Slashdot Mirror
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."
Go JC go!
1. Build nifty spacecraft for $20,000,000US
2. Maybe win $10,000,000US X-Prize
3. ???
4. Profit!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
X-Plane v7.0beta has both aircraft (apparently Scaled Composites used it for their simulator)
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.
Maybe I'm just early here, but it astonishes me that no one has posted a comment, except for trolls and ACs.
It's stuff like this that gives me hope that I'll live long enough to get a trip into space before I die. The government, as it usually does with everything it attempts, seems to have completely screwed up the exploration of space. It's been over 30 years since we sent a human being to another world, for heaven's sake.
I'm writing in Rutan for President in 2004. At least he's actually built something other than a portfolio.
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.
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.
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
Physicsnerd
_______________
"Even logic must give way to physics" - Spock
It's a hybrid: half rocket engine, half rubber band attached to a propeller.
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."
Rutan has a better track record than the rest of the competitors, combined.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"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.
Complex design? Airborne launch is well-proven technology. The spacecraft is very cleverly and elegantly designed. The vehicle has enough "cargo" space to carry three people. Or two people and 200lbs of cargo. It carries a lot more than my Miata, and my Miata is a damn useful vehicle. Although I don't want to hold up the Shuttle as a great design, it obviously does fine with unpowered landing. Carrying fuel for re-entry and landing is insanely expensive in terms of weight and vehicle size. Unless there's something mission critical that requires fuel during the landing evolution, you /really/ don't want to waste weight with it.
What do you base your cost estimates on?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Besides, the White Night is also the trainer for the spacecraft. Yep, you heard me, they load a profile on computer in the WN and it flies the same as the spacecraft! Double duty saving lots of money.
Big. The math isn't that hard for a rough but trust me, big. and expensive. And non-reusable. And a hazard afterwords. Yeah, well now that you've pretty much trashed all the other engineering now you want, what, super rockets? Sure, we'll just use the ones off your Voltron doll...How about just come out with it and admit you want Star Trek teleporters, forget this nasty uncomfortable dangerous test vehicle stuff? Hell I bet the thing doesn't even have in-flight service with a decent bar cart!
Frankly you come off as the the exact sort of useless US holiday poster you mention. Lots of inane second guessing, apparently no homework before reading one article, coming up with ridiculous requirements: Cargo? For a test vehicle? Meeting X-Prize criteria? Have you EVER been around ANY sort of engineering project?
Score you -3 for silly whiner.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Jerry Pournelle posted some more photos on his web site a couple days ago: http://jerrypournelle.com/view/view258.html#SS1
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
um, what do you think solid rocket fuel (i.e. the stuff used in the space shuttle's booster) is? It's basically rubber with an oxider and some metal powders.
The stuff that reacts with the oxygen in most of these rocket engines is a hydrocarbon: rubber, plastics, asphalt, kerosene, etc.
My only disagreement is with "Rutan for president". It's an insult to this great man to lump him in with an organization, government, whose whole existence is predicated on force and which can only fund itself by theft.
To the contrary it's the efforts of Mr Rutan and others like him which will finally put our species out of the reach of government.
What happens if the wings break off?
It's always possible to have a mission-failure point in a design. Good engineers identify those points, and design redundancies and fail-safes. That's why we pay engineers lots of money.
I hope. Anybody want to hire me? : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!