Posted on 05/14/2004 4:46:18 AM PDT by Arkie2
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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.