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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.
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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*.
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.
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.
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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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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?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Not just an ICBM but a manned ICBM. You can imagine the intense competition for that job.
Salvage 1 webpage
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> 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.
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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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.
Gentoo Sucks
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.
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.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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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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.
-
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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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.
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?
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.
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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