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SpaceShipOne Flight Test
Soft writes "Scaled Composites' entry for the X-Prize, the SpaceShipOne, has had a successful first (unpowered) flight test.
The spacecraft was dropped from the White Knight carrier aircraft at 47,000 ft (14 km) and 105 kt (194 km/h, 120 mph) and touched down after a 1.1-hour glide at Mojave airport.
Photos are available."
I know what Chuck Yeager would say: "Gas that beast up and let's go punch a hole in the sky with it!"
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Indeed the sink rate has far more to do with aerodynamics than weight, which was what I was trying to say. The glide time seems far greater on the SpaceshipOne than on the shuttle meaning that its aerodynamics are better thus a lower sink rate. However, I anticipated that someone would argue that the compariosn is invalid due the far greater weight of the shuttle so, I was just trying to head off ill informed comments.
If I remember coeectly, the SS1 was designed to handle an expected 5.5 G's or so upon "re-entry".
Besides Burt Rutan is a genius, so it has to work. ;)
In the older press release they mentioned the entire flight would be very short - something like 30-45 minutes. But with this sort of glide rate (avg sink less than 12fps when moving 150fps?) the possibilities for "space" (subspace? suborbital?) tourism seem much more clear. A 30 minute trip doesn't sound like much fun at all, but if you're in a ship that can glide back to earth over 4 or 5 hours, that opens all sorts of new doors - like transatlantic flight, to name one. Not as many passengers as the Concorde, but an infinitely cooler trip.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but could you reduce the amount of heating during rentry by slowing the craft down much much more before it reenters?
Obviously there would be a huge weight penalty because you would need to carry all that fuel into orbit in the first place...
But, since slowing down invariably means a lower orbit, is it physically possible to decelerate enough to just kind of "drop down" into the atmosphere at a cozy suborbital speed, or would the g-forces required to slow rapidly enough before your orbit lowers too much be too high?
Am I making any sense?
I've always wondered about this.
This space available.
The competitors for the X-price are one after the other dropping their capsules / spaceships out of the sky to test at least part of their re-entry profile, and Burt Rutans entry at least flies like a dream (big surprice - he designs flyingmachiens for a living, don't he?). The X-price is running until January 1, 2005 (qoute; The X PRIZE is fully funded through January 1, 2005, through private donations and backed by an insurance policy to guarantee that the $10 million is in place on the day that the prize is won), giving the teams a little more than one year to launch, overhaul their machines and launch again.
I'm getting all excited over the prosects ahead of us. Never mind if the X-price succeds in jumpstarting the space-tourism or not - we're getting a taste of what the spacerace was like when the USA and the USSR were competing about getting the first man up into space, allthought this time all the teams are playing with open cards.
I'm willing to bet all my karma that we'll have the first launch before next summer; anyone willing to bet against it?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
is that it's sort of like living in the 1950s and experiencing all of this new space stuff for the first time. We are lucky to be living in interesting times.
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If you had the reaction mass in orbit as a refueling point, there is no question that this would work. It is out of reach of today's technology with its dependence on chemical rockets, because the cost of hauling the fuel up with you is much too great. But that could change in a hurry, if we happen to find a source of ice that is already up there somewhere...
What I envision is a reentry vehicle that uses steam jets generated by the heat of reentry as brakes. I'm talking water-cooled wings where the liquid water is brought to temperatures of 250 - 500 deg C before it is flashed to steam in forward-pointing jets. We are past masters of handling live steam in everything from 1850's locomotives to light water nuclear power stations. We've got steam technology pretty well nailed. It is hard to imagine not being able to make that work. But it might depend on finding exploitable ice on the Moon, or snagging a passing comet.
It is also possible to use heavy lift, brute force, unmanned rockets to throw big water balloons into orbit, that would then be used as refueling points for the descent of manned craft. From my vague memories of the space shuttle's payload (something like 20 tonnes?) I'd guess that NASA could throw a 30 - 50 tonne water balloon up there within 4 years, with most of that time spent on choosing and approving the contracts. At a WAG, a water balloon of that size would probably provide a half dozen or so manned rides back (depending on what kind of beast you get when you mix a bunch of steam engineers with a bunch of aeronautic engineers). Compared to the cost of extending the space shuttle's service life, this could be economically worthwhile.
Anyway, the thought of this generates some interesting and fun images.