SpaceShipOne to Attempt Second Flight on Monday 314
m_member writes "There is a very cool video of the recent SpaceShipOne flight (on the Scaled video page) as covered by Slashdot. It shows some angles not on the webcast and most impressively has internal footage from when the roll occurred in the ascent. There are no M&Ms this time but Melville takes a few holiday snaps!" Gogo Dodo writes "After a successful first flight for the X Prize, SpaceShipOne is a go for launch to claim the X Prize on Monday. Takeoff is at 7am Pacific, ignition at 8am." October 4 will be the anniversary of the Sputnik launch.
cool, now make if affordable and do it to orbit (Score:3, Interesting)
It is about time that we had someone other than Government make it to space. This should open up the market! Now, if they can just make this afforable to those of us who can't afford 100K or so...
Hope they go for the $50M prize for a vehicle that will house 5 to/from orbit....
Other competitors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I hope they can do it without the spin-stabiliz (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I hope they can do it without the spin-stabiliz (Score:5, Interesting)
Improvements? (Score:2, Interesting)
Basically, how safe and sound are their methods?
Mike Melville rolled it on purpose! (Score:2, Interesting)
I think he just wanted to say "Yehaa...".
Have we heard anything official... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bransons space adventure (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Other competitors (Score:5, Interesting)
It's kind of a shame, isn't it, that money keeps coming into it. But this rocket science stuff gets expensive. I just hope some of the really cool technology being looked at now finds whatever it takes to keep going. I really don't want to get stuck with just one type of commercial spacecraft, the same way we (in the US) has been stuck with only one type of government manned spacecraft. (Which has been the case, with the recent exception of buying flight time from the Russians.)
Re:The other X-Prize contestants (Score:3, Interesting)
It was flying the English Channel that did it. Nobody else could even fly the Kremer course (a one-mile or so figure 8), and then the group did the English Channel.
Re:Mike Melville rolled it on purpose! (Score:4, Interesting)
Love the video! (Score:3, Interesting)
Gotta love it!
--
Free gmail invites [slashdot.org]
Re:X-Prize, NASA Funding (Score:4, Interesting)
It shouldn't be some big tit that someone can just suck on for a little extra juice to keep on going (please tell that to the airlines & railroads...)
Besides as other posters have said, it was desigend to be privte avoid all the stupid red tape.
But your point about the state run groups is good. I would much rather have the fed hand out a contract to "develop X for us" with exclusive rights to the Fed, than have the Fed create a department to do "X".
Of course, national security concerns says that if the Fed ownes and wholely controlls the development of "X" then there is no company that could possible sue them for breach of contract, or accidentally leak data / information to the press, or other nations.
jason
Re:./ed already (Score:5, Interesting)
And also when you try to load your own website and it takes 30 seconds to load the main page, this is the first place you look. Well, I'll post the torrent mirror link right now, that will help. There's three machines in a round robin, but the port only has so much bandwidth.
--Mike the webmaster
Re:Congrats! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Yes, consider the results of the state-run prog (Score:1, Interesting)
We sent probes to Mars. And Venus. And beyond. And some of them still work. So how many of them - percentagewise - still work? Even better, how many worked right in the first place? And what are we doing with this information?
We sent rovers to Mars. That still work.And we could have sent people. I did a report on the Mars Odyssey years ago that said we could get people there with relative ease
We built several working space vehicles.And they are somewhat reusable. But they are expensive. A private venture would make them as cheaply as possible so as to save as much money as possible. A government organization doesn't worry about cost at first; after all, they're just spending tax money that would otherwise get spent on things that aren't worth as much, so it might as well be used to do this - that way in 5 years when their budget requirements go up (for actual work, that is) they can cut back on unnecessary programs, fund the things they actually need, and not actually need to get more money - but so they can continue to do it, they say "look at us, we had to shut down "x" program due to lack of funds."
We space-walked.Yes, many times. Again, what has it gotten us?
We build a space station. And then we built another one.Why did we build a second station? Oh wait, the first one quit working. Did we get a good return on the investment from it at least?
We chased comets. And sent the collected materials back. Yay! We have interstellar ice and small particles!
We've populated our solar system with several probes that have performed beyond expectation.And future spacecraft need to dodge the ones that don't work. And - in theory - what happens if one drifts into the path of a comet? Long odds, to be sure, but possible.
We have Tang.This is a GOOD thing?
We have titanium hips, golf clubs, glass frames, laptops, and spyplanes.True. How much of this would have been made without space travel? This isn't Civilization by Sid Meier - we didn't really *need* Space travel to get Plastics, it merely provided a reason to do so.
I don't think the space program has been entirely a waste of time and money; however, I do think they need to pay more attention to actual useful things that work rather than other stuff. How many things like Tang and Plastics have come from the Space Program since we landed on the Moon?
Re:Yes, consider the results of the state-run prog (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose the big question is ... if NASA instead were merely a contracting arm of the goverment which put together specs for tender, would we have gotten further, faster, and cheaper?
And let's not forget the human cost: would we have lost similar or fewer people doing it (safety)?
No, really. I'm serious. This is not intended as a slam against government waste or corporate cost/corner cutting. It's really a question for thought. Is there a middle ground available where we get the same safety, but further/faster/cheaper?
Contractors would need to be able to find ways to compete against others for the research business. There are some things that competition is good for. But, then again, with only one possible customer at the time (NASA), would there be enough competition for those dollars? Now might be a much better time (than, say, the 1950's) to thin out NASA, spin off JPL, and then have NASA merely contract out: the competition will be competing for business from much more than NASA - airlines will be interested in some of this technology, too, I'm sure.
Re:Media Coverage (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why they use test pilots. These guys know how to recover when things go bad.
You are right that the press has an obligation to investigate. But BEFORE that, you need to make sure you know what the hell you are talking about. The ability to publish does not prove the ability to speak authoritatively on the subject.
Re:Bransons space adventure (Score:2, Interesting)
Dead end hacks (Score:5, Interesting)
If these guys were investigating and developing a radical new technology that's orders of magnitude cheaper than the traditional ways of getting into space, then it would be really interesting. Even a stunt like the X-Prize shot would be worthwhile to help develop it. But it's not radical new technology. It's just the same old chemical rocket stuff all over again. With a lot of cut corners. (And, apparently, "unscripted maneuvers").
And they're not even particularly good chemical rockets. Hybrid rockets burning plastic/rubber/etc and N2O have inherently poorer performance than, say, the hydrogen/oxygen engines that are common on the upper stages of orbital launchers. Hybrids are simpler, cheaper and safer, and they've become very popular among amateur high-power rocketeers for this reason. They're fun. But they just don't have the performance for a practical orbital launcher, as opposed to a suborbital "stunt" flight. Or is "commercial manned space" just about quickie zero-g joyrides for people with too much money? I can already experience zero-g on an airplane or Six Flags' Superman: The Escape a lot more cheaply.
The problem is that there just don't seem to be any radical, new technologies promising to cut space access costs by orders of magnitude just waiting for entrepreneurs to commercialize them. And that means only a tiny handful of humans will ever be able to go into space in our lifetime, and for at least several more. I wish it were otherwise, but we have to face facts. In the meantime, we have to get the very most out of the expensive launchers we do have, and that means putting more and more capable robots into space to give us earthbound humans the best vicarious experience of space travel we can possibly get.
I'm also really put off by all this "go private enterprise, rah rah rah" stuff, as if NASA is full of complete idiots. (It got so thick the other morning that I had to turn the TV volume down.) Who do they think builds the rockets that NASA has been flying for decades? What about the many space launchers that have already been fully commercialized? And where did the money for SpaceShipOne really come from? (Hint: what if the US Government were to actually enforce its antitrust laws against large software companies?)
If you've got the money, you can already buy a launch from any of several commercial companies, and only some of them are American. And there are companies who routinely launch stuff and make money. Space is already big business.
But when I look at SpaceShipOne and similar projects, I see a bunch of rich guys publicly stroking their egos. SpaceShipOne is a dead-end hack. I'd actually be completely okay with that if only they would be more honest with the public about what they're really doing.
Re:Resting on your laurels is counterproductive (Score:3, Interesting)
But that's a red herring. USEFUL isn't the topic of discussion; the X-Prize, or more generally, manned spaceflight, is the topic. The post the GP was replying to suggested that funding should go somewhere besides NASA. I don't suggest de-funding NASA (they ARE useful), but I would suggest funding some manned space programs that might actually get us out of the gravity well. LEO doesn't cut it. 20,000 bureaucrats doesn't cut it. Feynman's report on the shuttle bureaucracy (in the wake of the Challenger explosion) was quite damning. Nothing changed, and 15 years later we lost another shuttle and another crew to another avoidable problem again predicted in advance by engineers. We will NOT get large-scale manned spaceflight with NASA as it currently exists. Feel free to point to empirical evidence that suggests otherwise.
"Besides, if we liken NASA to..."
I'd liken NASA to one of the kings who had already turned down Columbus (he approached several monarchs of several nations before hitting it off with Isabella. I would liken her to the X-Prize. (Yeah, it's not a perfect analogy.) Columbus didn't care who funded him as long as someone did. I don't care who funds manned spaceflight as long as someone does. Again, hanging around in LEO doesn't cut it, and I haven't seen anything from NASA to suggest they'll do anything else.