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Space Science

Burt Rutan On his Upcoming X-Prize Attempt 149

Posted by timothy from the good-fine-americans-like-dr-wernher-von-braun dept.
dkleinsc writes "The BBC is running an article about Burt Rutan, the head of Scaled Composites and creator of SpaceShip One. He talks about his motivation (besides fame and a big pile of cash) for the project."
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Burt Rutan On his Upcoming X-Prize Attempt More

Burt Rutan On his Upcoming X-Prize Attempt

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  • He's doing it for the chicks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:42PM (#10352899)
    Do you know how well "Have you ever had sex in outer space?" works as a pick-up line?

  • Inspiration from movies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stroustrup ( 712004 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:47PM (#10352917) Journal
    Reading this story, I am remided of the movie October Sky [imdb.com]. For wannabe rocket scientists, this is one of the most inspirational movies.

    It's based on a true story. The protagonist is now in a very high position in NASA.

  • 09/29/04 (Score:1, Funny)

    by kalicki ( 603822 )
    A date which will live in history?
    • Well, it is my birthday...
      • damn man, its the day after mine (will be 19). While we are on the subjets of birthdays though, happy birthday! :-)

      • Well, it is my birthday...

        Mine too. I live less than an hour north of Mojave, and I'm not working (starting a new job in a couple of weeks). So, naturally, I thought about going. I could get whatever lithographs they make with my birthday on them, and all that good stuff. I'd finally convinced myself that I could spend $35 on the parking pass... then I find out that I need to pay another $20 to FedEx the thing. That was the only shipping option, even though it absotively, posolutely did not have t

  • Big pile of cash? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:50PM (#10352931)
    I was under the impression that more money was being spent than he'd win on the X-Prize.

    It must be like that joke: I made a small fortune on the stock market. Problem is, I started with a large one.

    • Re:Big pile of cash? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JarrettHere ( 250292 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:23AM (#10353271)
      Yeah, but if you are a principle owner in THE company who proves that common humans can visit space, and provide the means... His relatives will be happy that he did shoot for the X-Prize. (See also Joan Kroc, Wife of Ray Kroc, McDonalds Founder)
    • Think of it as a big car rebate, just like how you can buy a new Ford truck and get a couple grand back. Well as mentioned in the interview with him, this has been a dream of his for a very long time and he realized that if he waited for someone else to make commercial space travel a reality he might be 90 before he would get the chance and who's going to let a 90 year old on board?

      So now he gets to do what he wanted plus a good chance of getting most of his money back to boot lol. Would you buy a new truc

  • Great interview (Score:5, Insightful)

    by apsmith ( 17989 ) * on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:50PM (#10352934) Homepage
    After hearing that NASA wasn't going to fulfil his dream of routine spaceflight in his lifetime:

    "The first choice was to give up, and admit that I would never go into space, never see that black sky. The other choice I had was to do something about it."


    Putting dreams into actions - gotta love the guy!

    • but isn't his design a dead end? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @02:00AM (#10353379) Homepage
      It looks like he's built a vehicle that has a good shot at winning the X-prize. But it's not like you could tweak the design a bit and make something that could go into orbit and then return to earth. It's strictly a suborbital vehicle and it needs gravity to re-enter.

      But he will get to see black sky during daytime. So maybe he can die happy.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • What is this obsessive-compulsive devaluation that you must cater to?

        Okay, today its a 'sub-orbital' rocket, but thats still better than yesterday. And maybe tomorrow he'll build a bus that can take 30 people up there and bring them safely again .. .. what then, naysayer? "oh, but orbit is crass, the 'real' space challenge is on the moon' ..

        Freakin' negative people. I swear. They are so noisy...

      • Re:but isn't his design a dead end? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Inominate ( 412637 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @05:37AM (#10353877)
        You are quite wrong.

        Space-ship one is a suborbital vehicle meaning it goes straight up, and falls straight back down. Attaining orbit involves getting that high up, and simultaneously accellerating to some 20,000mph+, a feat which requires a hell of a lot more fuel than SS1 has available.

        An orbit is when you get going fast enough that you fall around the planet, instead of into it.

        There is also the problem of decelleration. The space shuttle has no retro rockets or anything. It uses it's rear-facing orbital maneuvering engines to slow down, and has to turn itself around to do so. Nothing SS1 couldn't do. However, the energy required to slow an orbiting spacecraft down using only rockets is immense. Because of this orbiting spacecraft use the atmosphere to slow down, which at 20,000mph generates temperatures which require special thermal protection.

        SS1 cannot ever achieve orbit. It's roughly the private equivalent of the X-15 project, the beginning of private manned spaceflight.

        All of that said, SS1 cost some $20 million dollars, pocket change to nasa or any military project. I wonder how much the same project would cost if NASA did it. Nowadays NASA is bogged down by bureaucracy, and controlled by PR more than anything. NASA should be dissolved and it's budget used in the form of grants to private space projects.

        • Space-ship one is a suborbital vehicle meaning it goes straight up, and falls straight back down. Attaining orbit involves getting that high up, and simultaneously accellerating to some 20,000mph+, a feat which requires a hell of a lot more fuel than SS1 has available.

          True. However, suppose you added a booster rocket to the SS1 design ? Or, since you're out of atmosphere at that point, you might even be able to use a nuclear salt-water rocket since the exhaust gasses would be shot parallel to ground at

      • SS1 and White Knight are part of what Scaled Composites calls "Tier One." According to some intarweb sources [thefreedictionary.com] Rutan has said that there will be a Tier Two or Tier Three. Orbital? Highly probable, mostly due to the fact that Scaled Composites owns the designs to the Roton [astronautix.com] *and* (my personal favorite) the Delta Clipper. [nasa.gov]

        I was skeptical of Rutan's true goal (ooo, black sky), but after hearing rumors, I think he and others are going to do what NASA couldn't; bring cheap space access to the masses.

  • If you live in Southern California, its not too far to go to see the launch. From the Ansari [primary.net] web site:
    launch currently scheduled for approximately 6:47 a.m.

    Mojave Civilian Flight Test Center
    Address: Mojave Airport
    1434 Flight Line Mojave, CA 93501
    Parking is $35. My boss is letting some of us trade 1/2 day off Wednesday for some Saturday work - we will car pool and split the fee. There is more expensive, premium parking available - but we can't tell what that buys us.

    Lucky me, I have cool boss. ;-)

    • Re:September 29 at the Mojave airport, California (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Lucky me, I have cool boss. ;-)

      Your boss isn't that cool if he's making you come back in on Saturday.

    • You can no longer buy tickets online [airshownetwork.com] for their X-Prize launch. It did not say if they are available through other means - you should probably call the number listed on my link to check if you really want to go.

      Which is why I am glad I got my tickets the day it was announced :P
    • I saw Burt and Mike speak at Airventure2004 in Oshkosh. 2 hours of great stuff including fantastic video - well worth the trip. Anyway, he said a couple times that he'd "really really like" to bring SS1 to Oshkosh and raffle off a pair of tickets to ride into space during the show! He seemed skeptical but hopefull about getting the OK to do it. I expect the following at Airventure2005 in decreasing likelyhood:

      1) They bring SpaceShipOne
      2) They launch it during the event
      3) He gets to send a couple ordinary

  • Well... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lifix ( 791281 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:54PM (#10352959) Homepage
    X-prize => Priviate citizen's in space => tourist's in space => priviate "space resort" => Advertisements in space => advertisements visible from earth in space => coca cola constlation / starbucks galaxy? Serriously, if we have tourists in space, they are gonna want to spend time up there, so we will need long term staff in space... Space tourourism (sp) is not a feasible buisness for many years to come imo.
    • Why is it that we, as a society, have been so obsessed with the absurd idea that the height of technology in advertising will be the giant orbiting billboard?

      It would make much more sense to just beam advertisements straight to my dreaming mind. .. If the ads were from Playboy or Spice TV, I may even consider opting in. I probably wouldn't even mind drinking Starbucks in that ad--but please, keep Carrot Top out of this.
    • Ah yes, a great man once complained, "This place is great and all but its just so artificial. The gravity, the air, the gophers. You might as well stay on Earth."
    • Space tourourism (sp) is not a feasible buisness for many years to come imo.

      Business is feasible whenever you can sell a product/service for more than it costs to provide that product/service. After that threshold is crossed it's just a question of how much of a margin the customers will bear and how many sales are required to cover the start-up and inventory/overhead costs and provide a ROI to the capitalists. YOU may not be willing to drop $20,000 on a 1-hour hop but that doesn't mean there aren't tho

  • what, no tiles? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ir0b0t ( 727703 ) * <{gro.aluossimnepo} {ta} {llewejm}> on Saturday September 25, 2004 @11:58PM (#10352978) Homepage Journal
    The description of the reentry strategy includes none of the bazillion tiles stuck all over the shuttlecraft. This seems like a better approach --- very simple and apparently a lot less heat. Did anyone notice that a Canadian team is also competing for the prize? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3539018.stm

    • Re:what, no tiles? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:04AM (#10353005)
      The description of the reentry strategy includes none of the bazillion tiles stuck all over the shuttlecraft. This seems like a better approach --- very simple and apparently a lot less heat.
      Thats because this is a suborbital flight and not an orbital one so there is not the insane amount heat generated when Rutan's craft re-enters the atmosphere.

    • Re:what, no tiles? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mj_1903 ( 570130 ) * on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:28AM (#10353095)
      Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, etc. did not use tiles. SpaceShipOne is using similar ablative compounds to remove the minor heat that it produces.

      Of course, if they were doing orbital flights where you would have to remove the insane amounts of kinetic energy they would probably use carbon-carbon or something similar. Tiles are too complex a beast for extremely reliable space flight.
      • Is there an advantage to orbital flight? Why couldn't an orbiting craft stop orbiting before reentry and return to the atmosphere like SS1?

        • Re:what, no tiles? (Score:5, Informative)

          by AeroNate ( 740123 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @02:54AM (#10353511)
          Is there an advantage to orbital flight? Why couldn't an orbiting craft stop orbiting before reentry and return to the atmosphere like SS1? In order to stop orbiting, they have to slow down from very high speed, and that requires getting rid of a huge amount of kinetic energy. In the case of the shuttle, capsules, etc, that energy is just turned into heat by the atmospheric drag. If you want to avoid that heating, you need to slow down in a different way. The only other choice is to use an engine burn, and that is hugely expensive because it means that you have to lift a lot of extra fuel into orbit along with your payload. In fact, it takes as much fuel to slow down as it takes to get into orbit in the first place (unless you get rid of some mass by tossing out a satellite). But carrying that extra "deorbit" fuel means that your original load on the launch pad has to be much much bigger too. It is better to just let the atmosphere slow you down.

    • No heat (Score:5, Informative)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:42AM (#10353148) Homepage Journal
      Orbital craft need to travel fast enough to orbit the earth. Fast enough to travel all the way around the planet in 90 minutes. That's why they come back in so fast.

      This craft is going to straight up, and fall back down. Much slower.
      • That and that is also why orbital reentries are at the shallowest angle possible. If their reentry would be any shallower, they would bounce right off. It it was any steeper, braking would be much faster. Then, the brakes would get too hot, and burn up. The brakes being the heat shield, that would not be a good thing.

        As this craft does not have to lose this insane amount of energy by braking against the atmosphere, it can come straight down again.
        • I was wondering, what is the weight of ion drives?

          Would it be possible for an ion drive to slowly decelerate a spacecraft before re-entry? I'm assuming it wouldn't be able to slow the craft fast enough.

      • Re:No heat (Score:2, Informative)

        by Schaffner ( 183973 )
        Sorry, you're wrong. SS1 is not going to go "straight up" and come "straight down". It will be going forward around Mach 3 and will be going in a parabola.
    • Not only is there a Canadian team, but there are actually TWO Canadian teams, as well as two teams from the UK, and one each from Romania, Argentina, Israel, and Russia.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Another news (Score:3, Informative)

    by semijoin ( 816610 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @12:02AM (#10352997)
    This is another newest story about the topic. http://mirror.metamenu.com/news.bbc.co.uk/3676312. stm [metamenu.com]

    • Re:Another news (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Moderators please note: The above link is the same as the main link in the article
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature /3676312. stm

      It would be best to resubmit this story for proper /. duplication.
  • he's going to cue up Steppenwolf before takeoff and ushering in a new era of peaceful space exploration and mini-skirts?

  • Rutan is Angry (Score:2, Informative)

    by BisonHoof ( 810891 )
    Rutan attacks US policy of striving to keep space access limited to military superpowers, which he believes is evidence of the smothering of commercial activities in near earth space.

  • NASA screwing us again? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sdcmk ( 238455 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:30AM (#10353286)
    " But, he says, ask the same question of Nasa now and the answer is the same as 30 years ago. Nasa is working on it and it will be affordable in 30 years' time."

    Yeah tell me about it, on the 27th NASA is going to do a dress rehearsal [nasa.gov] for the X-43 flight in October. Next month they are going for a new world record [nasa.gov] in the fastest jet powered aircraft in the world. The X-43 could have led to an airplane that can "fly into space" like Rutan mentioned as wanting to do in the article. However, from what I understand, NASA decided to cancel the successor of the X-43. Which is a shame because it is a very solid concept for finding a cheap way into orbit.

    This reminds me of the X-20? The successor of the X-15, that was planned to go into orbit. If Rutan, can succeed with a spacecraft that resembles the X-15 and enter orbit, I think that would show that NASA, in all it's wisdom, has held us back as far as manned space travel is concerned.
    • from what I understand, NASA decided to cancel the successor of the X-43.

      Because the Peoples' Representatives said "prioritize"?

      This reminds me of the X-20? The successor of the X-15, that was planned to go into orbit.

      Bacause the Peoples' Representatives said "Apollo and Great Society and Viet Nam" over "Apollo and X-20"?

    • Scramjets have nothing to do with space access (Score:4, Informative)

      by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @04:44AM (#10353796) Homepage
      Don't get me wrong - the X-43 is a fantastic engineering achievement. It may pave the way for things like a mach 10 airbreathing cruise missile or possibly even a hypersonic jet transport. But it has nothing to do with access to space.

      A space launch is a short acceleration mission. You spend very little time at any particular speed. A scramjet is good for efficient and sustained cruising at a certain range of speeds. It's not effective for takeoff. It's not effective for accelaration to supersonic speed. It's not effective for acceleration from supersonic to low hypersonic. It's not effective for accelerating from its top hypersonic speed up to orbital velocity. It's only good for a specific range of hypersonic velocities.

      Current plans are talking about using at least three different types of engines to make a single vehicle that can make it all the way to space. This is an enormous penalty in weight, vehicle shape and configuration. It's doubtful if a single vehicle can be designed for all these different flight regimes and still be light enough to make it into space at all. But even if it can be done there is absolutely no way it can be cheaper. The development and operational costs of such a complex system will be staggering.

      In short, saying that scramjets are the way to cheaper access to space is a big fat lie and just an excuse for robbing the taxpayers.

      • Re:Scramjets have nothing to do with space access (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Thomas Shaddack ( 709926 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @06:58AM (#10353983)
        In short, saying that scramjets are the way to cheaper access to space is a big fat lie and just an excuse for robbing the taxpayers.

        Not necessarily. (Even if it leads "only" to hypersonic transport aircrafts, it's good.)

        A big enemy of the space flight is the atmosphere. But it can also be a friend, when used properly. Why avoid multiple-stage system?

        Every day, thousands heavy airplanes take off all over the world and climb to 30,000 feet of cruising altitude. This part of the flight is well-understood and commercialized. Atmospherical oxygen means the airplanes don't have to carry oxidizer, the atmosphere itself supplies not only drag (which is bad) but also lift (which is good), so we don't need to lift everything by jets, which is not really effective.

        Once up in 30,000 ft, we can use a second stage - a smaller airplane, with smaller fuel tanks, sitting on the back of eg. an Airbus (I don't like Boeing, but you can use one too, if you have it). This plane can use scramjet engines, and maybe small JATO-style solid-fuel rocket boosters to give it a kick to take off the back of the carrier airplane and reach the scramjet-friendly speed (the Airbus then goes back to its airport and lands, as common for airplanes). This is the stage where X-43 comes to play. The scramjet is used to get the second-stage airplane as high and fast as possible. We still use atmospheric oxygen here, saving on the mass of the oxidizer, and we still exploit the atmosphere to supply the lift to our wings.

        Once we get too high for a scramjet, the atmosphere is too thin for both the wings and the scramjet (which is now a disadvantage for stage 2, but advantage for stage 3, which has much less drag to cope with). We jettison the second-stage (which then returns on parachute or by computer-controlled glide), and continue on a conventional rocket engine. (We face the change of density of the atmosphere with rising altitude, which is a challenge for the scramjet design - but maybe the designs where a shock wave acts as part of the engine could provide the necessary geometry changes.)

        We then return back in one of the ways available. I suppose the cheapest is the Soyuz-style approach, a reentry capsule with ablative shield and parachutes. That way we sacrifice part of the third-stage craft, but it can still be cheap enough to satisfy our purposes.

        What's bad on using different engines for different flight stages?

        • It's bad when the weight of multiple engines and/or airbreathing parts exceeds the weight, cost, performance, or maintenence penalties of just using a rocket with oxidizer.

          Although, given that none of the rockets using any sort of air-breathing stages except for standard jet engines in a carrier aircraft, so it's really hard to draw conclusions...
          • It's bad when the weight of multiple engines and/or airbreathing parts exceeds the weight, cost, performance, or maintenence penalties of just using a rocket with oxidizer.

            I wouldn't underestimate the weight of the oxidizer. Let's use a simple hydrogen-oxygen system, and count with hydrogen fuel for all three stages.

            Oxygen is relatively heavy atom, its molar weight is 16 g/mol. Hydrogen atom is only 1 g/mol. To form one mol of water, we need two mols of hydrogen atoms, which is 2 grams, and 1 mol of oxyg

            • See, again, there's not a lot of good answers here because nobody's tried them.

              I still think you are overcrediting scramjets. The problem is that, not only are they heavy, but you incur a lot of drag from the intakes. And you have to design the entire craft around the scramjet intake, which means there's a lot of design comprimizes to be incurred. And they need to be supersonic before they get going. And there's a lot of heating problems with a scramjet vehicle, because you are staying in the atmospher
    • Air breathing space craft are still a bad idea.

      The reason is that they produce large amounts of drag due to the large cross-sectional area required to ingest air.

      No, you don't have to carry oxidizer, but you DO have to schlep a big draggy fuselage along with you.

      It's very hard to make the numbers come out better than a conventional staged rocket.

  • SpaceShipOne Chat 'ready for launch'... (Score:5, Informative)

    by pandelirium ( 709326 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @01:48AM (#10353348) Homepage

    As many already know, Scaled Composite's "SpaceShipOne" is set to fly on Sept 29th, 2004 in the early-morning hours (Pacific-time) in it's first attempt to fulfill the requirements to win the Ansari X-Prize. Chat will again be available for the flight and the following flights as well.

    We had a VERY sucessful chat-session during the previous flight on June 21st and expect to have a good round this time for the X-Prize flights. The channel is open to all (we prefer you register/identify your nicks but is not a requirement for this channel). IF any 'over-flow' occurs, a back-up channel will automatically re-direct those as needed. A !news bot (Space.com) and !countdown bot is available.

    We also set another 'special' channel ( #SS1-FltData ) to record/display near 'real-time' Flight-Data from SS1 but the final decision is still not complete and not expected for the first flight-attempt. In any case, we expect to still have some limited data/info available. This channel is to monitor only, no chatting there, unless you are 'voiced'. The #SpaceShipOne channel is for that. ;) You MUST be a registered nick and identified in order to join this channel. There is no cost to register.

    The chat-server is located on the Freenode.net series. Point your chat-client to:

    -- Server: irc.freenode.net

    -- Channels: #SpaceShipOne and #SS1-FltData

    Hope to see you back there for the flights. ;)

    b>John B. -("Pandelirium")
    SpaceShipOne Admin/Ops/Moderator

    For other 'space-related' chat on Freenode, goto:

    - #space (general-combined channel)
    - #maestro (Mars Rover/SAP/Maestro Planning Software)
    - #cassini (Cassini/Huygens to Saturn)
    - #messenger (Probe to Mercury)
    - #celestia (3D Space/Solar-System Simulation)
    - #roverware (NexGen Rover/Planning Software development)

    • lilo will NOT be doing any such thing in #SpaceShipOne. They had a fund-raiser and it is not occurring at this moment. Please remember though, Freenode is provided for by user-donations mostly, which allows Freenode to be a FREE space to chat, available to ALL who wish to utilize it's services.

      Since Feeenode is such a professional-grade server-set with generally few peeps that just wish to disrupt things (unlike many other IRC servers out there), one can expect a courteous and friendly access and interac

  • Rutan's accomplishments pale in comparison to those of the late great Zefram Cochrane [startrek.com]. Sure, Rutan will have fame and fortune, but will he ever get his own statue in Bozeman that looks to the very location in the sky where he made first contact? I think not.

  • Screw the X-prize. What about Aliens? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Schwarzchild ( 225794 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @03:45AM (#10353667)
    Enquiring minds want to know why he believes in ET.

    From Wired magazine:

    He grabs a plate of mashed potatoes and roast beef and heads over to a floor-to-ceiling mural depicting three large white pyramids glowing against a lush tropical background; toward the front, a strange creature strides across a white veranda. The mural was painted a week ago, and everyone is ogling it. "Giza plaza, 17,000 years ago," he explains. "See, I think
    the pyramids were made by aliens before the last ice age, and the ice destroyed them and they were just put back together by the Egyptians." Is he serious? "I've seen them and I'm an engineer, and you can't tell me that the technology is ancient Egyptian. If you were a superior race and you knew your time on Earth was ending, wouldn't you build something really big so people would know you'd been there?"
    • If Mr. Rutan is motivated by pseudo-egyptian sci-fi and that gets our monkey-asses out of the gravity-well then please lets not forget that many things (the pyramids included) were built on the assumptions of people far-less educated than Mr. Rutan.

      I find the line between church and state a much greater cause for concern. Why do politicians have to keep saying that they're right and then name-drop a popular fairy tale/mythos? Yet all over the planet people are happy to do it all the time. I think it's a mo

    • read the article... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The BBC article this slashdot story references explains that Rutan says he was misquoted in that article. He doesn't believe aliens made them. He says merely that we haven't discovered the technology used to buid the pyramids yet. He doesn't believe it has to be alien technology.

  • Amazing video of their first flight (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 26, 2004 @04:24AM (#10353760)
    Recently, one of the folks from Vulcan Ventures came to Microsoft to give a presentation about their space program. (Vulcan Ventures is the VC firm funding the program, and is owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of MS, which is why we got this special presentation.)

    We saw an amazing video: a 20-minute presentation showing their first space flight from beginning to end. Lots of tiny clips have been shown on the news, but in the video we saw, the entire space portion of the flight (from rocket fire to atmospheric re-entry) was not time-compressed. We heard every radio transmission, saw every moment of the acutal space time.

    It was amazing. Brought tears to my eyes. (Embarassing, when you're sitting with 80 other researchers.)

    There was a long Q&A session afterwards. They answered everything from techno-nerd questions about the details of some aerodynamics problem to visionary questions about the future of their program and what this means for humanity.

    It was the most moving and inspiring presentation I've seen in a long while.
  • Anyone know if the September 29th launch will be televised or webcast live? I think this would be great for Nasa TV, and I would enjoy it as much as sitting through the Spirit and Opportunity touchdowns.

    • Re:Will the revolution be televised? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Stridar ( 325860 ) <Stridar@gmail.com> on Sunday September 26, 2004 @07:10AM (#10354032) Homepage

      Answering my own question the Ansari X-Prize [primary.net] webiste has a link to a September 29th live webcast of the launch. The link is in the top, right hand corner.

      Currently, that link has videos of the other launches made by Scaled Composites. It looks like there is an external camera, a wing camera, and a cockpit camera. Hopefully they have all three rolling on Wednesday =)

    • Re:NASA TV? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Migraineman ( 632203 )
      The only way I see NASA TV carrying coverage of the X-Prize competition is if there is a horrendous failure. Then they'll replay the disaster over and over, with the reminder that "we told you so."

      Rutan's already made many public statements about the liability that the NASA culture has become. NASA used to be the premiere space program, but degenerated into a self-serving bureaucracy.

      We can't expect substantial innovation out of NASA until something changes. Rutan's thrown down the gauntlet, and gi
      • Would be hilarious though if Rutan has been holding back, and flies SS3 instead... they could make a surpise trip to the ISS and do the whole unwelcome guest thing. Eat all the cheetos, steal the remote ontrol to the TV...

  • Success of the X prize (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @09:52AM (#10354434)
    This really just demonstrates the successful strategy of the prize. It's imperative that the momentum isn't completely lost when/if Scaled Composites take the prize.

    That means a new, bigger, harder target next with a bigger prize.

  • Brannigan's law (Score:3, Funny)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @11:12AM (#10354756) Homepage Journal
    As for ET? Rutan hopes there is local life on other planets, because it would be fun to do what holidaymakers do: "interface them". -

    We have failed to uphold Brannigan's law; however, I did make it with a hot alien babe, and in the end is that not what man has dreamt since first he looked up at the stars?

  • Rutan's effort harkens back to the days of the individualistic test pilots captured in Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff and movie spinoff.
    No more boring NASA-bots.

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