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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.)"
No, LEO starts at around 200 miles (above 300 km). And the altitude is only half the trick to orbit, the other is speed...
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.
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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Actually... this is wrong too. 93km is the limit in which the gravitational drag becomes smaller, but orbit at that level is very unstable as the object will eventually fall back to earth.
Stable orbit is 350km minimum to 1400 km
More info here
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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.
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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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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.
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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Speed: 4520MPH/Mach 6.7 William Knight.
. html
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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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).
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