"NEW DESIGN -- The White Knight, a new plane introduced by Scaled Composites at Mojave Airport, takes to the air during a demonstration flight at its unveiling Friday."
Posted on 04/19/2003 5:48:54 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Burt Rutan's name has long been synonymous with innovative feats of aviation creation.
With his latest endeavor, he may add breakthroughs in spacecraft and spaceflight to the list.
Rutan unveiled SpaceShipOne, and its carrier aircraft White Knight, before a crowd of more than 300 excited aviation and space experts and enthusiasts Friday, ending months of secrecy and speculation about his latest project.
The first manned spacecraft built without government support, SpaceShipOne is designed to be air-launched from the White Knight carrier aircraft, then use a rocket engine to boost it to 100 kilometers - 62.5 miles - altitude. Completing an arc, the spacecraft will then descend to a runway landing, much like a glider.
Developed in secret for the last two years by Rutan's Scaled Composites at the Mojave Airport, the dual-aircraft project was presented before such aviation luminaries as Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin; Erik Lindbergh, grandson of the famed aviation pioneer; and space tourist Dennis Tito.
"It's the closest thing to the Wright Brothers that exists in the world," said Ken Szalai, a former director of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and member of Scaled Composites' board of directors.
"Seeing him from NASA, I was impressed," he said of Rutan. "Seeing him from the inside, I'm awed."
The project is Scaled Composites' entry in the X-Prize race, an international competition intended to jump start the space tourism industry.
The competition will award $10 million to the first privately funded team to successfully build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers altitude and safely return to earth, then turn around and duplicate the feat with the same ship within two weeks.
For comparison, the space shuttle reaches orbits ranging from 185 to 643 kilometers, or 115 to 400 miles. The international space station orbits at 354 kilometers, or 220 miles.
So far, 24 teams from across the globe have joined the race, said Peter Diamandis, chairman and president of the X-Prize competition.
Twelve teams are building hardware, with four of those - included Scaled Composites - planning manned flights this year.
"We hope there will be a real horse race in this competition," he said.
"This is elegant," Diamandis said of the Scaled Composites design.
Many of the other entries are taking the "brute force" approach, vertically thrusting a vehicle into space from the ground.
Hopefully, the competition will result in useful technology that will jump start an industry and "create more astronauts in one year than in the last 40 years," he said.
SpaceShipOne's concept builds on the X-15 rocket plane program of NASA and the Air Force in the 1960s. Exploring the possibilities for spaceflight, the high-speed, high-altitude aircraft made two forays to beyond 100 kilometers.
The X-15 was carried aloft for launch beneath the wings of the massive B-29 and B-52 bombers.
"This program is a lot like the X-15," Rutan said. "But we had a minor problem - we had to build our own B-52."
Scaled Composites' version of the B-52 is the White Knight.
One major distinction, however, is the White Knight serves not only as a carrier aircraft and launch platform, but carries the same instrumentation and is designed to mimic the flight profile of the spacecraft. In this way, it can be used as a flight test vehicle for the spacecraft, as well as a pilot trainer.
White Knight has been flying all the same systems as the SpaceShipOne since August.
"I'm going to have mature systems before we fly the first mission," Rutan said.
The White Knight is the "ultimate flight simulator," pilot Doug Shane said. "You fly the airplane just like you'd fly the spaceship on reentry."
Scaled Composites chief test pilot Mike Melvill put White Knight through its paces before an appreciative crowd on the wind-swept flightline Friday.
'It flies great," he said.
Much like its predecessors the Voyager and Proteus aircraft, White Knight is a gangly craft, with a small fuselage and long wingspan.
"There's a saying in flight test - if it looks right, it flies right," Northrop Grumman test pilot Roy Martin said. "With Burt, it doesn't look right, but it always flies right."
Like that of the spaceship it carries, the prominent cockpit is notable for its lack of a conventional windshield. Instead, it features a series of small portals, designed to be lightweight and provide the structural stability needed for the pressurized craft.
Although the scattered windows are small, the view they provide is "amazingly good," Melvill said, "way better than I ever thought it would be."
The only real difficulty is in watching for other air traffic, he said, when the pilot has to tip the plane around to see other aircraft.
The project also has a sophisticated ground simulator for testing and training electronics.
"It's so innovative," said Gordon Fullerton, former astronaut and current NASA research pilot, as he watched a demonstration of the spacecraft simulator.
"It's overwhelming, that's why it's so exciting," he said.
The innovative key to SpaceShipOne's reentry is in creating huge amounts of drag early on, so it lands at roughly the same speeds as a general aviation airplane.
To accomplish this, the spacecraft's twin-tail section lifts until it is virtually perpendicular to the wings and body, generating drag and slowing the spacecraft.
When told of the plan to slow the spaceship early in reentry with high drag, "the a-ha light came on," former NASA astronaut Rick Searfoss said. "They're solving the problem early."
"Leave it to Burt to come up with something like that," Searfoss said.
The spacecraft also will not travel faster than Mach 3.5, Rutan said.
"I don't care about fast," he said. "I want to go high, because that is where the view is."
Because of the reduced speed, SpaceShipOne does not generate the intense heat experienced by vehicles such as the space shuttle, and therefore does not need an extensive thermal protection system.
SpaceShipOne's three-man crew will fly without spacesuits, instead relying on the environmental controls of the pressurized spacecraft.
Double-redundant systems have been built into the spacecraft to ensure it remains pressurized at an equivalent to near sea level.
"We put the spacesuit outside the vehicle," Rutan said.
For the rocket propulsion system needed to boost the spacecraft into space, Rutan has two separate rocket engine companies working in parallel.
Environmental Aeroscience Corp. of Miami and San Diego-based SpaceDev Inc. are each developing hybrid engines which use nitrous oxide - laughing gas - for fuel, as well as a solid propellant.
Both vendors will complete the ground test phase, but only one will be used on SpaceShipOne.
Although it is a research aircraft, SpaceShipOne is constructed completely of space-ready hardware.
"There is nothing … that is a mock-up," Rutan said. "Everything is designed to put humans in space."
Although SpaceShipOne has been mated to the carrier aircraft, it has yet to be airborne.
Eventually, the schedule calls for test flights with the spaceship attached, before moving on to rocket-powered flight.
In addition to its technological innovations, the SpaceShipOne project is notable for being an entirely private program, without government support.
Rutan was inspired to attempt spaceflight by what he sees as stagnation in the field dominated by government programs.
"We've retreated from our former capabilities," he said.
In nearly a half century of space travel, only 241 manned flights have been completed, carrying a total of 431 people, Rutan said.
He concluded that space travel is still in a primitive state, with only three basic concepts ever used.
"I'll stick my neck out and say 'yeah, I can do that'," Rutan said. "If I can do that with this little company in Mojave, a lot of other people will say 'yeah, I can do that too.' "
Like the early aviation pioneers, Rutan is concerned with the ability to accomplish spaceflight, not with future benefits of the technology.
"The big benefit, if there is a renaissance in space travel, will be for our youth," he said. "If they continue to be bored like they are bored now with space travel, there will be no future leaders.
"If ever there is even the tiniest hint that we inspired others by doing it first, that's worth it to me," Rutan said. "It's so much more important than making money."
Similar frustration with the government's approach led Searfoss' resignation from NASA two months ago.
A commander and pilot for two shuttle missions, he was most recently a research pilot at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.
"It's nice to see flight testing going on in the Mojave Desert," Searfoss said, "but it's not happening at NASA Dryden."
He is now a consultant and X-Prize judge.
"It's just incredible to see flying hardware," he said.
"It's just fantastic all the way around," he said of the Scaled Composites design. "It's brilliant across the board."
Inspired by the X-Prize competition, Rutan began working on his concept in 1996.
Hardware development began about two years ago, with the first flight of White Knight in August.
Because it is an active research project that will incrementally expand the vehicles' flight envelope, Rutan will not divulge a flight test schedule or cost of the project.
Former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin sees such private endeavors as one path for the future of manned space flight.
While only the large companies have the level of commitment and time needed for large-scale spaceflight, small companies can inspire larger ones to take it up.
I don't see how they can use nitrous oxide as a fuel. It is my understanding that nitrous is used as an oxidizer and by itself is not flammable.
Rutan's a brilliant designer and visionary.
But he needs help naming the thing. ;-)
Oh, I bet they'll all be wearing pressure suits on their first flight beyond 100,000 meters if they need any kind of insurance policy on their lives or equipment. Unless Burt is using his first aluminum skin in a long time, fourteen psi is a huge pressure differential to risk in a composite fuselage. The fifty pounds per person a rudimentary flight suit would require would be well worth the weight. If I had to guess, I think it would be much lighter overall to design in non-pressurized ports and just necessitate the use pressure suits from the start.
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