Branson and Virgin did nothing at all except provide funding after the fact to the actual, certified genius aerodynamist and visionary Burt Rutan. Since it is far outside the knowledge domain of/., I will just introduce Rutan to the crowd who might be attracted to the silly clickbait article: Burt has for about 40 years years been designing outstanding aircraft, some large, most small. He designed for NASA, for Jim Bede, and for thousands of home builders. He pioneered the modern use of canard winds and com
I have serious doubts that a feathered reentry would work for anything that has orbital reentry speed.
There's a reason we have capsules with heat shields, and it's still tricky.
We lost a shuttle over damaged heat shields.
I suspect there would be strong vibration issues at orbital reentry speed as well that they haven't had to face yet since all of their flights so far (as well as those actually scheduled) have been sub-orbital.
That being said, I wish them luck and hope they continue to innovate.
The feathering mechanism is very clever and effective, and I'm sure that Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic love getting free advertising on Slashdot. But this concept - the mechanism, the shuttlecock behavior, the passive stabilization - was successfully demonstrated when SpaceShipOne won the X-Prize... in 2004.
So please explain, Oh submitter and editors, why are you cluttering up our lives with old news?
For those interested, the documentary Black Sky [imdb.com] is a must-see on explaining how this concept (and SpaceShipOne in general) works.
Branson and Virgin did nothing at all except provide funding after the fact to the actual, certified genius aerodynamist and visionary Burt Rutan. /., I will just introduce Rutan to the crowd who might be attracted to the silly clickbait article: Burt has for about
Since it is far outside the knowledge domain of
40 years years been designing outstanding aircraft, some large, most small. He designed for NASA, for Jim Bede, and for thousands of home builders. He pioneered the modern use of canard winds and com
So please explain, Oh submitter and editors, why are you cluttering up our lives with old news?
How can someone misspell descent three times in two sentences?
Missing a descent spell check?