Rutan's SpaceshipOne Hits 200,000 Feet 292
An anonymous reader writes "Burt Rutan's privately-built SpaceshipOne is one step closer to winning the X-Prize after zooming to what witnesses say was somewhere around 200,000 feet on only its third powered flight. (See also the partial update from Scaled Composites.)"
Re-launch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who's ever been on the tours at Kennedy Space Center knows that the space shuttle launches don't begin with the countdown. Rather, they begin when the space shuttle touches down and the crews start preparing the shuttle for re-launch. Given that it takes (took?) NASA a helluva long time to get the shuttles prepped for re-launch, I'm wondering how these teams in pursuit of the X-Prize are doing with their plans to quickly refuel and relaunch the craft(s) within the alloted time period.
Third Flight (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Re-launch? (Score:5, Insightful)
The technology of WhiteKnight / SpaceshipOne is radically different from that of the shuttle. Largely due to 2 things: 1) Burt et al are only going for 100,000 meters rather than orbit. 2) Advances in technology since the 70s, when the shuttle was designed.
Personally I expect that they'll be capable of relaunching within hours - well below the two weeks allowed by the contest organizers.
Re:Paid by the microsoft tax (Score:5, Insightful)
> Microsoft tax often ridiculed by slashdotters....
Most of Paul Allen's money was from inflated Microsoft stock prices. Not actual money from Microsoft. Money from selling stock comes from investors and not Microsoft customers.
Granted that a lot of the Microsoft stock value comes from Microsofts bank account. However strictly speaking Paul Allen and Bill Gates got most of their fortunes from the investment community who bought shares.
Re:Paid by the microsoft tax (Score:4, Insightful)
And had Microsoft's practices been more, uh... responsible, their performance in the market wouldn't have been as good, they wouldn't have achieved the same level of dominance they did, and subsequently investors wouldn't have valued Microsoft's stock so high.
So while technically you're correct, the money Paul Allen made from Microsoft is only one or two steps removed from the actual business practices (eg: Microsoft tax) of the corporation.
Re:Info from Scaled Composites (Score:4, Insightful)
So the pilot had a pair, but Burt Rutan's ability to make the most bizare looking aircraft be easier to fly than the equivelent normal-looking aircraft is just inhuman.
Re:Info from Scaled Composites (Score:3, Insightful)
However, I agree that the pilot definitely has some cojones. He needs them just to get in the damn thing and light it off!
Gov't oversight?? (Score:3, Insightful)
On April 1, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced it had issued to Scaled Composites the world's first license for a sub-orbital manned rocket flight.
XCOR Aerospace, also of Mojave, California, announced in April it had received a Reusable Launch Vehicle mission license from the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
NASA, DOT, FAA...
Forgive me for being cynical, but how many government agencies need to be involved? Do we really need this much agency and departmental overlap for this stuff?
Time to burn the newly minted Karma I guess.
Re:Gov't oversight?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Rocket Planes and Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
By the time the X-15 was doing its stuff, NASA was already gearing up for the Apollo program, and the ballistic missile guys (primarily lead by Von Braun, but it did involve others) were trying to push a competing program. It should be obvious who won that debate.
The Space Shuttle should have (and in a small part did) been a technological decendant of the X-15 project, but instead most of its design technologies came from the Saturn V program and its predecessors.
The promise of the X-15 was to have routine reusable aircraft for travel into space. The pilots of the X-15 were finally granted astronaut wings, but politcally even that wasn't really appreciated by the guys at NASA. The prep crew for the X-15 was just a dozen or so people, compared to the hundreds it took even for Alan Shepard to do his sub-orbital flight. It is indeed too bad that this research wasn't followed, but not because it was a technological dead-end. It wasn't followed simply because Congress in their infinite wisdom decided that programs of this nature should be cut. And it was almost impossible to get a follow-on project to go this route.
Space Ship One really is the heir apparent now of the X-15 flights, and you had better believe that Burt Rutan knows just about all there is to know about the X-15 flights... probabally a world-class expert on the subject.
Other X-class projects have been done since the X-15 (Notably the X-33) and they have all suffered with political problems coming from folks at NASA thinking they (the X-projects) are mussling into their turf. The X-prize was even named that in honor of these X-class planes and the potential they could have had if they hadn't been abandoned.
The inspiring thing is that this ship goes higher and higher, pushing the materials and seeking refinements on what they already have.
Finally, remember the saying of Robert A. Heinlein: "Low-earth orbit is half-way to the rest of the entire solar system."
That sums up the importance of these flights. If refinements of materials and general ship design gradually lead to something that goes into orbit or even can leave the earth's gravity (like the Apollo missions), the age of manned planetary exploration will truly begin. Eventually, if you keep getting higher and higher, you are going to run out of altitude to the point that it really doesn't matter any more. You will be in orbit regardless.
Re:Re-launch? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, no. Solid Fuel is much easier to handle and replace than crygenic fuels.
And SS1 is a hybrid, so it may require replacement of the solid fuel portion of its engine. It is designed for quick replacement though, so I don't imagine that it will be much of an issue.
Biggest difference between the two (not counting size) is that SS1 will never approach the nearly 8000 m/s required to put a Shuttle into orbit. Which dramatically reduces wear and tear on SS1. Or increases it on the shuttle, depending on perspective.
See Scaled's launch journal... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does anyone know? (Score:3, Insightful)