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Suborbital Spaceflight Update
HobbySpacer writes "Burt Rutan's group has fixed a problem with the SpaceShipOne and recently carried out a successful drop test. Ground studies involved tests with CFD - "creative Ford driving" using a Ford-250 pickup truck. Other suborbital news includes the announcement of plans to follow the X PRIZE competition with an annual X PRIZE Cup event in which rocket teams will compete in an air show type format. In Japan the RVT (Reusable Vehicle Test) just completed its third short hop (in Japanese) within a week. (English reports on the first and second flights.) The liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen powered vehicle seeks to develop robust, reusable technologies for vertical takeoff and landing rockets. It and subsequent vehicles will gradually expand the flight envelope to high altitudes."
If NASA had this problem they would have had to build a Wind Tunnel and finance the development of a Supercomputer, in the "correct" congressional district. Ensuring future funding of the program.
The F150 solution goes to show what the private sector can do, given the proper motivation.
Rutan is gonna win this thing on December 17th.
Burt Rutan is such a great idol figure for any aspiring youth; he's cool as elvis, no nonsense as any good ol' american commonsenser, creative as da vinci and alternative as it can be yet deeply respected and admired by the "establishment" guys of his craft. The fact that he can make a design company as relatively small as his sustain itself and succeed in a market that is dominated by huge corporations that not only are deep pocketed and heavily staffed but also capable of yielding political influence, such as boing and lockhead martin, and just do his thing yet sell good without "selling out" is phenomenal and very inspiring. His design are truly creative and beautiful. It's a testament to a design when it's not only highly functional but also beautiful, and wild in a way that's unlike any before yet amazingly simple and makes sense in a way that makes you think there's no good reason why it shouldn't have been this way all along. He should a case study on the list of everyone who's even remotely interested in innovation.