Burt Rutan On Future Of SpaceShipOne (and Two) 182
Neil Halelamien writes "In a recent interview with the Desert Sun, Burt Rutan talks about the future of SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo. The bad news is that SpaceShipOne will be retired straight to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, despite getting five different requests to fly suborbital payloads. The good news is that efforts are being focused on SpaceShipTwo, which will carry nine people, and fly higher and further downrange than SpaceShipOne. Virgin Galactic will purchase a fleet of five of these vehicles, which will start test flights in 2007. Virgin Galactic may end up competing with Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is rumored to be developing a VTOL suborbital vehicle. Also interesting to watch will be Rutan's involvement with t/Space, one of the companies contracted by NASA to conduct concept studies for the Vision for Space Exploration."
Re:Rutan is my hero. (Score:3, Informative)
This man is an inspiration to everybody. He is innovative, intelligent, and follows through with his dreams and goals. So tell me why, WHY Dub Bush gets Time's Person of the Year and Rutan does not.
Relax and let history be the judge. Time's Man/Person of the Year has included every US predident going back at least to JFK. They had to do W at some point. How big of an honor can it be, anyway? Hitler was it 1938. See a list here [about.com]).
Re:Rutan is my hero. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Rutan is my hero. (Score:5, Informative)
Time's Person (nee Man) of the Year originally was not meant to be a "This person did the greatest things this year" award. Rather, it was about who most influenced current events that year...hence why both Hitler and Stalin recieved it.
Many argue that the Person of the Year for 2001 should have been Osama bin Laden, rather than Rudolph Giuliani. No one is going to say that bin Laden is a nice guy...but his actions influenced 2001 more than any single person.
Apparently Time had some pretty big arguments in-house when it came to picking the Person of the 20th Century. Again, if you're choosing Most Influential Person, it probably would have been Hitler, but in these PC days it's not something that most would find accceptable.
Re:Rutan is my hero. (Score:2, Informative)
Doesn't that mean he's in there three times now?
But as someone said, Hitler was in there once, and Stalin was included twice.
Re:Personally... (Score:4, Informative)
One problem is SS1 is still an experimental aircraft. Under FAA regulations, you can't use it in a for-hire operation. That means you can't just start selling tickets for SS1 rides.
Scaled would have to make SS1 into a certificated airframe first, which is a horrendously expensive and lengthy process, and doesn't make sense with SS1 being a one of a kind technology prototype. My guess is with SS2 they're going to work on certification from the beginning, and given that it'll carry 9 people and they'll build more than one of them, the certification costs can be spread out more and be recovered easier.
Re:VTOL? (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of folks think that the mass penalty of carying extra fuel for landing is less than the mass penalty of carying wings (a penalty which includes extra fuel and engine mass to compensate for the increased drag).
If you are doing SSTO, you can have much less sophisticated heat shielding because the requirements of heat shielding decrease as you get less dense. At reentry, a SSTO is not very dense at all, so it's easier. Also, there's some arguments about reentering tail-first and using the engines to reduce the heat loading, which hasn't yet been tested.
Furthermore, range safety is simpler with VTOL. You have to assume that, at any point, your spacecraft could explode, raining parts down on populated land. Less gliding means less area to wory about. Airliners don't need to wory about such things, but airliners also have a good track record of not blowing up. Spacecraft don't have that record yet.
Ejection seats and escape capsules aren't very heavy, if they are included in the design early (They are now saying that, given that both the Challenger and Columbia's crew cabin survived the explosion intact, that they really could have made it removable for a minimum weight penalty. However, it's too late to do that now.)
The biggest problem is that NASA spent all of their time between the 1980s and today designing a bunch of different concepts for spacecraft, none of which have actually flown enough to be able to contribute factual data about all of this except for a few low-altitude hops made by the DC-X that made the VTOL model seem rather reasonable.
Re:Rutan is my hero. (Score:5, Informative)
Lets look at polls, now shall we?
jeez, Rei, you're WAY too easy on him.
Need we break out the picutres of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand?
Need we point out the billions of dollars of illegal business Halliburton did with Iraq in the 1990's, under Cheney's watch (as CEO of Halliburton)?
Need we point out that EVERY SINGLE SHRED of evidence in the so-called "oil for food fraud scandal" was *lost* when "evul hackerz broke into my computer and erased the hard drive and all the backups, HONEST!" - All the evidence comes from Ahmed Chalabi's INC. The same Ahmed Chalabi who's wanted in Jordan for embezzling $300 Million from Petra Bank. The same Ahmed Chalabi who passed on highly sensitive (read: Classified) US SIGINT information to Iranian Intelligence. The same Ahmed Chalabi that ran a ring to re-submit old Saddam Dinars in exchange for new CPA Dinars, AT US TAXPAYER EXPENSE! The same Ahmed Chalabi whose Nephew had an Iraqi finance minister assassinated. The same Ahmed Chalabi who took tens of millions of US TAXPAYER dollars every month throughout the Bush Administration, in exchange for information about Saddams WMD programs - ALL of which ultimately proved FALSE. The same Ahmed Chalabi who has ties to Ghorbanifar (yes, THAT Ghorbanifar, the arms dealer from the Iran-Contra days).
The SAME Ahmed Chalabi who sat behind Laura Bush at the State of the Union address in 2002.
George Bush and his Administration has made a very close ally of this man. They trusted a traitor. They are NOT on our side, and have done more harm than good to US security. Both with their policies enacted during the Reagan and Bush I adminsitrations, and the crap they're pulling in the Bush Administration.
And you people put these white-collar criminals back in office.
The "Only those who were opposed to the US were involved in scandalous activities" is a laugh and a half. Keep watching Fox and keep taking those Blue Pills Neo.
Re:SpaceShipOne (Score:5, Informative)
The real cause of the uncommanded roll was an issue with the wing dihedral, which is used to provide a natural corrective tendency for crosswinds. It's difficult to design a mach 3.5 spaceship that is also a 70 knot glider.
The test pilot, Mike Melvill, had ample time to abort the flight. He felt confident and in sufficient control to continue the first suborbital flight. Burt and Mike are very close friends and have been since the 1970s. Ground control suggested an abort, but Mike was comfortable with the roll rate. Yes, he's that good. He later commented that it was "kind of cool". Mike was clearly not too upset by the 20+ rolls as he corkscrewed into space, because a minute later he was playing with M&Ms in microgravity.
So don't go throwing around reckless comments about Burt almost getting a test pilot killed. It's a lie, plain and simple. The truth is, Burt Rutan has done almost 400 designs and for decades has consistently averaged flight testing a couple of truly unique aircraft, and now spacecraft, per year. None of his projects have ever resulted in an injury, much less a fatality. The few incidents have all been minor, such as the SS1 test flight where the left landing gear collapsed after a rough landing. Burt Rutan has the best safety record in the industry, while simultaneously doing the most cutting edge designs. He attributes a large part of that safety to an environment that wouldn't be possible in a large bureaucracy, whether in government or big business.
The SS1 roll problem was fixed by simply changing the flight profile and the two subsequent X-Prize flights had no trouble. The dihedral issue will be corrected in SS2, which is probably one reason that SS1 is being retired after accomplishing the X-Prize mission. That, and the fact that it is a very valuable historic spacecraft.
So for anyone keeping score, NASA has lost two shuttles with all crew (14 people total) out of a little over 100 missions, for a little less than a 2% fatality rate. SS1 has been into space three times with no injuries. Safety is a big part of the SS1 design, including the novel "carefree reentry".
There were some uninformed opinions and lame attempts at sick humor prior to the SS1 success. Why do some people need to see the dark side of everything? Why do some people need to comment about things when they are totally clueless?
Suggestion:
1) Read
2) Think
3) THEN write