science

The Spaceship Company

The Spaceship Company is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Spaceship Company rather than just read about it. In short: The Spaceship Company (TSC) is a British/American spacecraft manufacturing company that was founded by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson in mid-2005 and was jointly owned by Virgin Group (70%) and Scaled Composites (30%) until 2012 when Virgin Galactic became the sole owner. TSC was formed to own the technology created by Scaled for Virgin Galactic's Virgin SpaceShip program.

Key takeaways

The Spaceship Company belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Spaceship Company to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Spaceship Company from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Spaceship Company (TSC) is a British/American spacecraft manufacturing company that was founded by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson in mid-2005 and was jointly owned by Virgin Group (70%) and Scaled Composites (30%) until 2012 when Virgin Galactic became the sole owner. TSC was formed to own the technology created by Scaled for Virgin Galactic's Virgin SpaceShip program. This includes developments on the care-free reentry system and cantilevered-hybrid rocket motor, licensed from Paul Allen and Burt Rutan's Mojave Aerospace. The company is manufacturing Virgin Galactic's spacecraft and has plans to sell spacecraft to other buyers. The suborbital launch system offered included the SpaceShipTwo (SS2) spacecraft and the White Knight Two (WK2) carrier aircraft.

History

2005-2010 The company was founded in 2005 by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson, and was initially jointly owned by Virgin Group and Scaled Composites, to own the technology created by Scaled for Virgin Galactic's Virgin SpaceShip program. Virgin Galactic was announced to be the launch customer for the SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo vehicles. Virgin placed an initial order for five SpaceShipTwos and two WhiteKnightTwos, with "exclusive use of the systems for the initial 18 months of commercial passenger operations." By late 2010, the company had announced plans to build three WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and five SpaceShipTwo rocket planes.

2011-present Since the first WK2 and the first SS2 were built by Scaled Composites, TSC had responsibility for the manufacture of the second WK2 aircraft (not built as of 2024) and the second SS2 spacecraft for Virgin Galactic, as well as additional production craft as other customers for the vehicles would emerge. Virgin Galactic acquired 100% ownership of TSC in 2012, by acquiring the 30% stake still owned by Scaled Composites, which itself had been acquired by Northrop Grumman. The company had grown to 70 persons by July 2011, 145 by June 2013, 250 by July 2014, and 430 by July 2018. In June 2013, Doug Shane joined TSC to become executive VP and general manager, ending a 31-year career with Scaled Composites, including five as president. In July 2014, Shane was named president of the company. In 2016, it was announced that TSC, Virgin Galactic, and the Virgin Group, would be collaborating with Boom Technology to develop a supersonic trans-oceanic passenger jetliner. By February 2018, The Spaceship Company was "duplicating and testing prototypes of an original design of SpaceShipTwo" with the goal of sending a model into space in 2019. It was building models for Virgin Galactic.

Spaceship construction In March 2010, following the construction of the prototypes of WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo by Scaled Composites, The Spaceship Company stated in 2010 that it was moving the aircraft and spacecraft into commercial production. By July 2014, TSC was halfway complete with the build of the second SpaceShipTwo—VSS Unity—and was 65 percent complete as of early November 2014. Virgin Galactic rolled out VSS Unity on 19 February 2016. A release by TSC on the company's Twitter account in May 2018 showed two more spacecraft, after VSS Unity, under construction.

Aircraft construction TSC collaborated with Boom Technology to create a new supersonic transport. The initial 1/3-size prototype would be the XB-1 "Baby Boom" Supersonic Demonstrator.

Production facility In November 2010, TSC broke ground on a 68,000-square-foot (6,300 m2) aircraft assembly plant at Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. The manufacturing facility was expected to employ "up to 170 people when production is in full swing." In July 2011, TSC announced it would begin production of "the first sections for a second WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft along with the first of multiple SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital vehicles for Virgin Galactic and, ultimately, other customers" in the "Final Assembly, Integration and Test Hangar" (FAITH) in the fall of 2011. In September, 2011, TSC completed construction of the new plant, on schedule, for US$8,000,000. The production of new spacecraft—initially three WhiteKnightTwo aircraft and five of the smaller SpaceShipTwo rocket planes—was planned to commence before the end of that month. The FAITH hangar was intended to be used for building the one-piece composite spars and wing for WK2, fuselage lay-up for both WK2 and SS2, and "will also be used for major maintenance and will serve as the company’s operating headquarters."

References

General

"Branson and Rutan Form 'The Spaceship Company' To Jointly Manufacture and Market Spaceships for the new Sub-Orbital Personal Spaceflight Industry" (Press release). Scaled Composites. July 27, 2005. Archived from the original on 2007-08-21. Retrieved 2007-09-04.

External links

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic video on TSC, as of the opening of the second hangar facility, September, 2011.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Spaceship Company

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Spaceship Company claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Spaceship Company before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Spaceship Company ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Spaceship Company

In research: The Spaceship Company appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Spaceship Company in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Spaceship Company is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2005 establishments in California, American companies established in 2005, Companies based in Los Angeles County, California, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Spaceship Company outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Spaceship Company in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Spaceship Company means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Spaceship Company out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Spaceship Company in simple terms?

Why does The Spaceship Company matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Spaceship Company?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Spaceship Company.