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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.)"
zooming to what witnesses say was somewhere around 200,000 feet...
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.
Isn't the goal 62.5 miles... that's about 330,000 feet.
They're getting awfully close. I get the distinct feeling this one is going to win it very soon.
Rutan's SpaceshipOne Hits 200,000 Feet
As it launched it turned 90 degrees and skimmed along an inch off the ground through the croud.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Chalk up another booming flight of the privately-backed SpaceShipOne
I don't know about everyone else, but I just hate it when my spaceship goes *boom*.
Low Earth Orbit is actually about 93 miles (150 km) up.
Almost halfway there, not bad.
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Isn't that the name of the space ship Andy Griffith made to go get the garbage off the moon?
No, LEO starts at around 200 miles (above 300 km). And the altitude is only half the trick to orbit, the other is speed...
after zooming to what witnesses say was somewhere around 200,000 feet ...
..."
Witnesses looking up into the sky:
"Wow, that looks like, what, about 100,000
"Nah, looks more like, I'd say 200,000 feet to me."
"Ya, about 200,000 feet looks right."
I skimmed the article and didn't catch anything about the re-launch within the given time period. Are they going to try and reuse the vehicle anytime soon? This, IMHO, is one of the most interesting requirements of winning the X-Prize.
Anyone who's ever been on the tours at Kennedy Space Center knows that the space shuttle launches don't begin with the countdown. Rather, they begin when the space shuttle touches down and the crews start preparing the shuttle for re-launch. Given that it takes (took?) NASA a helluva long time to get the shuttles prepped for re-launch, I'm wondering how these teams in pursuit of the X-Prize are doing with their plans to quickly refuel and relaunch the craft(s) within the alloted time period.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
You've brought back many a memory of model rocketry. Bless the memory of Vern Estes.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Oh, well.
Don't forget to bring a towel!
Well, that's two flights more than most spacecraft achieve.
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.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
but what is 3 miles between slashdot posters?
Not enough.
I really, really want some videos of this or any other of SS1's test flights. Does anybody know if such things are out there to be downloaded?
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Not just an ICBM but a manned ICBM. You can imagine the intense competition for that job.
Salvage 1 webpage
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
How is John Carmack progressing with Armadillo Aerospace? The only major flights I keep hearing about are Rutan's.
Personally I've been rooting for Carmack, but thats probably because I've just been a long fan of all of his work..
> Keep in mind that this was paid by the
> Microsoft tax often ridiculed by slashdotters....
Most of Paul Allen's money was from inflated Microsoft stock prices. Not actual money from Microsoft. Money from selling stock comes from investors and not Microsoft customers.
Granted that a lot of the Microsoft stock value comes from Microsofts bank account. However strictly speaking Paul Allen and Bill Gates got most of their fortunes from the investment community who bought shares.
Have to launch under it's own power (meaning the whole ship is reuseable)? Or is it ok if it uses external breakaway parts like the Shuttle?
-----
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
he said 93Miles 150 KM not 93 km. if minimum stable orbit is 350km what is it in miles?
You must work for NASA right?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Here are links to the photos from the flight directly off their servers. Shot of earch in background... Apogee
The amount of this prize was, until recently, $6,000, which by itself would be a remarkable incentive. But thanks to Stargoat, this has been increased by a massive 50% to NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS. (US$)
If you're interested, get going! All it takes to get to Mars is a lot of imagination, thinking outside of the box, pro-active team playing and self-motivation. What are you waiting for?
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I can't remember if he was involved in XPrize or not, but there was a guy building a ship that used peroxide as his propellant. He was most definitely a back yard builder, he had his two huge tanks for his H202 in his garage. Does anyone remember who he was, or have a link to him? I was really interested in his project a while ago, but I've lost his url.
Th
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.
to ....... Mos Eisley
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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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Most of Paul Allen's money was from inflated Microsoft stock prices. Not actual money from Microsoft. Money from selling stock comes from investors and not Microsoft customers.
And had Microsoft's practices been more, uh... responsible, their performance in the market wouldn't have been as good, they wouldn't have achieved the same level of dominance they did, and subsequently investors wouldn't have valued Microsoft's stock so high.
So while technically you're correct, the money Paul Allen made from Microsoft is only one or two steps removed from the actual business practices (eg: Microsoft tax) of the corporation.
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I presume that this is just coincidence, but it turns out that 41 miles is also the altitude for first-stage separation for Saturn V rockets going to the moon)
See the section How Apollo Got to The Moon.
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No, LEO starts at around 200 miles (above 300 km). And the altitude is only half the trick to orbit, the other is speed...
Since we're being so precise you mean geocentric position and velocity. There are infinitely many orbits both, circular and ellipical, for arbitrary altitude and speed.
an ill wind that blows no good
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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Actually, the way I heard it, altitude is only 1/25 the trick to orbit. The other 24/25 is speed.
Mostly right. If you just put an object 500 miles above the Earthing, it'll start falling. To achieve orbit, you have to have enough velocity perpendicular to the pull of gravity that you move away from the planet as fast as you're falling.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Thats their previous, April 8th flight.
Alans Mojave Weblog has more on that one
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On April 1, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced it had issued to Scaled Composites the world's first license for a sub-orbital manned rocket flight.
XCOR Aerospace, also of Mojave, California, announced in April it had received a Reusable Launch Vehicle mission license from the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
NASA, DOT, FAA...
Forgive me for being cynical, but how many government agencies need to be involved? Do we really need this much agency and departmental overlap for this stuff?
Time to burn the newly minted Karma I guess.
I can envision using SpaceShipOne as launch platform for a second unmanned stage that would place a small payload into LEO. The amateur's group booster on here yesterday might be able to do the job (it would go quite a bit faster at altitude as opposed to being launched though earth's atmosphere).
A most interesting titbit in that article that I don't see anyone else has mentioned is that they've applied for a licence to allow Mojave airport to also become an inland commercial spaceport.
;)
Like an airport.. but FOR SPACE! Wow!
This is amazingly cool news and almost could be straight out of the pages of a science fiction book. Perhaps in a few years it will be major center for space traffic and commerce?
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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Here's an idea on re-entry:
Thrust up and away from your current vector. If you can reduce your angular velocity with minimal encounter of atmosphere during the process, you can reduce your dependence on heat shielding.
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Any idea what the launch cost is expected to be or how much payload there is on SpaceShipOne?
It may be fun and cynical to attribute the cost of getting to space to bureaucratic overhead, but it's seldom true. Getting to space is HARD.
By the way, I think you're confusing your stereotypes of the military and of NASA. Although, NASA has had its problems, too, mainly for being too trusting of contractors. The company that I used to work at, Rockwell Collins, once had a contract for the shuttle. The shuttle project had no cap, so everyone started charging their hours to it. Rockwell was eventually caught and punished, but you get the idea.
"She was out of her depth in a shallow pool." -- Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin
The reason why the X-15 didn't get any further was strictly political, not technological.
By the time the X-15 was doing its stuff, NASA was already gearing up for the Apollo program, and the ballistic missile guys (primarily lead by Von Braun, but it did involve others) were trying to push a competing program. It should be obvious who won that debate.
The Space Shuttle should have (and in a small part did) been a technological decendant of the X-15 project, but instead most of its design technologies came from the Saturn V program and its predecessors.
The promise of the X-15 was to have routine reusable aircraft for travel into space. The pilots of the X-15 were finally granted astronaut wings, but politcally even that wasn't really appreciated by the guys at NASA. The prep crew for the X-15 was just a dozen or so people, compared to the hundreds it took even for Alan Shepard to do his sub-orbital flight. It is indeed too bad that this research wasn't followed, but not because it was a technological dead-end. It wasn't followed simply because Congress in their infinite wisdom decided that programs of this nature should be cut. And it was almost impossible to get a follow-on project to go this route.
Space Ship One really is the heir apparent now of the X-15 flights, and you had better believe that Burt Rutan knows just about all there is to know about the X-15 flights... probabally a world-class expert on the subject.
Other X-class projects have been done since the X-15 (Notably the X-33) and they have all suffered with political problems coming from folks at NASA thinking they (the X-projects) are mussling into their turf. The X-prize was even named that in honor of these X-class planes and the potential they could have had if they hadn't been abandoned.
The inspiring thing is that this ship goes higher and higher, pushing the materials and seeking refinements on what they already have.
Finally, remember the saying of Robert A. Heinlein: "Low-earth orbit is half-way to the rest of the entire solar system."
That sums up the importance of these flights. If refinements of materials and general ship design gradually lead to something that goes into orbit or even can leave the earth's gravity (like the Apollo missions), the age of manned planetary exploration will truly begin. Eventually, if you keep getting higher and higher, you are going to run out of altitude to the point that it really doesn't matter any more. You will be in orbit regardless.
Here's your proof
Scale'd launch journal puts it at 211,400 feet at apogee. I would imagine this is from the craft, not from "witnesses". Why the original story didn't link to this and use this number, is beyond me...
Or they could sell it to NASA. I hear they're looking for a reliable, reusable spacecraft.
google it. You "must work for NASA" (make that Lockheed Martin) if you get your units wrong.
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I have enough space.
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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.