Burt Rutan On Future Of SpaceShipOne (and Two)

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."

VTOL?

[ivan256]

VTOL seems like such a bad idea to me. Not only do you have to cary fuel for liftoff, but for landing as well. What's the benefit?

Re:Private space-flight

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly do governments understand? Power is about all I can think of.

Personally...

[jd]

I think it's a little stupid to retire it to the museum. Sure, it's a valuable piece of history, but there are plenty of things that they could have done with it that would have improved awareness and possibly increased sponsorship efforts.

Here are a few random thoughts on what I would have considered doing, had I been in charge:

• A tour of airshows, possibly even marking the "start" or "close" of the airshow by having SpaceShipOne dropped at a fairly low altitude & speed, to glide in. There's always some risk with flight in general, so there's some chance of an accident, but getting the "unwashed masses" up close to SpaceShipOne will reinforce the idea that space travel could become within the reach of anyone. A static display would be safer, but wouldn't require the real thing either. It also wouldn't have the same impact.
  
• SpaceShipOne can carry three people. A top-notch celebrity, or top-ranking politician would likely pay very big money to be taken on a simple flight (go up a bit, no rockets, just glide down). Photo ops tend to revolve around celebs getting out of aircraft, so the lack of any really dangerous stuff would be irrelevent to them.
  
• There are usually "special" amateur rocket events in many countries. Can you imagine what impact it would have on the sport, if SpaceShipOne was trucked in? Not launched, but just there for the gawp value?
  

Re:VTOL?

[Waffle Iron]

Not only do you have to cary fuel for liftoff, but for landing as well. What's the benefit?

It's possible that the extra fuel weighs less than heat-shielded wings and a tail plus wheeled landing gear.

Re:Bad news? WTF?

[imsabbel]

Because its a death-trap in the long run?
It was designed to reach the x-price. Ist just reached the height, it did the 2 runs. Plus it had a real nasty spin in one that didnt remotely look funny or planned.
Somewhere else, back after the second flight there was talk about needed improvements to counter such behaviour, which would be implemented in a successor.
Think about it: that thing may have 95%, or lets say 99% success rate. That would be a good value for a cutting ende test-design. 2 tries without problems are very likely->xprice won.
But every further try increases the "big bang" factor of a failure, negating ALL positive press, destroying the market for commercial manned space flight at least for the next decade and generally messing things up.
So they rather create the new&improved spaceship2...

Re:VTOL?

[Rei]

I'm not so sure that a rocket plume would be your best source... you want laminar flow, not turbulent flow. Turbulent flow transfers a lot more heat to the craft at hypersonic velocities. Perhaps simple jets of liquified gas, injected at regular intervals along the control surface, would be better.

A Spruce Goose? SpaceShip1 airframes cost nothing!

[Invisible Now]

The cost is all in the intellectual work to create the design and prove it works. The airframe itself is on the order of $1 to 3 million for materials and labor.

IT IS INTERESTING that a brilliant engineer like Rutan would be moving to a completely new 9 passenger SpaceShip2 instead of putting airframe #1 of SS1 into the Smithsonian and selling hops on her sister ships.Though he does seem to reveal there was an internal discussion...

Flying the design again has nothing to do with any of the previous posts regarding 'history'. Make a fresh copy and put it into service. Unless you're worried it's lack of redundancy makes it unsuitable for non-test pilot passneger flight. Paul Allen may not want to expose himself to some pin-head real estate mogul's wife's tort attorneys.

Or, maybe they feel good to get up and down safely a few times in this frontier expanding design (There where some close calls, after all.) Hughes flew the Spruce Goose once and ordered it mothballed. Some designs proudly push the limits but aren't great for everyday use...

t/Space Gets It

[Baldrson]

When t/Space says [transformspace.com]:

NASA becomes the first bold customer for commercial services.

they clearly get the idea I was trying to put across to Congress in my testimony before the House subcommittee on space when I said over a decade ago [geocities.com]:

Americans need a frontier, not a program.

Incentives open frontiers, not plans.

If this Subcommittee hears no other message through the barrage of studies, projections and policy recommendations, it must hear this message. A reformed space policy focused on opening the space frontier through commercial incentives will make all the difference to our future as a world, a nation and as individuals.

Let's hope NASA gets the idea before its too late.

dont bet on virgin

[Dr.Knackerator]

its pretty easy to make a press release - that costs no money. virgin is an interesting company having as many bad ideas as good. branson seems to jump on bandwagons and push the 'maximum publicity' button at any oppertunity.

virgin rail was launched in a blaze of media coverage with branman waving from trains etc. promising the earth. years later fares are much higher and the service seems to be much worse from what i read.

a few years ago i believe he had to sell 49% of virgin atlantic, it was the only thing making any money. needed the cash to pay off debts.

so whatever you do please just dont quote this ludicrous plan (and a ludicrous name- galactic? we havent even got there yet!) and give him more bloody free publicity. only mention it when it becomes a reality.

Re:Three Words

[Picass0]

Second System Syndrome can usually be chalked up to poor project management. Without proper leadership any project can spiral out of control and never reach a conclusion. Poor focus, scope creep, bad testing, a failure to meet the customer's requirements.

Burt Rutan knows how to get what he wants from his people. He's a good leader with a good team. And the part that might make the biggest difference between Scaled and PARC - it's Burt's show. He's always the deciding vote. I'm sure he's kicked a lot of dead weight ideas out of the way in his many years of designing flying craft.