Posted on 06/21/2004 8:22:15 AM PDT by Dallas59
Ya' see, a beneficial spin-off already.
"Rutan might be able to make some side-money launching Pegasus rockets from his carrier plane. Those B-52's must be getting real old and expensive to keep flying".
I've seen a Pegasus launch from Wallops I. Virginia from an L1011. They can use any properly equipped large aircraft.
I got to the airport two hours early at 4:40AM, in time to get in a mile long line of cars slowly entering. And this was well before first light on a MONDAY morning!
At 6:40, the "White Knight" carrier plane and "Space Ship One" combo taxied by the crowd. These two aircraft are really a weird sight. Rutan truly is an aerodynamic artist.
The chase planes were a high performance aerobatic plane (landing chase), a Beech Starship, and a small foriegn fighter of some type. Watching the flight climb over the airport was surreal.
Unfortunately for us ground pounders, the launch was mostly obscured directly into the sun, but the climbout was directly over the airport. I was watching with binoculars, and hoped to be able to keep sight of the spacecraft after engine burnout. No way. After the smoke trail ended, I couldn't see even a spec in the binocs.
Everyone was listening to a local radio station that was broadcasting from mission control. They blocked the media's radio feed for awhile (probably when the "bang" occurred). We had no idea what was going on. No one in the crowd knew anything was amiss, but nevertheless, thousands of people stood on the ramp in total silence, seeing nothing, waiting on reentry.
They cut the radio back on during re-entry, and I heard Melville call out, 5 g's... 6.5 g's. Then we heard he was at 80k feet, and soon thereafter moved the wings back into landing configuration.
The landing was right in front of the crowd. After a few minutes with the media cameras, they towed the spacecraft down the taxiway for everyone to cheer. Melville held a sign up "Space Ship One... Government Zero".
Well, not exactly true, but it felt like it.
An awesome day, and great feat by Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites, and good old American Capitalism!
Thank you for the info, I recant, it is a big event. One for the private sector who began it all. The federal government for years had been funding Langley in order to achieve powered flight when the Wright brothers beat him to it. Maybe we have come full circle back to the private sector leading the way again.
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