Posted on 05/14/2004 4:46:18 AM PDT by Arkie2
Chalk up another booming flight of the privately-backed SpaceShipOne, the piloted rocket plane designed to soar to the edge of space and glide to a runway landing.
With pilot Mike Melvill at the controls — following release from the White Knight turbojet-powered launch aircraft high above the Mojave, California desert — SpaceShipOne punched through the sky today boosted by a hybrid propellant rocket motor. According to sources who witnessed the flight, SpaceShipOne appears to have reached an altitude of a little over 200,000 feet.
Scaled Composites of Mojave is the builder of SpaceShipOne, an effort led by aviation innovator, Burt Rutan. The financial backer of the project is Microsoft mogul, Paul Allen.
Today's flight builds upon a progression of 13 shakeout tests, mostly un-powered drop glides along with two engine-thrusting runs. The White Knight took off with SpaceShipOne at around 10:30 a.m. ET today with the rocket plane landing an the ground a little after 12 noon.
SpaceShipOne's builders are expected to release specific flight data regarding today's test flight as soon as they analyze the mission.
SpaceShipOne's first powered mission took place on December 17, 2003, with the hybrid motor firing for 15 seconds. A second powered flight occurred on April 8th of this year. In that trek, the motor burned for 40 seconds. A major contractor for the hybrid motor used in the rocket plane is SpaceDev of Poway, California.
Routine recording of multiple video streams on board White Knight and on SpaceShipOne are expected to help in pilot and engineering evaluation of the flight.
Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation of Pasadena, California provides the critical camera gear. They are also supplier of the RocketCam line of onboard video systems used on rockets, spacecraft and other remote platforms.
Hot pursuit
The step-by-step SpaceShipOne missions are keyed to winning the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million purse offered by the X Prize Foundation of St. Louis, Missouri. For the cash prize, however, the clock is running as the $10 million purse expires January 1, 2005.
The Ansari X Prize money is to be awarded to the first company or organization to launch a vehicle capable of carrying three people to a height of 62.5 miles (100 kilometers), then return safely to Earth, and repeat the flight with the same vehicle within two weeks.
Twenty-seven teams from around the globe are vying for the Ansari X Prize contest. The competition is modeled on the $25,000 Orteig Prize — won by Charles Lindbergh after winging his Spirit of St. Louis airplane solo from New York to Paris in 1927.
Federal go-ahead
On April 1, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced it had issued to Scaled Composites the world's first license for a sub-orbital manned rocket flight.
The license came via the DOT's Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. This federal paperwork gave Scaled Composites the go-ahead to fly a string of sub-orbital flights for a one-year period — the first license to authorize piloted flight on a sub-orbital trajectory.
XCOR Aerospace, also of Mojave, California, announced in April it had received a Reusable Launch Vehicle mission license from the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. That license is the first for a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) that is launched and recovered from the ground. Additionally, XCOR is now authorized to test RLV technologies prior to suborbital passenger travel. The company is not in the competition for the Ansari X Prize.
XCOR's launch license is for a technology test vehicle. The license does not yet cover passenger operations. It does, however, permit revenue-generating payload flights after initial tests are completed. "A significant feature of the license is that it allows the pilot to do an incremental series of flight tests — without preplanning each trajectory," said XCOR Government Liaison Randall Clague in a press statement.
Mojave mojo
Given all the rocket plane activity at the Mojave Airport, steps have been taken to have the facility certified as a spaceport.
Stuart Witt, General Manager of the Mojave Airport, envisions the site busily handling the horizontal launchings and landings of reusable spacecraft.
Witt said the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation is reviewing an application to license Mojave Airport as an inland spaceport. In fact, the airport is already a natural center for research and development and certification programs, such as the rocket plane work of Scaled Composites and XCOR Aerospace.
Many see Mojave Airport as a magical nexus for safe, smooth coordination of general aviation activity and private aerospace development.
Mojave Airport, also tagged the nation's Civilian Flight Test Center, is situated away from major metropolitan areas, while being located near Edwards and China Lake military test ranges.
"Certainly Mojave is a premier location due to its proximity to the Edwards Air Force Base restricted areas," Burt Rutan told SPACE.com .
Adds Aleta Jackson, an XCOR Aerospace executive: "We look forward to flying our licensed spacecraft from the Mojave Spaceport." The town of Mojave — as well as the County of Kern — plan to help support the spaceport, such as designating land use that is compatible with an active spaceport, she said.
I hope everything works out for them. I would love to see civilian space travel before I’m too old to appreciate it.
Burt could take a live cow and a weedeater and build an 8 seat aircraft with 2,500 mile range, cruise at 300 + knots, and produce milk.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Burt!
This guy seems to make a habit of succeeding at what he attempts. I didn't realize the prize expired at the end of this year. Hopefully Burt will win it, but I'd like to see some of the other competitors get there as well. Cool stuff!
LOL! I'd pay to fly on that! Can he make a pig fly?
Go Burt Go ! ! Woohooo !
Sure, why not? The F4 Phantom proves that with enough power, even a pig can fly.
Burt Rutan is one of the great inventers in history, right up there with Bell and Edison.
Shhhhhhh! He built a 100 Stealth Pigs for the USAF. Mach 4, internal weapons bay for 5,000 lbs of ordinance, totally invisible to radar, infrared, and the human eye. Detectable only by the squeal as they pass overhead.
The Stealth Pig is highly feared in the islamic world.
But I can not talk about it because the whole project is Top Secret. Please don't mention this to anyone else.
I see you take your handle seriously!
Can he make a pig fly?
SURE! I have several in-laws with pilot's liscenses...........
Not at all. Oswald acted alone.
I know a pilot who's father and grandfather were airplane designers and he has a very dim view of Rutan. He says nothing Rutan has ever done has moved airplane design forward and his flight around the world was just grandstanding. I was shocked when he told me that because, like most Rutan fans, I always assumed he was a great designer. Just goes to show, not everyone is tuned to the same station!
There's another team who are not competing for this prize but instead going for a reusable launch vehicle that will have immediate commercial application. I think Rutan will have to do some serious redesign to get his to a stage where launching small sattelites or giving tourists a ride will be feasible.
I'm a big backer of private space flight, and the X-Prize is a neat promotional/motivational effort... but if I understand the pysics correctly, winners won't even come close to true, i.e. "orbital" space flight- they'll reach the edge of space, but they'll only by going a few thousand mph max- orbital velocity at 200km is amost 8K kilometers per second, or about five miles per second.
The X prize is neat...but it's not even really close to orbital flight.
(as always, if a more knowledgeable freeper wants to chime in, please do- googled those numbers, so can't swear to their accuracy.)
You have my wholehearted agreement.
Rutan is one of the greatest inventors and capitalists in history, without question.
It would be interesting to run the numbers, but I don't have the time to do that now...
I suspect that the energy required to punch through the atmosphere and overcome the gravitational potential up to 200km dwarfs the kinetic energy needed then boost up to orbital speed... My seat-of-the-pants guess is that it is about 75% or so of the needed energy ...
Don't forget that it only requires a shell of a ship, though, and that maintaining a liveable environment is going to add much more weight to any real space vessel.
If these suborbital ships have any utility at all it will be to carry small satellites to the edge of space then kick them out of a cargo bay. They would need their own boosters to continue to orbit. Otherwise, the tourist trade seems to be the most likely market.
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