SPACE FLIGHT ATTEMPT
SpaceShipOne boosts itself into the atmosphere
It aims for an altitude of 100km (62 miles)
Wings fold up to provide "feather" effect
Converts back to non-feathered glider
Posted on 06/02/2004 10:46:44 AM PDT by alnitak
Scaled Composites, the company behind the first private manned spacecraft, will launch it into space on 21 June carrying an as yet unnamed astronaut.
SpaceShipOne is built by aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan who hopes to win the Ansari X-prize of $10m (£5.7m) for the first private flight into space.
The craft has to reach an altitude of 100km (329,000ft) twice in two weeks to win.
A total of 25 other teams across the world are competing for the prize.
First private astronaut
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SPACE FLIGHT ATTEMPT
SpaceShipOne boosts itself into the atmosphere
It aims for an altitude of 100km (62 miles)
Wings fold up to provide "feather" effect
Converts back to non-feathered glider
|
Aviation history is set to be made on 21 June if SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately-built spacecraft to go into space.
Last month it completed an impressive demonstration over Mojave airport, when SpaceShipOne and its carrier aircraft White Knight moved a step closer to claiming the X-prize. Pilot Mike Melvill took the vehicle closer to space than any non-governmental craft has been.
Its 64km (211,000ft) altitude was twice as high as SpaceShipOne had been piloted to before.
To win the Ansari X-Prize, that altitude - 100km (329,000ft), the official boundary of space - has to be reached twice in two-weeks by a three-man spacecraft.
SpaceShipOne's 14 shakedown tests have now put it into a position to make the bid for space.
Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites has already become the first non-governmental body to be granted a launch licence when the US Federal Aviation Authority gave it one on 1 April.
The X-prize will mark a new era in manned spaceflight when private companies are able to make short sub-orbital hops for paying customers.
It is hoped that a market for space tourism can be developed. But in reality, only a very few rich passengers will be able to be carried into space by one or two companies for the foreseeable future.
Thanks, Brett!
Space begins at the end of the effective atmosphere. Get to that altitude and you are in space for a moment. If you are coasting in space for a moment, you are in orbit. Tt is orbital flight. So the orbit happens to intersect the eart's atmosphere, it is still an orbit, and it is in space even if you cannot do a complete orbit around the earth. That's what suborbital means.
Ping
I like!
Rear Admiral Shepard was one of the Mercury astronauts named by NASA in April 1959, and he holds the distinction of being the first American to journey into space. On May 5, 1961, in the Freedom 7 spacecraft, he was launched by a Redstone vehicle on a ballistic trajectory suborbital flight--a flight which carried him to an altitude of 116 statute miles and to a landing point 302 statute miles down the Atlantic Missile Range.
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/shepard-alan.html <-- Link
"Since when does a suborbital trip qualify as space flight?"
Since May 5th, 1961
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/shepard-alan.html
lol.
Great minds, et al.
The tenable atmosphere ends at about 50 miles height, defined as the air being too thin to act on wings and control surfaces. Beyond that is space. Any ballistic trajectory, from a softball pitch to a cannon shot, to an ICBM flight is an orbital trajectory. Suborbital means that the orbit will not go all the way around the planet because it intersects the body of the planet so the flight will be a segment of a complete orbit. It's all orbital, and it is free ballistic flight in space, so it is orbital space flight and also the special case of suborbital flight.
Height requirements = 100 km.
Orbital speed requirements:
The orbital speed of a body, generally a planet, a natural satellite, an artificial satellite, or a multiple star, is the speed at which it orbits around the barycenter of a system, usually around a more massive body. It can be used to refer to either the mean orbital speed, the average speed as it completes an orbit, or instantaneous orbital speed, the speed at a particular point in its orbit.
The orbital speed can be described by Kepler's second law, which states that as a body moves around its orbit during a fixed amount of time, the line from the barycenter to the body sweeps a constant area of the orbital plane, regardless of which part of its orbit the body traces during that period of time. This means that the body moves faster near its periapsis than near its apoapsis, because at the smaller distance it needs to trace a greater arc to cover the same area. This law is usually stated as "equal areas in equal time."
The mean orbital speed can be derived either from observations of the orbital period and the semimajor axis of its orbit, or from knowledge of the masses of the two bodies and the semimajor axis.
where vo is the orbital velocity, r is the length of the semimajor axis, T is the orbital period, m is the mass of the other body, and G is the gravitational constant. Note that this is only an approximation that holds true when the orbiting body is of considerably lesser mass than the central one.
More precisely,
where m1 is now the mass of the body under consideration, m2 is the mass of the body being orbited, and r is specifically the radius between the two bodies, ignoring the barycenter. This is still a simplified version; it doesn't allow for elliptical orbits, but it does at least allow for bodies of similar masses.
You then have orbital space flight.
Simple!!!!!
White Knight and Stretched White Knight would be a problem for amateurs, but SS1 would be a task worthy of the effort. You should be able to build an EZ-SS1...
Not quite your average garage project, at least not yet.
EZ-Rocket was a little too much. Dangerous if you ask me. But EZ-Spaceship is different. EZ-Spaceship is a glider--the safest thing there is to fly. We could build EZ-Spaceship and fly it. The materials and chemicals wouldn't be so EZ to work with if we have to build all the shapes and panels, but if it comes with some amount of pre-fab, it might be very possible as a kit.
Sounds like one helluva ride! How much for a ticket and where's the end of the line?
The "thrust" [pardon the pun] was to try and get an idea of what cost would be associated with a space shot. If the cost was low enough, sub orbital, trans oceanic flight, could be accomplished in a very short time.
US to Sydney in 3 to 4 hrs?
If it is rockets all the way, any place on earth is 45 minutes from anyplace else, or less. You might want to land smoothly on the airstrip at Sidney rather than just make a crater near the terminal, so add some glide time, maybe 5 minutes. But the speed of SS1 is maybe Mach 5, and to be intercontinental would take well over Mach 15. That extra speed would require ten times the fuel and everything else is scaled up, too. It's a different animal.
Glad you enjoyed the thread folks, had to post and run earlier today.
It looks like the only thing that could beat Rutan at this point is his own failure. It's going to take a courageous man to pilot that ship.
So would whoever flies this get astronaut wings? I suppose not, but that brings on a more general question as civilian space travel opens up: who exactly is an "astronaut"? Will flying for NASA make you an astronaut and Rosaviakosmos a cosmonaut and if you fly privately are you just a space traveler?
I think the term astronaut should probably be reserved for the specific government job, but I believe they've given shuttleworth and tito astronaut wings, so its already becoming a question.
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