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

Rutan can do it if anybody can

[Animats]

Rutan has a very good track record in aircraft design, and can probably bring this off. He's designed many strangely-shaped aircraft, and they all fly well.

Of course, there's the problem that maybe he can, but nobody else can. This happens. 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.

Yes! Rubber!

[Gharlane of Eddore]

From an article on KMSB-TV This history of space missions has been written with solid- or liquid-fuel rockets. Solid-fuel rockets are simple, reliable and inexpensive, but thrust at only one speed, can't be shut down, and produce toxic exhaust. Liquid-fuel rockets can be throttled to control thrust and turned off and on, but are highly complex and less reliable. Hybrid technology combines the advantages of both types of fuel, but can be made more cheaply and with more environmentally benign materials, said Brad Linenberger, a senior in aerospace and mechanical engineering. "The components themselves are safer, because the solid fuel is basically tire rubber and the liquid fuel is nitrous oxide, which is just laughing gas" liquefied under pressure, Linenberger said. "The stuff they put in solid rockets to keep them burning, you don't want to be inhaling that stuff."