching soon.
And don’t forget Shenlong!
Yeah! Not as many pictures of that one though.
I think this is it? Or is that just a pic of the x37? R wiki said it should have one vertical stabilizer rather than two.
Or is this it?
Yeah, the top image is just an X-37B. The bottom image appears to be a prototype used for glide tests in 2007. I’m not aware of any images of the current version.