Posted on 06/20/2004 5:20:18 PM PDT by Pandelirium
Burt Rutan, designer of numerous state-of-the-art flying machines including the note-worthy "Voyager" aircraft that flew around the world non-stop and un-refueled, is poised to set another record. This time, he has designed and built an aircraft that is an entrant for the Ansari X-Prize competition. Pilot Mike Melvill will be at the controls for the record flight, the first private-owned flight into space (62miles/1000km high). Another aircraft, a "StarShip" built by Beechcraft (now known as Ratheon), is a unique modern composite-built design that will fly chase during the missions.
"This flight is one of the most exciting and challenging activities taking place in the fields of aviation and aerospace today," said Paul G. Allen, sole sponsor in the SpaceShipOne program through Vulcan Inc. "Every time SpaceShipOne flies we demonstrate that relatively modest amounts of private funding can significantly increase the boundaries of commercial space technology. Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have accomplished amazing things by conducting the first mission of this kind without any government backing."
To reach space, a carrier aircraft, the White Knight, lifts SpaceShipOne from the runway. An hour later, after climbing to approximately 50,000 feet altitude just east of Mojave, the White Knight releases the spaceship into a glide. The spaceship pilot then fires his rocket motor for about 80 seconds, reaching Mach 3 in a vertical climb. During the pull-up and climb, the pilot encounters G-forces three to four times the gravity of the earth.
SpaceShipOne then coasts up to its goal height of 100 km (62 miles) before falling back to earth. Flight-Profile: http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/data_sheets/PDF/SS1_flight_profile.pdf The pilot experiences a weightless environment for more than three minutes and, like orbital space travelers, sees the black sky and the thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon. The pilot (Mike Melvill for this flight - actually a new astronaut!) then configures the craft’s wing and tail into a high-drag configuration. This provides a “care-free” atmospheric entry by slowing the spaceship in the upper atmosphere and automatically aligning it along the flight path. Upon re-entry, the pilot reconfigures the ship back to a normal glider, and then spends 15 to 20 minutes gliding back to earth, touching down like an airplane on the same runway from which he took off. The June flight will be flown solo, but SpaceShipOne is equipped with three seats and is designed for missions that include pilot and two passengers.
The Discovery Channel and Vulcan Productions are producing RUTAN’S RACE FOR SPACE (wt), a world premiere television special that documents the entire process of the historic effort to create the first privately-funded spacecraft and will air later this year.
Just an add-in bit of info. For those interested, we now have opened up the #SpaceShipOne chat room to the public. As they ready the project to step (well fly) into space, the buzz is high and we hope many will come in and talk about the project, the concept of privatization of space travel, and most any topic-related item. Please spread the word! With more support, the better the general subject-matter and more things to talk about. Since there will not generally be any online broadcast of the flight, this may be the next closest thing short of watching on the news (CNN sconfirmed but expect that NASATV 'might' cover it as well (from rumor mill)... we'll see.
The chat is located on the freenode.net servers at irc.freenode.net. As always, we are a family and professional channel so please refrain from trolling, soapboxing, or using foul-language.
More info at their website: http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/
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John Boney
-Pandelirium - registered.freenode.net
Moderator - #SpaceShipOne #maestro #cassini #Pandelirium MaximumPC
http://www.pandelirium.net
Bump and Ping
A little more Delta-Vee and the universe is ours!
I was thinking about this after I saw the announcement, and wondering about where to post a response. When I saw your name, I decided.
Hi, Jacqui!! Good Afternoon.
A question for many of us is, "Straight up, and straight down, what good is that?"
I have an answer for that. Years ago, in ANALOG Science Fact and Science Fiction, a science fact article described a less expensive way to get to space.
Put an orbiting spaceport up there. When a Rutan-like vessel pops up out of the atmosphere, (timing and precise positioning being VERY critical -- snag it with an electric catapult operated in reverse.)
The spaceport would be as long as needed to get acceptable rates of acceleration and deceleration, and as long as sufficient finished goods were exchanged for an equal mass of raw materials, no additional maneuvering fuel would need to be used to maintain orbit.
Yes, it would have to be big. But it would also be useful for catching shipments coming from the moon, or sending them there. Or for sending fresh supplies to a colony on Mars.
Electrical space propulsion, and a cheaper ride to orbit. Perhaps worth analysing again to see what could be worked out with modern materials and positioning technology.
Hopefully no decimal errors, or system conversion mistakes would happen to ruin the day.
You are exactly correct.
I don't recall the details of the article well enough now to recall what the sizes might have to be. Not dissimilar from the old Jules Verne notion of using a cannon, I would suspect.
How big would an electric catapult on the moon have to be, to be safe for human cargo? A calculation would yield the answer -- what's the minimum distance for sustaining the maximum acceleration? (Rough approximation, the last half second has to cover several miles, but that would essentially describe something like a miles-long antenna tower, with electric coils every few meters or kilometers.)
It may be that the concept could only work for certain bulk goods type of cargo. Still, that would be useful for sending a resupply ship to Mars.
Note that any cargo composed of equally magnetic materials would enjoy equal forces of accel and decel. Everything else would have to be robust.
I'll be watching for this Monday!
heheh... typo for sure (althougth the idiocy creeps in from time to time). When your type too fast... it can get interesting. Thanks.. ;)
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