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[Photo: Reinhard Hunger for Fast Company]
Virgin Galactic Rolling Out Replacement SpaceShipTwo, Recommits To Space Tourism
The new rocket ship replaces the one that broke apart in mid-flight and crashed in 2014. Fast Company's Daniel Terdiman will bring you live updates Friday February 19 at 2:45 p.m. ET.
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Hey, there, everyone...Virgin Galactic kicks off its event in about 12-and-a-half hours. Stay tuned!
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We'll be getting started in 45 minutes. Right now, just a million press hanging out.
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This is obviously a big day for the space industry. Although Virgin Galactic is a private company, and still some undetermined amount of time away from ferrying passengers to space, it's a very important milestone for the company to show the world that it's back in business. Which, of course, explains the massive media presence here.
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Just a reminder, folks: Virgin Galactic will start the press briefing at 11:45am PT (2:45pm ET). That'll be in a briefing center. Then, a bit later, everyone will be taken into the hangar where the actual reveal of the new SpaceShipTwo will happen. So, please stick with us for the next few hours.
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Now inside the Virgin Galactic mission control room for the briefing.
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This is not your father's mission control. Instead of a giant room with huge screens on the wall, this is basically a conference room with a bunch of PCs in cubicles. Welcome to the modern space industry.
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The workstations have labels on them like Telemetry, SpaceUp, Pneumatics, Stabs, Mother, and many more.
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I'm not entirely sure who will be speaking at this briefing. But I do know that Virgin CEO/tycoon Richard Branson is here today. Also George Whitesides, the CEO of Virgin Galactic and the Spaceship Company, which does the manufacturing of the spaceships.
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It appears Branson will be speaking to us. And your humble reporter will be less than 10 feet from the impresario. Not sure if photos will be allowed, though.
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We're getting started. George Whitesides will start us off with brief remarks.
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Whitesides says this is an "important day for the company. We've been heads down ..working for over a year to get back to this position. What I hope you’ll see here is a sign of resolve….We are absolutely committed to opening the space frontier (and) democratizing (space)."
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Doug Shane, president of The Spaceship Company: "Today is a huge day for all of us….It’s hard enough to build an airplane. Its much harder to build a company to build an airplane....The spaceship (is) pretty close to being ready to test. We’ve already started some subsystem checkouts….Our team is being very careful about planning out ground tests (before we get to flight tests)."
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Today's new spaceship was originally designed to be the first commercial flight vehicle, but after the 2014 accident, they had to recast it as a test flight vehicle, meaning it has lots of extra wiring and equipment that the commercial version won't have.
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Yes, this vehicle will be safer, says Mike Moses, but it will be safer the second flight, third, and so on. It's always getting safer.
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Moses says Virgin/The Spaceship company did what every high risk, high profile program do: look at it all, look at systems way beyond what the accident investigation asked us to look at. To sum up: #2 (ship) is a lot like #1. It has the same fundamental design. We didn’t find any fundamental flaws. NTSB validated that. We’ve had validating inside and outside.
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The accident was caused by the pilot unlocking the feather in regime that was not safe to do so. So the change that was made is simple and straightforward: a pin that will prevent the feather handle from being moved when the computer says it's unsafe to do so.
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Moses is Virgin Galactic's senior vice president of operations, by the way.
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Branson says he's going to delegate answering any questions from the press.
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Moses says Virgin Galactic now has a flight core of seven pilots who will presumably be flying test missions.
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Virgin Galactic will not be giving a timeline of when it expects to start flying commercially, Whitesides says in answer to a question.
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Moses says that's basically because of the business situation. If Virgin Galactic gives a schedule, the company will be held to that, and it's not ready because of the profile of its test flights, which require it to land the spaceship and refuel and fly again if it misses the way it wants to fly. The company has an optimistic timeline, a realistic timeline, and a worst-case, but it's not ready to tell anyone publicly.
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While it took Virgin Galactic several years of progress before the 2014 accident, Whitesides says the process will be much faster this time around, in terms of advancing through the testing. That's because they do have the benefit of all the things learned the first time around.
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Whitesides also confirms a previous number he'd given, that Virgin Galactic has invested more than $500 million in the project.
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Asked what are some of the really cool innovations of the Virgin Galactic program, Branson responds: "First of all, it’s pretty cool to be taking people to space, and that’s the challenge. We’ve been at this for 10 years….Once you’ve got people in space, then why shouldn’t we have…point to point travel at tremendous speeds. And a lot of people who work here are eager to start working on that program. And why shouldn’t we…have an orbital vehicle. And we will start to do that."
Also, Branson says, since the International Space Station only has a few years left, why shouldn’t Virgin Galactic replace the Space Station.
He also notes that he just had a meeting with a Senator about asteroids, and discussed whether Virgin Galactic could help (with asteroids near) Earth. "Let’s give it a go," he says. "Can Virgin Galactic help with debris in space?" -
Branson also says Virgin Galactic would like to join the race for deep space exploration.
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Whitesides says that the spaceship being rolled out today will be the first into "revenue" service.
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And the briefing is over. Next up is the unveil of the new SpaceShipTwo, in a little bit. Please stay tuned.
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Not much signal here right now, so please forgive the slow updating.
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George Whitesides says that Virgin Galactic is very proud because of the company's "willingness to learn and a commitment to continually improve.
Today also has a sense of poignancy, he says, because it's now been 16 months since the tragic accident in 2014. On that day, he and Branson walked through this very hangar and wondered if the work they saw being done on spaceships here was the company's past or its future. But "all of us committed to each other on that day: we would learn what we needed to learn, and we would stay true (to our commitment)."
