Slashdot Mirror
SpaceShipOne Completes Second Test Flight
waynegoode writes "According to an article at Space.com, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne suborbital rocket plane made its second powered flight today. The piloted vehicle was powered by a hybrid rocket motor to over 105,000 feet. The engine burned for 40 seconds, zipping to Mach 2. SpaceShipOne is one of several projects competing for the $10 million X Prize. Slashdot mentioned yesterday that it received a license from the FAA, the first license for a suborbital rocket."
Just yesterday, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced it had issued the world's first license for a sub-orbital manned rocket flight.
The license was issued April 1 by the DOT's Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation to Scaled Composites. This federal paperwork green-lighted a sequence of sub-orbital flights by Scaled Composites for a one-year period.
The license to Scaled Composites is the first to authorize piloted flight on a sub-orbital trajectory, the DOT statement noted.
I hope we are able to witness this "...piloted flight on a sub-orbital trajector.."this year!
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
They have to get to 328,000 feet, seems like they are looking pretty good.
How about our favorite FPS gaming programmer turned rocketman John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace?
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com
Wow, that was a big possesive noun.
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Drat, someone beat me on the article submission. At least this time, the editors will finally have a decent reason to reject my submission, though.
Unless something goes seriously wrong with Scaled's program, it looks they've got the thing pretty much sewn up. The only serious competitors to Scaled right now are Carmack's Armadillo and those craaazy Canucks on the Da Vinci project. Given that this is almost exactly 1/3 of the way to the X Prize and that they already have broken the red tape barrier, I have trouble seeing anyone catching up to Rutan and crew at this point.
They have to get to 328,000 feet, seems like they are looking pretty good.
I bet this one only went a third of the way because that's about as far up as they can go while still controlling the craft's attitude with control surfaces.
Power for the rest of the altitude should be no problem, since their engine seems to be working just fine. But they'll need also need their attitude control and reentry heat shielding working to go extra-atmospheric - where they can't just glide down the whole way.
So first some tests where the limits of the aircraft mode are demonstrated and debugged, followed by tests where the additonal functions are also used.
One step at a time wins the race. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Scaled has a huge reputation in the industry. They're sort of the outsource Skunk Works. Companies like Boeing and Lockheed go to Scaled when they need something bizarre built and tested. Scaled isn't ever going to have a spot next to Boeing and Lockheed because Boeing and Lockheed are their customers.
-twb
Pretty much bragging rights, yes.
Or you could look at it this way: sub-orbital flight can potentially yield returns far beyond the investment. And I don't mean just the ability to fly at sub-orbital altitudes; getting this far proves you've got the brains and cojones to achieve this feat, which attracts other investors, which can fund bigger projects.
But if you can't bear the investment, the X-Prize may soften that blow to the point that a company may give it a try. Think of it as a carrot that will feed you long enough to get to the BIG carrot farther on.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
I've been following Armadillo about every week on their news page for the past year. I like their dedication and method of building a ship.
They have however spent a lot of time dealing with engine issues. They've already had to go from a 90% peroxide monopropellent design to a 50% peroxide/methanol mixed-monoprop because FNC (one of the few companies that make 90% peroxide) wasn't willing to sell it to them. They've spent a lot more time dealing with designing the engines than they anticipated. Just goes to show, rocket engine design is not simple!
Other issues include how to get the thing back on the ground safely. They initally planned to use a big ass parachute to land it, but they found out that this really restricts them in terms of getting a launch license. Because there is a possiblity for such huge range drift with the parachute design (thus endangering public safety since it can land in a huge footprint) that they've now had to think about doing a powered landing using the engines. This of course, leaves much less room for error on landing. An alternative would be to have the pilot bail out and parachute down while the ship lands by itself, but again this adds complexity.
Although I'd love to see them win, the fact is, Rutan is way ahead of them in terms of testing and having a working prototype ship. Basically SS1 is the favorite by quite a bit as of now.
A lot of the aviation 'firsts' had nothing to do with commercial interests on the part of the participants. They just wanted to DO it, because they thought they could. On that note, Carmack's efforts are closer in spirit to those of the Wrights, Lindbergh, et al, than Rutan (since Burt and Dick are well known in the experimental aircraft business) but it looks like that within a couple of years there will be a number of private organizations capable of doing Low-Earth-Orbit vehicle insertion. What that is going to do for society? I dunno. The suborbital capability alone basically gives Rutan etc. the ability to deliver people or cargo partway around the world in half an hour. That would be one hell of a courier service.
Less is more.
The real trick to the X prize, if you read the whole article, is that everyone has to get the FAA approval. So if there are any thoughts to other teams forgoing safety to try and beat the clock, think again. Indeed as a long time fan of Rutan, he's been the only real contender in my mind, due to his ability to solve any challenge presented because he thinks completely out of the box. That tail fin which flips up to control descent is a mark of true genius.
"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." -- Albert Einstein