Flight Testing Of Burt Rutan's X Prize Entry

evenprime writes "The X Prize website is reporting that Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites did some flight testing on their SpaceShipOne/White Knight launch platform on May 19, 2003. Next up: drop tests. There's also a nice write-up at the BBC website."

Comments

The profit is not in underpants.

[inertia187]

1. Build nifty spacecraft for $20,000,000US
2. Maybe win $10,000,000US X-Prize
3. ???
4. Profit!

Just Ducky!

[Tackhead]

"Mommy, what is that duck doing to the other duck?"

Seriously... you go, Burt - and all the other X-Prize teams, too.

On behalf of all of us cubicle-bound geeks looking at the stars, may you all show NASA what teams of dedicated engineers can do if given an environment in which... well, an environment in which dedicated engineers can do what dedicated engineers have always done in such an environment.

Re:Armadillo's page recently updated too!

[drinkypoo]

Am I the only one who wouldn't ride in the black armadillo because of this section:

The crushable, aluminum nose cone neatly and systematically collapses into itself, decelerating the vehicle to a stop. The capsule then falls on its side to end the mission.

So let me get this straight. You're going to fire this thing into space and then it's going to land and crush like a beer can? Pass.

Space-travel industry.

[Lemmy Caution]

It'll be about private industry until United Spacelines and American Spacelines start losing too much money, and the space-citizens of the United Space-states of Earth have to shell out billions of space-dollars to keep them afloat. I mean, in orbit.

Rutan rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rutan amazes me.. I mean, he has an interest in aircraft, then goes out and designs builds tons of them, makes a business out of it, sets all sorts of records, and so on. All with sideburns! He rules!

-J

Re:Nitrous Oxide and Rubber?

[farnerup]

It's a hybrid: half rocket engine, half rubber band attached to a propeller.

Re:Armadillo's page recently updated too!

[the_other_one]

it operates in a manner which can only be described as "ground breaking."

IANARS, however, I do believe there are breaking methods that that I would prefer if I was going along for the ride.

Re:Armadillo's page recently updated too!

[RabidOverYou]

But ... but ... but ... according to your sig, you're a street walking cheetah, with a heart full of napalm. You're the runaway son of a nuclear A-bomb! Of course you'd do it! Else, you must retire your sig. No, I insist.

Seven minutes in heaven

[endquotedotcom]

From the BBC article: "SpaceShipOne will start its mission with a climb to 50,000ft under the twin-engined White Knight. SpaceShipOne will then fire its hybrid rocket engine, fuelled by a mixture of nitrous oxide and rubber, to reach the blackness of space.

"After experiencing weightlessness at the top of its trajectory, the ship will extend its wings and tail and glide back to the runway that it left 90 minutes earlier."

Okay, so we have a plane with a "spaceship" under it, and we're going to go up real high and then fling it up into what's just barely "space," and watch it fall down. So you'll actually be in "space" for just a few minutes? No orbiting around and trying to see if you can find your house from up there? How much fun is this really, when the majority of your time is spent screaming your head off as you fall back to Earth? Maybe the inflight meal will be really good.

Re:Rutan can do it if anybody can

[Sanity]

Paul MacReady made human-powered flight work two decades ago. Nobody has done it since. Gregg Williams designed almost all the really small jet aircraft engines - he did his first one in the 1950s, and he designed the engines for cruise missiles, and he's still designing them. One person, Ed Kleinschmidt, designed all the mechanical teletype machines from the 1930s to the last one in the 1970s.

Clearly all of these people subscribe to the Perl doctrine of job preservation: "If nobody else can figure out how it works - they can't fire you".

Re:Armadillo's page recently updated too!

[kinnell]

The crushable, aluminum nose cone neatly and systematically collapses into itself, decelerating the vehicle to a stop. The capsule then falls on its side to end the mission

This is why I'm rooting for armadillo aerospace - if they win, the history videos of the future will show a fat, cheap looking rocket crashing head first into the ground then falling over. It's about time history got a little comic relief :o)