Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff
I write about the future of science, technology, and culture.
In case you didn’t get enough of Virgin Galactic‘s successful powered flight of SpaceShipTwo on Thursday, here’s another treat for you: the company has released footage of the flight from a camera on the spacecraft’s tail, so you can see the rocket engine fire up close and personal.
The engine itself isn’t the creation of Virgin Galactic. It was developed and built for SpaceShipTwo by the Sierra Nevada Corporation.
The engine is a hybrid propulsion system that uses nitrous oxide as an oxidizer and Hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) as fuel. (In rocket parlance, a hybrid engine is one where the propellants are in two separate states of matter. In this case, the HTPB is a solid.) The benefit of this setup is that the fuels are non-toxic, and the burn itself is very low emission compared to other rocket fuels.
“Today’s test has once again proven the safety and reliability of our hybrid rocket engine technology,” Sierra Nevada VP Mark Sirangelo said in a statement Thursday. “We have now supported two successful crewed flight tests for Virgin Galactic.”
In addition to developing the engine for Virgin Galactic, Sierra Nevada is also developing it for its own reusable spacecraft known as the Dream Chaser. The Dream Chaser is a competitor to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, and when fully functional it will aim to transport cargo and up to seven crew members to the International Space Station. Unlike Dragon, which resembles the capsules of the old Apollo program, Dream Chaser looks almost like a mini-Space Shuttle, and will be capable of runway landings.
On August 22, Dream Chaser had a successful “captive-carry” test flight. During this test, the spacecraft had its systems successfully evaluated while hanging from the bottom of another aircraft. This successful test was another checkbox on its list of milestones it needs to meet for NASA. Sierra Nevada and NASA both expect that all of Dream Chaser’s milestones will be met by the end of 2014.
But while we wait for a full powered flight from the Dream Chaser, you can watch the footage of SpaceShipTwo’s flight as seen from the tail camera below.