SpaceShipOne Rockets To 68,000 Feet

ehartwell writes "According to Space.com, Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne flew its first rocket-powered flight today, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' 12-second first flight. SpaceShipOne's engine burned for 15 seconds, pushing it to Mach 1.2 (930 mph) and a peak altitude of 68,000 feet. To win the X-Prize they need to reach 330,000 feet twice within 2 weeks."

John Carmack ?

[EmCeeHawking]

Sounds like someone needs to stop spending so much time tweaking the Doom3 Engine and get on the stick. Sundays and Tuesdays aren't going to be enough to beat a fulltime effort.

For those that haven't used imperial for ages....

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation:

ehartwell writes "According to Space.com, Scaled Composite's SpaceShipOne flew its first rocket-powered flight today, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' 12-second first flight. SpaceShipOne's engine burned for 15 seconds, pushing it to Mach 1.2 (1496 km/h) and a peak altitude of 20.7 kilometers . To win the X-Prize they need to reach 100.6 kilometers twice within 2 weeks."

Damn cold fusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only my cold-fusion flux-capacitor hadn't gone on the blink my electrogravatic anti-grav drive would humming along nicely and I'd be half-way to the Mars by now...

SpaceShipOne?

[Junior J. Junior III]

What, did it have the president on board? Please tell me it broke up upon re-entry...

No kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

The Duke Nukem: Forever team has been working on a fusion reactor in their spare time. We can all see what that did to that project's timeline.

Re:And so it begins.

[trentblase]

How long before commercial spaceflight tickets are offered by competing commercial organizations and WE get to pick the craft?

I choose the Millenium Falcon

Re:John Carmack ?

[Dark Lord Seth]

It'd be worse if he'd confuse both projects. That'd mean his rocket would require a quad Xeon MP 2,0ghz with 16gb of RIMM memory to launch while Doom3 would put your computer in orbit...

Frequent Flyer Miles

[LeiGong]

It's great that we're gonna finally be able eventually travel to the moon and all... but all of my frequent flyer miles are now freakin' useless... It took me forever save up these thousands of miles with Delta too. I'm still 230,000 miles sort. Dang.

Grump grump . . .

[Java Ape]

First, I really want to cheer these guys on, this is a great achievement, and I hope the champagne corks are popping all over Scaled Composite's.
On the other hand, I visited their site from a server running 800x600, and I really hope they hire a web-site designer someday. Ack! There's a huge static graphic in the top frame, and a tiny window for THE REST OF THE SITE. I mean, I can read like 3 lines of text! This graphic may be fine for a splash screen, but it makes it impossible to read the content! The only thing they could do to improve it is jam it full of flash and add a few blink tags, then it would be PERFECT!

Re:50 years from now...

[fiftyLou]

The ability to educate one's self should be the greatest lesson of a compulsary education.

Agreed. With the ability to dress one's self coming a close second.

First Contact

[frohike]

Am I the only one that had Magic Carpet Ride [imdb.com] going through my head while reading this article? :D

I kept reading "hybrid rocket motor" as "hyperspace motor"... ack... too much Asimov :)

Re:space race

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm... Iraq war $87 billion or going to the moon 50 billion..... Hmmmmm.... Tough choice.....

I say save up the extra $37 billion and buy yourself a war. The videos will be a lot more exciting, it's a lot safer (for you, anyway), you'll gain quite a bit more fame (or notoreity), and you can get the whole world involved instead of just the one or two friends who will fit in the spaceship with you. It costs a bit more, but with a war, you're definitely going to get your money's worth.

Re:50 years from now...

[Mantorp]

I disagree, I'm all about fact retention.
People can only gain my respect by beating me at Trivial Pursuit or shouting out answers before me while watching Jeopardy. I won't vote for someone whom I don't think can stand chance against me at TP which is why Bush is out in 04. That, and the fact I'm not a US citizen yet.

Re:No kidding

[Luigi30]

Will the game be powered by the Fusion Reactor Engine?

Re:who makes this component at armadillo ...

[mrjah]

"ESTES"

They use D motors.

Re:50 years from now...

[Lithus]

Yes, but sometimes we need facts, like roman numerals!
How else would we know when a movie was made?

Oh no, Carmack!

[l00sr]

Time to put Doom III on the back burner.

Re:Looks bad for Carmack

[enforcer999]

So, where is Carmack? I still think that Scaled Composites has the advantage. BTW, I am new to this message board but very happy I found it. I hate spam and love space science. Perfect. I am not a computer programmer or anything like that. I am a lawyer. Hi.

Re:Does the X-prize achievement scale to usefulnes

[s20451]

So I wonder if the X-prize is really meaningful in the scale of realistic space flight?

Well, what about other applications, like suborbital rocket courier from the West Coast to Japan?

USPS Rocket Priority: When it absolutely, positively, has to be there in an hour. Only $100/lb.