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Flight Testing Of Burt Rutan's X Prize Entry

Posted by timothy on from the rutan-tootin' dept.

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."

7 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Try it yourself by GrubInCan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    X-Plane v7.0beta has both aircraft (apparently Scaled Composites used it for their simulator)

  2. Re:Armadillo's page recently updated too! by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Big news, but no interest by knobmaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Rutan can do it if anybody can by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  5. Re:Nitrous Oxide and Rubber? by farnerup · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  6. Re:Armadillo's page recently updated too! by RabidOverYou · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  7. Yes! Rubber! by Gharlane+of+Eddore · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."