SpaceShipOne Flight Not as Perfect as it Seemed 609
ArbiterOne writes "SpaceShipOne's flight wasn't as perfect as it seemed, according to Burt Rutan and New Scientist. Apparently, at one point in the descent, the pilot completely lost attitude control. According to him, "If that had happened earlier, I would never have made it and you all would be looking sad right now." Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?"
Still a great flight (Score:5, Insightful)
So ? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's perfectly normal (Score:5, Insightful)
It's how aeronautical design's been done for decades. I very much doubt this'll be a major setback for them.
This is why more people didnt go (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why, it was a test run, things can, and did (though fortunatly not bad enough to have resulted in loss of life) go wrong.
I think this was exactly the right way for them to have approached this, go up with as little extra as possible, see what goes well and what doesn't, and make revisions based on that. Though an extra 300lbs might not have mattered much with this particular problem, in other cases it could have turned a small problem into a disaster.
who else (Score:2, Insightful)
Minor Issue + Space = Scary, but keep trying! (Score:5, Insightful)
The flight was a success, the pilot survived, and the ship wasn't damaged? Good job guys! Don't get lazy!
Accept the risk (Score:5, Insightful)
There's been quite enough of that already, thank you very much. Get ready for it, it's going to happen. Every pioneering effort accumulates causualties.
This is sad (Score:2, Insightful)
It should have been expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be too harsh (Score:4, Insightful)
Space flight is dangerous. What amazes me is that even big problems don't result in fatalities whereas, in the case of Challenger(maybe Columbia), a minor problem resulted in the death of the crew.
Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed! NASA never has accidents that kill people. Through the mass application of science and billions of taxpayer dollars, all risk has been eliminated from space travel. Carry on, sir.
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is why more people didnt go (Score:5, Insightful)
100km is defined as space... and its not a big deal that its being done, the big deal is that he did it for cheap.
If I get my wife Barely pregnant, barring complications she will nevertheless have a baby
if I barely hit you with a hand grenade, you will be just as dead.
if I barely hit your house with a nuclear weapon, you will still be dead.
the wright brothers barely went 100 meters, but it was powered flight.
Barely is the difference between hitting and missing.
Class act (Score:5, Insightful)
Credit Mike Melville and Burt Rutan for being so open about the problems they experienced. Remember, this is 1 day after the flight! Compare that with how NASA closed ranks and divulged Columbia information with an eye dropper for weeks after the disaster. The only statements made by the mission controllers were through their lawyers. The Russians and Chinese would never admit to problems at all. Burt Rutan is a genious, he puts his work on the line for all the world to see. Space Ship 1 is a class act all the way around.
they will win (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, but let's all remember... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Class act (Score:2, Insightful)
minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:5, Insightful)
According to one article they had to run on backup systems [bbc.co.uk], another said the pilot heard a loud BANG at one point (lost that link). Not happy stuff, clearly they moved too soon.
For me, i'm not all that interested in the higher cost version of scaled composites, Rutan IS a pioneer, but previous work has also been government related. Which is why I laugh at the whole notion of public/private. Don't get me wrong, govt funding/projects are a good thing. But im sick of the BS pretending that there's the government and there's private industry. They are interelated, and we would do well to discuss, and plan, that relationship and public funding of r&d. And dont get me started on healthcare.
Re:Don't be too harsh (Score:4, Insightful)
I also don't call a big hole in the heat resistant paneling when you plan to endure metal melting temperatures a small problem either.
In contrast getting your ship pointed in the wrong direction for a while is smaller in that at least you get a chance to correct the problem (and in fact he had already corrected some issues in control moments after he fired the rockets proving he is an excellent pilot, damn lucky, or both).
All in all this flight was probably as perfect as any adventure into space can hope to be.
Re:attitude control (Score:4, Insightful)
The word comes from Latin aptus, meaning fastened or fitted. Actually, the aeronautic meaning is the primary one - originally the word was used to describe a position of an object related to some framework, backdrop or just the horizon, only in the modern times it attained the new meaning, a position of human being versus the society.
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? It seems to me that Scaled Composites have redefined "enough money" to be a hell of a lot lower than it used to be. So far they've spent about $20 million, which sounds like a lot, but let's put that into some perspective: That's less than the cost of a brand new 747. It's about 5% of the cost of a single shuttle launch. It's less than a 5th of what the Canadian government recently pissed away on cronyism in the recent sponsorship scandal. It's the amount of cash Peter Jackson is getting paid to direct King Kong. On the scale that these guys are operating $20 million is a piss in the bucket. It's more than you or I might happen to have lying around in spare change, but compared to the costs for standard everyday (non space going)performance aircraft it is unbelievably cheap.
Jedidiah.
Chicken Little (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon. What are you a Mac user?
test flight (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
SpaceShipOne and Scaled Composites are very good, but they are like the japanese entering the car market. Also, they are designing to a much smaller scope than the space shuttle.
we will win (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:right angle turns at 62 miles... (Score:4, Insightful)
if he had done a 90 deg turn at that speed he would not be talking about it.
Challenger reference? (Score:3, Insightful)
But it was the sublime view that affected him the most. "The sky was jet black, with light blue along the horizon - it was really an awesome sight," he said. "You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God."
That just brought me back to 1986 when the Challenger exploded during ascent and Ronald Reagan's address to the nation that night...
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/speeches/
Say what you will about Reagan, regardless of how you felt about his policies (many were quite controversial), he sure could deliver great speeches.
Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:5, Insightful)
Commie.
The fact is, in a capitalist society (or at least one that's MOSTLY capitalist), spending tax dollars and non-tax dollars are different things. If tax dollars are spent, you get a $900 toilet seat, $5 million in wireless equipment that never leaves the loading dock, etc. It's impossible for government to be efficient, because there's no incentive for efficiency. On the other hand, if private dollars are spent, there's a very big incentive to be efficient: They get to keep the money they don't spend! (or at least whoever is funding them gets to).
That is the very reason SpaceShipOne cost $20 million instead of $2 billion. If we ever want space flight to be within the reach of the average person, NASA is NOT going to get us there. It's private programs like this that will make the cost reasonable.
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does. Though I'm not sure what it says about his judgement. I certainly have the highest respect for Melville as a pilot - he's been testing for Burt for decades. However, when you look at the flight - he noticed control anomalies immediately after separating from White Knight, but chose to continue the flight - maybe he did indeed get very lucky. What caused the bang? What caused the control problems both early and late in the flight?
In flight training, my instructor called it 'get home-itis'. When you're close to home you're a lot more likely to press on in deteriorating circumstances than if you're still far from home. With the public & press invited to this launch, was there too much pressure on Melville to make the flight despite early signs of possible problems? I hate to second guess a professional of his caliber, but it feels like there was a lot of luck involved in this flight.
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Then comparisons with the space shuttle will be somewhat more valid.
Re:Could this pose problems? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still a great flight (Score:3, Insightful)
They'll do far better next time. For the purpose of learning more about their craft and what it will take to acomplish their goal, these (small) failures did far more to advance them than a "perfect" flight ever would have. A report of a "perfect" flight would have me worried. This report has me cheering.
Re:This is sad (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but more important (Score:3, Insightful)
The space disasters where everyone dies are ones where the pilots have no idea there is a problem, and the computers can't fix it.
Challenger had an o-ring problem that was wilfully ignored by engineers, and hidden from the pilots. Had the pilot been told that a catastrophic breach been possible with a forzen ring, the flight would have never left, and 7 people would still be alive.
Columbia had an accident on ascent, the problem was never properly explained to the pilot, nor was any engineer allowed to view the problem area before re-entry. Had either happened, all 7 would still be alive. They could have orbited for another 28 days at least.
Re:As they say... (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Wheels side DOWN.
Re:Accept the risk (Score:2, Insightful)
life is dangerous and scary, so to use the words of my 11th grade english teacher, "Deal with it"
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Class act (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a sec. If congress and the press started accusing Rutan of being negligent, you can bet your ass his coworkers would close ranks.
And if something really complicated and non-obvious has occured, they will release the information they learn as they learn it. Today they tell us there was a problem with attitude thrusters. Maybe tomorrow they will learn that the problem was with the main engine gymbal. If that happens, are you going to say they are divulging info with an eye dropper?
Re:It should have been expected (Score:5, Insightful)
The Bell X-1 used a similar electric trim for pitch, to overcome instabilities going through Mach 1.
Because the elevons on SpaceShipOne control both pitch and roll, Melville was left with no control on two out of three axes at the end of his climb. I cannot imagine how this must have felt, but he recovered with astonishing speed -- and was playing around with floating M&M's a few seconds later. It's unclear to me just what kind of "backup system" he used to control the ship after the trim motor failure, perhaps it was the cold-gas thrusters.
SpaceShipOne depends on still being within the vestiges of the atmosphere for control while the rocket is firing, although the parent poster is correct, control will get sloppy toward the end of the burn as they get above 150,000 ft. The ship has the advantage that it is going very fast indeed at that point, so while there is not a lot of air up there, the forces is generates is more than you would expect.
I was surprised watching the launch that the exhaust plume did not change much during the flight from 50,000 ft to burnout -- I would have expected to see far more expansion as it left the atmosphere -- as you see during a MinuteMan launch, for example. This again points to the ship still being atmosphere of some significant (while small!) density at burnout.
That Mike Melville is one hell of a pilot, his skill and Burt Rutan's innovative feather recovery saved the day. Every previous manned exoatmospheric craft depended on flying an extremely precise attitude before and during re-entry. Failure to maintain this attitude led to the loss of an X-15 and the NF-104 as dramatically recounted in The Right Stuff. SpaceShipOne has no effective attitude control during re-entry, but feathering the wing put the ship into an extremely stable high-drag configuration. Once the ship was subsonic and the wing was folded back into its normal position, the manual control of the elevons was used to fly the ship to a perfect landing.
If you look at SpaceShipOne as it flew yesterday, there was significant work done in the tail booms after the previous flight and prior to this one -- the most obvious change is the installation of a few more camera portholes (presumably with cameras behind them). That's the first place I'd look for the cause of the trim failure.
The launch yesterday was great fun to attend, and I really do think that it will mark a profound change in our access to space.
Thad Beier
Re:Class act (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that's fair or even justified. NASA is (primarily) a government organization. They have contractors to pay, politicians to appease, etc. Every flight is a multimilion dollar undertaking, and consider the vast majority for them have gone well, they must be doing something right.
Yesterday's flight, while incredible, was done with a very low budget (and in some ways, seat of the pants). Not that that's inherently "wrong", but they'd have a lot less people to answer to if something catastrophic happened. They'd probably have some investors to explain to, but NASA had over 300 million with Columbia. Would you rather the answers come out quickly or correctly?
So What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at it this way, the last time NASA screwed up people died. Scaled Composites screwed up and a craft buckled slightly but returned home safely. I think they are doing alright.
call me old fashioned... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree totally, that was my first reaction after reading the details of the flight. One imagines that (in private, over a nice glass of single-malt) Rutan gave Melville a friendly dress-down:
"Now, let me get this straight, Mike. Exactly how many uncommanded 90-degree rolls would it take for you to start thinking it might be time to shut down the motor?"
(A damn fine achievement, nonetheless. That whole team are folks I want on *my* side.)
Not an insurmountable problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad there are people out there doing that kind of thing. I'm also glad I'm not one of them.
Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:3, Insightful)
It also doesn't have the contractual and budgetary quirks that give you a $900 toilet seat or $2000+ hammer. The main problem is that the government has no idea what a certain item will cost for R&D and construction and budgets a certain amount to a contractor. If the contractor spends $10000 and finds an acceptable hammer solution on a $500000 budget, the numbers get badly skewed, quickly. btw, it seems to me that the toilet seat also included the framework to hold it and had to have specific testing to pass military specifications, which may also have contributed to the expense.
NASA itself is really a different bird... the Shuttle is build as a heavy load lifter, not a passenger craft. A lot of the parts for the shuttle are contracted, not built in house, which has the advantage of getting competing designs, but the disadvantage of added expense (even if you go with the lowest bidder, the cost of evaluation probably makes up for the difference). NASA also has a huge R&D role and gets their fingers in everything, from new materials and fabrics to foodstuffs and weightlessness research.
SpaceShipOne fills a void, because NASA feels there is no need for passenger spacecraft - and from their point of view, they're correct. NASA's primary goals are military deployment and research, so only puts people in space to do work - construction, fixing satellites, research etc. They don't care about the commercial aspects like tourism because they're not a business. A lot of the research done or funded by NASA eventually trickles down into consumer goods.
Safety-what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it's just a typo -- you meant safety-wary, I'm sure -- but it's very apropos.
I'm safety-weary, myself. I'm tired of everything having to be 100% safe and boring. My kids know not to jump off the top of the slide, but because some kids don't, you hardly ever see the old-school metal slide with a narrow set of steps and a steep drop at the end.
On the grownup side, all Rutan's test pilots know that they're strapping themselves to a very large firecracker that could as easily go BOOM as not. They know the risks, and accept them. I hope we'll continue to see more willingness to take a personal risk when the rewards are justified. That's where heroes come from.
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you actually had a inflight problem yet? Did you just panic and land of the first flat surface you could find? Or did you think about it a bit and press on?
Yes, I've had my moment of crises. And I flew home.
Re:Indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah they are both vehicles but they don't have much else in common.
The Shuttle is designed to take large payloads into space and stay there for days with a large crew.
The SS1 is built to get a couple people up there and play around for a bit.
yada yada (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) The ship was successfully launched
(2) The ship achieved it's goal
(3) Both ship and pilot returned safely to the ground
I would call this a success, wouldn't you?
I'd also point out that the pilot - who, I'd wager, has more experience testing experimental craft than all of Slashdot put together - was so concerned over the irregularities of the flight that he...played with M&M's while weightless.
Yep, ol' Mike was riddled with doubt and fear over the safety of his ship, he was.
Hand-wringers, space never was, and never will be, for you.
Max
Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P (Score:2, Insightful)
SpaceShipOne can barely fit 3 people, the shuttle can fit many more, plus cargo. There is not a proportional cost to weight ratio: the more weight you launch the much more it costs. Also consider the shuttle can reach altitudes of over 385 miles.
So that is *not* the very reason spaceshipone costs 20m instead of 2B! Peas and carrots. NASA has a very different mandate then Scaled Composites.
Re:Still 62% willing to fly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just ask Ayrton Senna da Silva. You can end up dead easily enough without leaving the surface of the earth.
Doesn't mean I wouldn't jump at a chance to take a demo ride with Schumi or Sir Jackie.
Shit happens, but mostly, on a day to day basis, it doesn't. It's a fucking crap shoot out there, or even if you stay home in bed. Might as well compute some odds, take a few calculated risks, and have a bit of fun before you die.
Or even while you're dying. You really can you know. I doesn't have to suck at all.
That doesn't mean I don't want to see my 100th or some such, but even then, I'd rather die by falling off Denali than lying in some hospital bed with tubes stuck in me.
So please God/whoever/whatever, if you only grant me one wish in this life, make it that in my final hours I'm doing something I love, which might only mean granting me the strength to escape from my hospital bed, crawl into the woods somewhere, sit down with my back to a tree where I can feel the grass, smell the air, see the sky, and die with some fucking dignity, even if that does mean dying a bit "early."
Would I fly in this thing? Shit yeah. Who knows, it might well result in my having a great story to tell my grandkids about, instead of getting hit by a car while crossing the street for a popsicle if I'd stayed home.
Life is not certain. Death is. Stop worrying about it so much.
KFG
Who thought it was perfect? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is being presented as some kind of controversy or embarassment. It's neither.
Get Over It (Score:3, Insightful)
Duh? You think? This kind of flying is full of all kinds of problems. Of course that would be the question we would all expect from the local News at 5 info bimbo. "Like oh my gosh... This stuff is like really difficult..."
Get Over it. It's a test flight. Stuff like this happens. Engineering fly toys isn't perfect.
Example: Early test of the big engine to be hung on the 777. All the engineers said the computer sims and such said the new big engine was good to go. That it could be hung on the 777 for its first flight no problem. The boss over-ruled the engineers and played it extra safe. One of the big new engines was hung on a 747 ( with the other 3 of its engines being regular 747 ones ). Right after rotation, the engine starts stalling in the high angle of attack air. -bang- -bang- -bang-, So the first flight of the 777 could have ended up as a big smoking hole.
You try and be as safe as possible, and not kill your monkey pilot.... Even then; stuff happens. That flight yesterday was based on great engineering. It was still full of enough danger and isn't like going out and cranking up a Cessna 172 or something.
"As I came out of the atmosphere I no longer had any attitude control,"
Well duh... welcome to spaceflight buddy. Got thrusters?
Despite Melvill's 25 years of piloting experimental craft, he found even the normal operation of the rocketship alarming, as it travelled faster and higher than any previous privately-built craft.
Again, welcome to a new way of flying
"Coming down is frightening, because of that roaring sound," he said. "You can really hear how that vehicle is being pounded."
You zero experience space wannabe's wanting to pony up some $$$ for a fun ride, better wear some diapers, so as not to be embarrassed at the post flight photo op. Freight train ride down to hell.
Having said all that... that team did a great job.
Re:This says quite a bit about... (Score:3, Insightful)
Though I'm not sure what it says about his judgement.
Maybe he's just not the kind of pussy that tries to back out of anything potentially dangerous at the first sign of trouble? It takes balls to be a test pilot, and the stuff you cited indicates that all he did was apply his balls to the situation.
Really, the kind of test flights you seem to want are the kind NASA gives us. Aren't we trying to replace NASA?
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
Thiokol engineers specifically warned against operating the O-rings that caused the Challenger mishap in very cold weather (i.e. weather with temperatures that exceeded the design values for the shuttle). They gave these warnings because they did not have sufficient data to be confident that the O-rings would work at those low temperatures, and (IIRC) even had some data that tentatively indicated that the O-rings would fail at low temps. NASA ignored these warnings, and chose to operate the shuttle in a flight regime outside of the specified design envelope.
The fragility of the RCC tiles that led to the Columbia mishap was well known. Several studies pointed out that allowing impacts to these tiles was dangerous. In fact, I have heard from a friend who works with some of the original shuttle design engineers that the shuttle external tank was specifically designed to prevent the chunks of falling ice that caused the Columbia mishap precisely because they knew that the RCC was fragile. NASA later chose to change the tank design to one that was much more susceptible to creating ice fragments. Again causing a situation in which the original design assumptions were violated, and failure resulted.
Bottom line: neither Columbia or Challenger were caused by a lack of knowledge when it came to material properties, but rather an active decision to violate the known design envelope. This kind of action might be excusable in a test flight program that is truly "pushing the envelope" (and even then, I'd expect to see much more in the way of ground testing first), but is certainly not acceptable in an operational program (which is how NASA portrayed the shuttle after the first few flights).
Re:This isn't what I expected (Score:4, Insightful)
When was the last time you saw any innovation in commercial aviation?
September 11, 2001
Sure, mod me down, troll and all. It's an honest answer, at least.
Re:You CAN do it in the atmosphere, of course... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Weight. An MG + Ammo weighs a signifigant amount.
2. Aiming. How do you aim the thing? For the time you'd basically need another person which means more weight.
3. From 1 and 2, more weight means less speed. Ever wonder why the ME 262 was considered one of the greatest planes of the war? Speed. As another poster said "speed is king". In fact during WW2 altitude was king, because it could be converted to speed at will, while speed decreases.
There were some fighters with rear mounted MGs. For example during the Battle of Britian BF110s were designed fighters (althought they could carry a bomb load) and had a rear mounted MG and gunner. They didn't do so well against the Spitfires and Hurricanes.