Virgin Galactic successfully conducted the first flight of its rocket engines of a spaceplane, VSS unity on Friday. A test flight in Nevada brings us one step closer to commercial space tourism.
VSS unity is part of a class of spaceshiptwo spaceplanes designed space ship virgin galactic, the company should be discharged from the ship, WhiteKnightTwo. WhiteKnightTwo carries the plane into the air before it is released, when unity uses its rocket motors to fire in my pocket line, just shy of the edge of space at 100 km above the earth’s surface.
Unity only reaches a height of about 80 km, but there is still a very easy to see the curvature of our planet.
Other spaceplane spaceshiptwo, VSS enterprise, was not built by scaled composites, but it crashed in a test flight in October 2014, killing one of its pilots and seriously injuring another.
The enterprise was designed to fly along the line of the pocket. The unity that “includes additional security mechanisms adopted by the BCC after a flight accident testing enterprise of 2014”, – reported in a press release, much heavier and not designed to achieve these heights.
VSS unity went through over a year of testing before today’s test flight, which included seven glide tests, sputnik reported. Unity also broke the sound barrier for the first time in today’s test flight, reaching a speed corresponding to Mach number 1.87, or 1,434 km / h.
WhiteKnightTwo launched from Mojave in the morning and is unity up to an altitude of 6,500 feet over the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Once out of the ship, the pilots of unity to ship up to 80 degrees the explosion to the sky. Unity used their rocket engines for a full 30 seconds before gliding back to the Mojave desert, making a smooth landing strip.
Flight created by “valuable data about the flight, the engine and vehicle performance” that the engineers of the virgin of galaxies is currently studying. The next stage of testing and is now ready to begin work that will allow you to extend the Duration of rocket burns out in full according to the project.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
