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Rutan's SpaceshipOne Hits 200,000 Feet
An anonymous reader writes "Burt Rutan's privately-built SpaceshipOne is one step closer to winning the X-Prize after zooming to what witnesses say was somewhere around 200,000 feet on only its third powered flight. (See also the partial update from Scaled Composites.)"
Nearly 38 miles ... dayam, that's practically low earth orbit ...
Can you even see Spaceship 1 at 200,000? If I recall, the engine cuts off and Spaceship 1 coasts up the rest of the way, so there is no trail to follow.
True, there's no exhaust track. But you can follow it on radar, or through a telescope, or you can estimate the altitude based on altitude and velocity at engine cutoff.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
They got the OK to run manned LEO (Low Earth Orbit) flights from the DOT (Department of Transportation) for the next year, so I'd say it's a safe bet that they will be doing this again a couple more times.
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Actually, the way I heard it, altitude is only 1/25 the trick to orbit. The other 24/25 is speed. I might presume that the kinetic energy necessary for LEO isn't really 24X the potential energy of that altitude, but perhaps that rather reflects hauling the fuel up there to build up the velocity. I need to sit down and do some math on this.
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It wasn't. Paul Allen is no longer of Microsoft, although he lives off the money he made when he still was part of it. Never mind where the money came from. If this takes off (pun intended), scaled up versions of the Rutan plane may one day bring us hypersonic passenger transport. From Amsterdam to New York in one hour, anyone? It'd be nice to see a private venture beat NASA, ESA and every other *SA out there. AND I would be first in line for the first intercontinental sub-orbital flight.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
There is a lot of difference between spaceship one and a space shuttle. FOr example the entire exterior of the shuttle has to be examined and significant sections replaced due to the heat of re-entry. This is not an issue for spaceship one because it doesn't gain a fraction of the altitude or speed of the shuttle...
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The article fails to do the math for us...
The test appears to have got the space craft to 61Kilometers, the Xprize is 100Kilometers (twice)
So yes, they are getting close.
M@
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Here are links to the photos from the flight directly off their servers. Shot of earch in background... Apogee
They're making some really neat progress with the jet vane concept, but until they get site and vehicle clearance they won't be coming close to catching up with the Scaled Team.
That's ok though, each team: Scaled, Armadillo, XCor, DaVinci, etc. is approaching things differently, so who knows we might end up with a heterogenous and competitive rocket industry.
Heck, there's even JP Aerospace with their airship/ballon platform to orbit method!
It needs to launch again 2 weeks later with no more than some arbitrarily set percentage of mass (ablative shielding, fuel, etc) replaced. So they need a minimum amount of refurbishment between flights.
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Here is the actual information release from Scaled:
"Launch conditions were 46,000 feet and 120 knots. Motor light off occurred 10 seconds after release and the vehicle boosted smoothly to 150,000 feet and Mach 2.5. Subsequent coast to apogee of 211,400 feet. During a portion of the boost, the flight director display was inoperative, however the pilot continued the planned trajectory referencing the external horizon. Reaction control authority was as predicted and the vehicle recovered in feather experiencing 1.9M and 3.5G's. Feather oscillations were actively damped by the pilot and the wing was de-feathered starting at 55,000 feet. The onboard avionics was re-booted and a smooth and uneventful landing made to Mojave." - Scaled Composites LLC
So it looks like it went to 211,400 ft. Those witnesses knew what they were talking about.
Source: The "Test Updates" page on the scaled composites web site (link in article).
Jan
Its on there website in the photos section, they have some movie clips. Here's the link: http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/New_Index/p hotos/photos_text.htm
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The payload and the range of SpaceShipOne is less then a primitive Scud rocket. It does not have military value.
Speed: 4520MPH/Mach 6.7 William Knight.
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Altitude: 354300 ft (107.9 km, 67.1 mi) Joseph Walker.
IIRC, the x prize contender would not necessarily break the height record, since it would only require an altitude of 100km or 330000 ft. However, the trick is the vehicle must (a) be privately funded, (b) be capable of carrying two passengers in addition to the pilot and (3) repeat the feat within two weeks.
Undoubtedly the X prize contestant will probably go the extra 7 km and break the altitude record for good measure.
FYI: William Knight recently passed away on May 7.
http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-050804a
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Presumably Rutan will have designed for this weight. It's probably just a matter of filling up the tanks all the way, but they'll be doing more testing than just "kick the tires and light the fires".
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The only video footage I have come across is on SpaceDev's Web site. It shows a joint White Knight/SpaceShipOne take off.
Unless you go straight up as far as you can, and try to make a sharp turn.
And have some magical engine capable of thrusting you to 17,000 mph in a short instant (and some kind of dampening field so you wont be killed from the acceleration)
That's why space vehicles curve backwards as they accelerate through the atmosphere so they have plenty of angular velocity once they reach the proper altitude. Maintaining orbit is all about getting to the proper angular speed tangental to the earth.
Orbitting the earth is much more difficult than touching space on a ballistic trajectory. You need way more engine power and heat ablative materials and design to handle the re-entry friction.
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You are probably thinking Brian "RocketGuy" Walker.
He hasnt made much of a progress as of late, due to personal life interfering.
You can follow all of those developments on HobbySpace RLV News and Space Log
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Thats their previous, April 8th flight.
Alans Mojave Weblog has more on that one
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I hate to be a wet blanket here, but does winning the X-Prize really get us any closer to privatization of space? The real question here is if having achieved the X-Prize, can the winning entry be modified to lead directly to LEO -- I suspect not. Most notably missing is the ability to survive the extreme thermal stress from the much higher velocities on reentry.
It doesn't matter that the current vehicles have no hope of getting to LEO. Suborbital is useful and potentially profitable by itself. Tourism is one possibility. People pay tens of thousands of dollars for an hour in a MiG-29, and you can probably find customers willing to pay a similar amount for a ride into space. Another possibility is microsatellites. Once you're in space, you can launch another rocket from your suborbital craft to put a very small (on the order of a kilogram) satellite into orbit, and there appears to be a market for this sort of thing as well if it can be done cheaply.
Scaled Composites is planning on revenue from both of these markets, from what I remember. They aren't just running a research program, they're also aiming to turn it into something that makes money. Once you have profitable, private suborbital vehicles, orbit can come in a natural, slow progression.
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The Federal Aviation Administration is an agency of the Department of Transportation, so both XCOR and and Scaled Composites dealt with the DOT. I'm guessing Scaled Composites didn't want to spend the time getting a commercial license, since they don't see the need to sell payload space; XCOR may be financing their operation this way. NASA is a scientific agency, so their standardization of "astronaut" as being above 50 miles is just for consistency, I guess.
As for too many agencies being involved, I guess I'm not so sure here. There is limited airspace, so regulation is needed to keep the skies safe, and rockets full of explosive fuels could certainly pose a hazard to the public. Therefore, requiring testers to check with the authorities first seems like a logical thing to do. Contrary to what many have been grumbling about over the apparent slow-down in space exploration (a government conspiracy to keep private industry out of space, for instant), the relevant agencies seems to be open to allowing people with something to actually test to do their testing. In fact, if XCOR is any indication, the gov't seems to be interested in allowing private industry to take the next step and conduct for-profit space flight.
For now.
Here's your proof
google it. You "must work for NASA" (make that Lockheed Martin) if you get your units wrong.
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ma = mv^2/r
F = GMm/r^2 so v^2 = GMm/r
So kinetic energy K = m/2 GM/r
Potential energy, though, is defined as the integral from an infinite distance to the current radius:
U = GMm/r
Oddly enough, this means that the kinetic energy is always half the potential energy for a circular orbit (2K = U)
Also, note that if your kinetic energy equals or exceeds your potential, then you're at or above escape velocity and aren't in orbit any more (Vescape^2 = GM/r).
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
To put this in perspective, the amount of energy you need to expend to get sufficient horizontal velocity (about 7 miles per second), if expended going straight up (like the X-Prize people are doing), would take you 700 miles high.
In simple terms, going 50 miles straight up is dealing with about one fourteenth the amount of energy you'd need to deal with to attain orbit.
Do you know how much energy would be required to move an *asteroid* from its orbit?
Even a very small asteroid would require hundreds, perhaps thousands, of megatons of nuclear detonations to nudge it a degree or two.
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sure, and how are you going to aim it?
how many nukes is this (small) spaceship
carrying not even a tiny fraction of the distance to this hypothetical asteroid of yours? in a pathetic attempt to deflect the asteroid
if SS1, or its like could reach an asteroid, its allready within seconds of hitting the earth, and if it could deflect it, its too small to worry about anyway.
um, most current x projects are managed by NASA; x37, x43a for example...