Virgin Galactic/Rolls-Royce Mach 3 SST

It would be obviously mostly a business jet. Notice also that with virgin Galactic Mach3 space flight, it seems plausible that Virgin felt confident having enough science to start such endeavor.
Great news.
 
yasotay said:
At Mach 3 it certainly will be warming up.
Sorry
Like most things, it will be affordable to the very rich at first and then eventually trickle down.
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Or perhaps stay accessible only to the wealthy, like Concorde.

TomcatViP said:
It would be obviously mostly a business jet. Notice also that with virgin Galactic Mach3 space flight, it seems plausible that Virgin felt confident having enough science to start such endeavor.
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I just don't see a lot of tech transfer between a rocket-boosted parabolic glider like Spaceship 2 and a Mach 3 airbreathing jet airliner. Possibly it falls out of VG's earlier notion of adapting SS2 technology for point-to-point travel? They've been making lots of partnerships on high=-speed travel recently, but none of them had this sort of concept of operations.

techcrunch.com

Virgin Galactic is partnering with NASA to develop supersonic point-to-point air travel | TechCrunch

Virgin Galactic today revealed a new partnership with NASA, in pursuit of the goal of developing a high-speed vehicle for point-to-point travel across
techcrunch.com techcrunch.com

www.satellitetoday.com

Virgin Galactic Envisions Future High-Speed Air Travel: Q&A With Enrico Palermo - Via Satellite

Virgin Galactic, the Richard Branson-owned company working toward commercial spaceflight with its SpaceShipTwo vehicle, last month announced a partnership
www.satellitetoday.com www.satellitetoday.com
 
@TomS Or perhaps stay accessible only to the wealthy, like Concorde.

A fair comment. If it only fills a niche' then it will remain expensive. In the 1950's few thought air travel would ever be for regular folk. Everyone got dressed in their Sunday best for the occasion. Now kids meander around the airports in their PJ's, or less (yes I am old). I agree that flying around at + Mach anything may not be in the cards for most of us in the first half of the century.
 
Thermal load, aerodynamics, buffering mode... The Virgin rocket plane are ideally suited to clear any unknown their design team want to acertain.
Imagine Kelly owning a fleet of X-1.
 
If the world didn't explode before, we will see in 15 years... or not.
 
yasotay said:
At Mach 3 it certainly will be warming up.
Sorry
Like most things, it will be affordable to the very rich at first and then eventually trickle down.
Click to expand...
That's what they said in the 60's. :p
 
Let's be honest, a BJ trip from London to NY doesn't cost more than what you'd paid individually for a Concorde flight (with BJ capacity maxed).

Edit:
BJ stands for Business Jet.
 
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Mach 3 ?

This will be fun to see how this project will struggle with various problem
first design, construction, if R&R is able to build the needed engines
next to that finance issue and high operation cost

and finally face the ultimate competition: SpaceX intercontinental rocket transport,
you know flight with London - New York in 35 minutes...
 
And why mach 3 ? Mach 2 would still be a supersonic transport, without having to deal with the heat problems. Virgin is going to manufacture a (titanium ?) transport airframe capable of sustaining mach 3 cruise ? Very brave... Good luck.
 
Probably to get more Europe - N.Y daily rotations without bursting airports neighboroughs *eardrums* at 3 in the morning.

You need at least Mach 2.7 and 2-hours crossings to achieve enough daily rotations and pay back the insane expense of supersonic travel.

2-hours crossings + 1 hour stop, rinse, repeat. Start at 5 or 6 in the morning, up to 11 in the evening.
 
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So, we have two mach 2 ssbj/small sst projects already, and a third one appear on the scene proclaiming "I'll do mach 3 !".
Mmhhh think i heard the story before.
At least they doesn't seem to want to make it twice as bigger than the other two projects.

Edit:
Ssbj doesn't stands for SuperSonic Bl...Job.
 
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Virgin Galactic will have hell of R&D on Fuselage to endure the heat during flight.
For Comparison

SR-71 skin temperature during Mach 3 +316°C or 600 F° airframe active cooled
Concorde skin temperature during Mach 2 +127°C or 261 °F

Concorde fuselage expand 300mm during flight
SR-71 Titanium fuselage expand 1016mm during flight
 
Michel Van said:
Mach 3 ?

SpaceX intercontinental rocket transport,
you know flight with London - New York in 35 minutes...
Click to expand...

Sure everyone in the surrounding area will love the sonic boom, replacing broken windows and fixing their house foundation, just so a few billionaires can do a spell of shopping and lunch.
 
The offshore platforms were supposed to take care of that issue... supposedly.
 
Zootycoon said:
Michel Van said:
Mach 3 ?

SpaceX intercontinental rocket transport,
you know flight with London - New York in 35 minutes...
Click to expand...

Sure everyone in the surrounding area will love the sonic boom, replacing broken windows and fixing their house foundation, just so a few billionaires can do a spell of shopping and lunch.
Click to expand...

The plan for earth-earth operations is to have launch facilities out at sea. And the ticket price is supposed to be in line with first class ones on same routes. Expensive? Sure. Billionaire class? Not necesserily. This Mach 3 power point presentation is billionaire class vehicle, not Starship. To be entirely honest, without getting too political, railing against billionaire class is a lost cause at this point. They will be flying their vanilla business jets or these new supersonic ones either way (or Starship, for that matter), they can afford it. I am just hoping that there will be atleast some "trickle down" effect in terms of technology, Boeing and Airbus are completely entrenched in laziness and boredom in their duopoly.
 
That's what i talking about
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

At first it will be unmanned Cargo flight
But with 150 tons cargo in 30minute delivery world wide, will change Cargo transport.
Follow by manned flights (for those who qualified medical for rocket flight)

But the World is changing do Corvic-19
Air trafic nummers droping and Airlines shutdown there Expensive airliners like 747 or A320
under those development, is questionable
if Mach 3 Airliner and Starship intercontinental are survivable economic
 
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Mach3 airliner probably not but as a private jet, yes. At least until there are people willing to buy some.
And then, in the post Covid era you draft, man has to figure what upper class expenses will be. For example, as hotels will have to be avoided or at least restricted to a minimal stay, what could be the fun spending a night in Paris, Auckland etc... When your nearest residence could be only a couple thousand miles from your business trip destination?

People who can afford NOT staying overnight will want such an airplane.
 
Boeing is now working with Virgin Galactic. Guess we know why they bailed on the other program, they went for the money and someone they have worked with before.
 
I'm wondering if one of the roles for this is transporting SpaceShip 2 customers to and from Spaceport America . . .
'As one of our highly valued customers ( and a Very Wealthy Person ), no need to use your own private jet, or mix with the hoi polloi on commercial flights, just tell us where to pick you up, and it's done . . .'

cheers,
Robin.
 
I forgot also, and I guess everyone had aknowledged that already, but the large delta with vortex generator (small span) could be favorable for a lot of lift with moderate attitude, something ideally suited for "short" field operation.
With a robust FCS, the risk of pitch-up could be a thing of the past.
 
I thought VG/TSC are working together with Boom on their SSBJ, then it doesnt make sense to undermine that effort with another Mach3 aircraft. So there must be a different use case / customer.
 
galgot said:
And why mach 3 ? Mach 2 would still be a supersonic transport, without having to deal with the heat problems. Virgin is going to manufacture a (titanium ?) transport airframe capable of sustaining mach 3 cruise ? Very brave... Good luck.
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Good point. There are many other challenges that will prevent this from succeeding; ozone depletion, community noise, a diminishing time savings due to ATC constraints, and absolutely enormous engine core size, etc.
 
Reaper said:
I thought VG/TSC are working together with Boom on their SSBJ, then it doesnt make sense to undermine that effort with another Mach3 aircraft. So there must be a different use case / customer.
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Boom is a 50 passenger aircraft, the Virgin jet will carry 9-19. It's a competitor for Aerion, not Boom. Different niches.
 
Moreover, Boom aircraft won't be used for extended land overflight, meaning that if you want to fly Back home supersonicly you 'll have to have a flight connection, drastingly loosing time on your journey.
Hence a supersonic private jet makes sense. Then the fact that you are easing the cost equation while drastingly downsizing your payload requirement makes an upgrade in performances pretty reasonable.

Virgin do fly at Mach 3 without requiring a Titanium airframe. It's all about flight profile.
 
I don't understand

Boom company build a 50 passenger SST for JAL and Virgin Galactic
Now build Virgin it own 19 passenger SST ?

can it be that Virgin who sign deal with Boom in 2016, be tired of waiting ?

source
boomsupersonic.com

Boom - Partners

boomsupersonic.com boomsupersonic.com
 
TomcatViP said:
Virgin do fly at Mach 3 without requiring a Titanium airframe. It's all about flight profile.
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If not titanium, then steel ........... all of the flight profiling in the world will not hide the airframe from aero heating at mach 3.
 
Spaceship One used an ablative coating on high temp areas - i.e. - leading edges. Moreover, One had limited exposure to high aero heating, not the long term exposure such as cruising - i.e. - SR-71.
 
And what engine would be used to power this Mach design?
 
We are talking about flight profile. Virgin has even commercial experience. The end-design might then be an hybrid one b/w innovative trajectories and flight worthy 1960's tech.

@djfawcett : The ablative coating is only on the LE and has a total mass fraction anecdotical.

IMOHO, trajectory sustainement at very high altitude is marginal in term of power, easing engine constraints on the vehicle to something like an air-breathing boost on inertia ascent (just a pitch-up at high Mach) and a somehow boost while glide shallow descent profile.

My 2 cents only.
 
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TomcatViP said:
We are talking about flight profile. Virgin has even commercial experience. The end-design might then be an hybrid one b/w innovative trajectories and flight worthy 1960's tech.

@djfawcett : The ablative coating is only on the LE and has a total mass fraction anecdotical.

IMOHO, trajectory sustainement at very high altitude is marginal in term of power, easing engine constraints on the vehicle to something like an air-breathing boost on inertia ascent (just a pitch-up at high Mach) and a somehow boost while glide shallow descent profile.

My 2 cents only.
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I am not sure what you are trying to say, but I believe that you are making my case. Replacing the leading edges on a commercial transportation system after every flight makes no economic sense at all. Truth being said, comparing Spaceship One and the mach 3 vehicle is pretty much apples and oranges deal.
 
Oh c'mon...
The point is to assess if yes or not it's mission critical for such a private business jets...
Obviously, no. Aero heating of the LE won't prevent such design.
 

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