Virgin Galactic Announces LauncherOne System for Small Satellites

The White Knight plane will be used to launch a small rocket
carrying satellites. 

On July 11, Virgin Galactic announced that they were building a new kind of launch system for small satellites. The system, dubbed "LauncherOne", will build upon their existing SpaceShipOne launch system, which launches a suborbital space plane off of their unique White Knight airplane. Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic's hippy-entrepreneur founder, said at the press conference that the company plans to be launching small satellites by 2016. The specs: 500 pounds of payload for under $10 million. This is the first privately-funded launching system specifically designed for small satellites, and Branson says: 

"LauncherOne is bringing the price of satellite launch into the realm of affordability for innovators everywhere, from start-ups and schools to established companies and national space agencies. It will be a critical new tool for the global research community, enabling us all to learn about our home planet more quickly and affordably."

The other benefit of the system, aside from the affordability, is the flexibility allowed by a plane-based launch system.  This reduces infrastructure headaches (and costs) associated with launch vehicle setup and deployment, and allows satellite builders to launch their satellite from a huge selection of sites, thereby releasing their satellites into a wider range of orbital planes than is otherwise possible. For an Earth-Observation constellation the more planes their satellites are in, the better the coverage of Earth at any given time.

Initial information about LauncherOne is that it would use a two-stage rocket powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene. The video below shows what the launch progression will look like.

(I like that they drop the "save the Earth" spiel after the obligatory shots of  deforested plains and fuming smokestacks. "Melting Glaciers? Check. Let's get to the good stuff." Also, the satellites being launched from LauncherOne will likely not be large enough to have deployable Solar Arrays, but that's a nit pick.)

Virgin Atlantic also announced that they already have at least four companies signed up to buy several launches on the new vehicle. One of the companies recognized as an early customer (that is very near and dear to me) was Skybox Imaging, a Silicon-Valley based commercial Earth imagery startup. Speaking at the event, Skybox CEO Tom Ingersoll said, "Skybox's objective is to provide world-class, affordable access to space imagery and information, and in order to do so, we need world-class, affordable access to space. Virgin Galactic is unique in having the right mix of ingredients to support our vision, as well as that of the growing small satellite community. We plan to make full use of LauncherOne."

Other companies signed up to buy rides on LauncherOne include GeoOptics Inc., a U.S.-based company developing a constellation of non-imaging remote sensing satellites; Spaceflight, Inc., a aggregator and integrator of small satellites; and Planetary Resources, Inc., the newly-announced, billionaire-backed company that plans to make millions mining asteroids.


This is a really neat prospect, and can only mean good things for the smallsat community!

The New Space Race

The AP had a great article by Seth Borenstein recently about the New Space Race, highlighting all of the companies currently working on programs to shuttle cargo and/or people to space. This, of course, is old news, but it's great to see the industry finally getting some serious attention from the press now that SpaceX is doing things for NASA that are useful (and profitable...at least eventually). A couple eye-opening excerpts:

"There are now more companies looking to make money in orbit — at least eight — than major U.S. airlines still flying."

"There are already eight different licensed spaceports in the U.S. where companies can launch from and most of them have no connection to NASA."

Of the companies mentioned by Borenstein, five (SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin) have received money from NASA and are aiming to reach the ISS within the next 5 years. Orbital is the closest behind SpaceX, with a trip to the ISS scheduled for November.

XCor's "Rocket Racer" Looks surprisingly lightweight and
simple. It will carry space tourists on suborbital flights.

In addition to the companies looking to make money from NASA by building ISS shuttles, there are several companies looking to make money the old-fashioned way - by finding people who have too much money and offering a service they can spend it on. I previously wrote about SpaceX and Bigelow's deal to shuttle space tourists to a space hotel. Space Tourism is also being pursued by Virgin Galactic (Richard Branson's company), and XCor Aerospace, who hope to send tourists on day-trips to space. Their reusable spaceships will take off from an airplane runway and reach sub-orbital altitudes, giving passengers several minutes of zero G, and some fantastic views of the Earth, before landing again.

So how much will a space vacation set you back? XCor and Virgin are not publishing prices, but Space Adventures, which has been helping rich people get to space since 2010, charges $20 million for a trip to the ISS, but has accepted $5 million down-payments for sub-orbital flights. I'm guessing that XCor and Virgin are hoping to undercut this price point significantly. Still, it will likely only be affordable to the 1%. But who knows, with the current pace of innovation in the space industry, maybe in 2040 the middle classes will be complaining about leg room in their space shuttle.