X Prize Race Heats Up

evenprime writes "Armadillo Aerospace have already done a drop test, and Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites did a second flight test of their launch plane/spacecraft combination on July 3. SC haven't posted the results yet, but when they do you will find them here. Sadly, PanAero doesn't appear to be doing that well. Although I like their "Junkyard Wars" technique, it doesn't look stuffing rockets in the back end of a business jet will build a legitimate contender."

Comments

Armadillo

[tra2499]

It's interesting to note that Carmack, with Armadillo Aerospace, is taking more of an Open-Source approach to the X-Prize by participating in mailing lists and discussing various aspects of his designs with others in the rocketry community. While he's not going full-disclosure, he's at least sharing a lot more than Rutan.

I'm cheering for Armadillo.

Re:tumbling

[tra2499]

The problem is that the airframe and the wings are NOT designed to withstand the necessary stress of escape velocity.

If you look at the successful "space plane" type vehicles that NASA or any other big research team has developed, you'll see that it required designs that looked more like a rocket than an airplane to get anything anywhere near the edge of space.

If not a "junkyard wars" approach, it is an extremely optimistic design. I would expect the wings to rip out at the roots when they light up the rocket motors.

Re:Armadillo? Ouch!!!

[MickLinux]

From the website:

1. The flight profile of the Black Armadillo starts out in a familiar fashion, but shortly after reaching the peak altitude of 107 km (67 miles), it operates in a manner which can only be described as "ground breaking."

I don't think I want to be a passenger in that particular entry. Breaking ground is a pretty severe way of landing, in my opinion.

Re:tumbling

[tra2499]

It's not necessarily the sudden shock that makes parts separate themselves from each other. The airframe was rated to 0.8 Mach. Okay, let's assume that the FAA is being their usually pessimistic selves when it comes to airframe ratings and that it can sustain twice that much for a short duration. The speed of sound (Mach 1) is roughly 780 mph. If the airframe is capable of short bursts of 1.6 Mach, then I can't really see it surviving 2.97 Mach.

Once they hit transsonic, they will undergo a severe amount of turbulence. The longer they spend in the transsonic region, the bigger danger to those long, thin wings.

Wanna fly it?

[davids-world.com]

Interestingly, the simulator Scaled Composits uses to train their pilots is available for cheap: X-Plane does the job at Scaled Composites with their own sim cockpit.

Runs on OS X, OS9 and Windows. Warning: Harder to fly than MS Flightsim -- of course!

X-Plane, being fairly realistic, even has an FAA rating so it can be used (with a $150.000 motion platform) to log hours towards your Airline Transport Certificate.

To the PanAiro folks.

[AltGrendel]

Don't do it. It'll void your warranty.

Are Competitors Building Dead-End Technology?

[reallocate]

I don't mean to demean any of the efforts, and all that cash is an obvious incentive. But, are any of the competitiors building something that isn't dead-end technology?

Consider: Rutan and others plan to boost a more-or-less conventional aircraft to a few times the speed of sound, coast to altitude, and glide back. (You can't just put a bigger firecracker in the back, remember. You need life-support, navigation, communications, and, especially, safe passage through re-entry.)

So, one of them bags the X-Prize, but in the end you still have a vehicle with a maximum velocity of 1500-2500 mph. That's a long way from the 17,000 mph needed to reach and sustain orbit.

Are any X-Prize competitors building something that can be the basis of a realistic orbital vehicle?

Re:Are Competitors Building Dead-End Technology?

[MtViewGuy]

Fortunately, Scaled Composite's entry into the X-Prize competition is not as dead-end as some people think.

Remember, by launching SpaceShipOne at over 50,000 feet altitude, that right there saves a tremendous amount of propellant needed to fly to the 62.1 mile altitude. It's the same method that allowed the relatively small X-15 with its XLR-99 rocket motor to reach over 354,000 feet, or 67.5 miles into space. During the late 1980's, there were serious studies about building a small spaceplane launched from the top of a modified 747-200 that has been fitted with a de-rated version of the Space Shuttle main engine; Rutan could apply what he learns from SpaceShipOne and build a small spaceplane that could carry as many as seven crew or its equivalent in cargo to the International Space Station. Indeed, I've heard of a company that proposes towing a fully-fueled spaceplane behind another large jet and then launching it at around 40,000 feet; because it launches at this altitude, the spaceplane needs far less propellants to reach low Earth orbit (LEO).

Re:Are Competitors Building Dead-End Technology?

[seanthenerd]

Actually, I read in a PopSci article (right here) that Rutan does have plans for the SpaceShipOne/WhiteKnight, but that he wants others to build and commercialize them:

Rutan's historical model is Wilbur Wright's tour of France in 1908, which sparked tremendous growth in the industry. Rutan wants SpaceShipOne to kick-start a similar burst of innovation. Hence his ambitious post-X-Prize testing and demonstration plan: Fly every Tuesday for five months, 20 flights in a row on schedule, to determine the system's cost and reliability. Though he envisions everything from 10- passenger suborbital tour buses to a giant White Knight that uses eight 747 engines to launch a 300-ton spacecraft, Rutan says those are for others to build: "The Wrights didn't build the world's first airliner--they didn't need to," he says. "I hope people don't expect me to certificate a spaceship and offer rides. I want to be doing something more exciting by then."

Go, Burt!