SpaceShip Two First Powered Flight

[N2NH]

Another milestone passed for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two.

After a short 16-second burn today, SpaceShipTwo reached a maximum altitude of 56,000 feet (17,000 meters) before flew back to Earth. The trip marked the 26th test flight of the vehicle, and the first "powered flight," which propelled the ship to Mach 1.2, fast enough to beat the speed of sound, which is 761 miles per hour (1224 km/h)...

SpaceShipTwo is a suborbital vehicle, designed to carry space tourists on trips to the edge of space and back for $200,000 a ride. Though these flights wouldn't make a full orbit of the planet, they would provide passengers with a brief experience of weightlessness and a view of Earth from the blackness of space.

The frontier got pushed back a little further...

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo makes history with1st rocket-powered flight

[NQ6U]

How long before they get the warp engines working?

[N8GAV]

How long before they get the warp engines working?

Next week........

[K7SGJ]

What's the big deal? It's not the first time a virgin went lickity split.

[KC2UGV]

How long before they get the warp engines working?

I'm hazarding within the next couple of decades. They have the theory, now it's time to figure out how to make something to make the theory work.

[ki4itv]

I'm hazarding within the next couple of decades. They have the theory, now it's time to figure out how to make something to make the theory work.

They keep hitting the energy brick wall. Hope I'm still alive when they finally crack this nut; It'll be an onrush of technological advancement like never before. Worth seeing.

[kb2vxa]

They're hitting the energy wall because they're looking at energy in a way that hasn't changed in 150 odd Tesla years. When they find a way to make science fiction science fact, that is looking with new eyes things will happen.

[NQ6U]

They're hitting the energy wall because they're looking at energy in a way that hasn't changed in 150 odd Tesla years. When they find a way to make science fiction science fact, that is looking with new eyes things will happen.

That, and the fact that, if you believe Einstein's general theory of relativity (which has stood up to every test thrown at it so far), as you approach the speed of light the amount of energy required approaches the infinite. It's going to take a lot more than new eyes to work around that, it's going to take a momentous change in our understanding of the laws governing the universe.

[KC2UGV]

That, and the fact that, if you believe Einstein's general theory of relativity (which has stood up to every test thrown at it so far), as you approach the speed of light the amount of energy required approaches the infinite. It's going to take a lot more than new eyes to work around that, it's going to take a momentous change in our understanding of the laws governing the universe.

Well, they're down to about a mass the size of V'Ger to make it happen (Theoretically), by changing the shape of the torus, and oscillating the wave's energy function. A POC has taken place in a lab.

The great thing about the Alcubierre drive: It doesn't violate Relativity since everything locally still moves at sub-C speeds. It's the propagation of the space time folding (Which can exceed C) that moves faster, and moves everything in the bubble along with it (While not violating relativity).

[NQ6U]

The great thing about the Alcubierre drive: It doesn't violate Relativity since everything locally still moves at sub-C speeds. It's the propagation of the space time folding (Which can exceed C) that moves faster, and moves everything in the bubble along with it (While not violating relativity).

The not-so-great thing about the Alcubierre Drive is that it requires the existence of negative mass, something that none of the current standard models of the universe support. That's why I said that it would take a momentous change in our understanding of the laws governing the universe.