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SpaceShipOne 100 km Attempt Slated for June 21
apsmith writes "Scaled Composites has just announced their first attempt at breaking 100 km, scheduled for June 21. This would make it the first commercial manned vehicle to officially enter space. This is not quite an Ansari X prize attempt since it will carry only one person without the extra mass corresponding to the 3-person prize requirement; they have to give at least 30 days' notice for that. Past flight history is available from their site; the Discovery Channel is producing a documentary on the whole project, 'Rutan's Race For Space.'" Roger_Explosion adds "If successful, the craft - named Space Ship One - will become the world's first commercial manned space vehicle. Space Ship One will temporarily leave the earth's atmosphere, and the pilot (yet to be announced) will experience about three minutes of weightlessness."
Any chance there'll be a webcast of the launch? I'd really like to see it.
Good luck, SpaceShip One; and Godspeed.
This could be the beginning of the next Space Age.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's important to remember that going into space and being weightless are separate things. Weightlessness is the effect of free fall; not some magic thing that happens once you reach space. You're only weightless in orbit because orbit, by definition, means that you're in a continuous free fall. Since this flight won't go into orbit (or anywhere close to far enough from Earth to ignore it's gravity), the weightlessness effect is simply a result of the flight trajectory including free-fall on re-entry.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
... as we watched the 1st launch since the Challenger disaster...
"GO baby, GO!"
I'll be counting down. Heck I might even break out the model rockets and find a big park to go 'celebrate' (course the biggest park is next to a gorge, we don't like strong winds...)
Allen, founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc,
The Vulcans are helping them out. I wont be at all surprised if SpaceShipOne looks like a Zephram Cochran design.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Enough said.
Does the Russian's new policy of sending up folks for big amounts of cash (the Japanese reporter, etc) not count as commercial flight?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think this is the first Space Ship One flight that Scaled has announced in advance. I'm more than a bit surprised. I thought that they would do their first X-Prize-class flight quietly, then announce the next day that they were going for the prize officially.
Good luck to them in any case... I'm sure it'll be a heck of a ride!
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
To win the X Prize requires that two sub-orbital flights be completed within two weeks. The June 21st first attempt is just less than two weeks before the Fourth of July, America's Independence Day. While I don't expect to hear a public commitment (or even comment) from the Spaceship One team, it looks suspiciously like they're hoping to wrap it up on Independence Day.
Q: What date and time will the launch take place?
A: The launch is planned for June 21, 2004. We plan for very early in the morning. Currently we are planning to taxi out for takeoff at 6:30 a.m.
Q: Why so early?
A: Mojave is a windy place. It is less likely to be windy very early in the morning. That makes for better flying and launch conditions, and the low sun angle allows better spectator viewing of the high-altitude boost to space.
Q: Is there any chance that the flight would launch later in the day or be delayed a day or more?
A: Yes. As with any flight test activity, weather is a very important factor. High winds or very cloudy conditions could change our flight plans. In addition, flights can be delayed for technical reasons.
Q: What can we expect to see?
A: White Knight with SpaceShipOne slung underneath will taxi by right in front of the public viewing area. A few minutes later, you will see it take off. For a few minutes early in the flight, you can see them circling overhead as they climb. It takes the pair of mated vehicles roughly one hour to reach 47,000 feet a few miles to the northeast. That is where White Knight releases SpaceShipOne. They are generally easy to follow visually since the White Knight and its chase planes usually make contrails. SpaceShipOne glides for a few seconds, then the pilot lights the rocket and you'll be able to see flames and a rocket exhaust trail for about 80 seconds. There will be a public address system in the viewing areas which will carry the radio transmissions between Mission Control, the White Knight pilot and the SpaceShipOne pilot, so you'll know what is happening.
SpaceShipOne's flight lasts roughly 25 minutes. It will rocket to space, spend about three minutes weightless outside the atmosphere, then enter the earth's atmosphere in a high-drag configuration. It will glide back toward Mojave, circle overhead, then land directly in front of the public viewing area on the same runway on which it took off about 1 hour and 25 minutes earlier. SpaceShipOne's rocket is very loud but it can only be faintly heard on the ground in the best of conditions. If its reentry direction is aimed away from the airport, two soft sonic booms will be heard. After landing, SpaceShipOne will be towed by a truck to the media area for a brief photo opportunity, then moved to the adjacent public viewing area, then towed back to Scaled's facility. Thus, the media and the public will get to take their own close-up photos. White Knight takes longer to return. It usually lands a few minutes after SpaceShipOne.
Other aircraft which you may see during the flight include:
Robert Scherer's Starship (a Burt Rutan design). This plane flies high-altitude chase and carries our company photographer. This is a twin-engine turboprop airplane painted white with a canard near the nose.
An Extra that belongs to Chuck Coleman, one of Scaled's Design Engineers. This aircraft has been used to train our pilots/astronauts. It is a single engine aerobatic plane painted red and black. It flies very close chase toward the end of the flight to assist the SpaceShipOne pilot in landing.
The Alpha-Jet, a military-looking fighter aircraft painted olive green. The person in the back seat of this aircraft will have a video camera and will photograph the launch from a better position than we have on the ground. Some of this video footage will be used in preparing a documentary for the Discovery Channel.
Q: What services are available in Mojave?
A: Mojave is a small town with limited resources. Mojave's motels are listed below:
Bel Air Motel - 661-824-2350
Best Western Desert Winds - 661-824-3601
City Center Motel - 661-824-4268
Economy Motel - 661-824-2347
Econo Lodge - 661-824-2463
Friendship Inn - 661-824-4523
Mariah Country Inn and Suites - 661-824-4980
Mojave Travel Inn - 661-824-2441
Motel 6 - 661-824-4571
Twenty Mule Motel - 661-824-2214
White's Motel - 661-824-2421
Mojave also has several service stations, se
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm
I think they'll manage to get over 100 km in their vessel. Then I assume we'll see them attemt the quick turnaround needed to win the prize and a new launch within two weeks. Then first, having proven their system, will they announce their officall attempt for the prize.
At least that makes sence to me - test that it work first, before they go for the big one. Just the same as NASA did with their first spacecapsules; unmanned ballistic flights first, then a ballistic flight with a monkey, then an unmanned orbital flight and a monkeyed orbital flight - and once they knew their craft would behave as expected under all phases of the mission, they did a couple of manned suborbital flights to prove that humans would behave as expected (they did better than expected AFAIK) before they launced a man into orbit. In fact, it's just the same these guys do; prove that the spacecraft can handle all aspects of the mission before they put three people into it and light the fuse ;)
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Will they be playing it?
Sorry, couldn't resist the gratuitous movie quote reference, the names are too similar. :P
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
"This would make it the first commercial manned vehicle to officially enter space."
Which immediately makes me wonder which was the first commerical manned vehicle to unofficially enter space. Did this guy finally get some larger balloons?
Best of luck, Space Ship One! May your design be sound and your crew be safe.
Q: Who is invited?
A: Everyone, especially children. They will want to tell their children that they were there to see the event that triggered the industry of private space tourism.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
This flight doesn't qualify for the X-Prize, because they are only carrying one pilot and no extra weight in place of the other two people.
They will have to make 2 more flights later to win the X-Prize.
One person has done balloon jumps from 110K feet in preparation for early manned space flight. A famous astronaut commented that he would not have wanted to try this. From the SS1 this would be worse than bailing out from a jet under power - which generally only is accomplished with powered ejection systems. All of these things add the weight that SS1 is designed to avoid.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Everyone knows the REAL reason a followup flight is required within two weeks. It's so that the Vulcans can detect the flight, as they will only be surveying on our system for two weeks.
If successful, the craft - named Space Ship One - will become the world's first commercial manned space vehicle.
I believe that distinction goes to the Russians, who are the first to fly a paying customer in the flesh. It would be more correct to say that Space Ship One is the first privately developed manned craft to reach space. Until they fly a paying customer, I don't count Space Ship One as a vehicle of commerce. Just splitting hairs...
... the lady handling reservations at the motel didn't even need to ask what night I wanted (the 20th) -- their phone is apparently being slashdotted, and she said that everyone calling for that night "sounds the same".
Is there some kind of geek accent I wasn't aware of?
One of the sweetest things is that the SpaceShipOne looks like rocketships were supposed to look like many years ago. Curvacious.
The game of Go (Igo, Weiqi, Baduk) has the simplest concept and the deepest play.
I gotta hope the guy they find to pilot the thing has his life insurance paid up.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Well, actually it would depend on the exact altitude and speed. Up above 100,000ft, there is so little air that the actual windblast would be fairly low, no worse than a conventional skydive. Being supersonic would make things interesting of course, but there's no reason that I can see why it wouldn't work. The biggest problem I would see is getting the parachute to deploy cleanly. Should be okay at 150k ft or below (round numbers), as there is still enough atmosphere for aerodynamic devices to function.
TODO: Something witty here...
You've got to hand it to Paul Allen - here's a guy who knows what to do with more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime. Making it possible for other people to pursue their dreams and possibly improve the world for everyone is just about the best possible use for all that wealth.
-Mark
The pilot (to be announced at a later date) of the up-coming June sub-orbital space flight will become the first person to earn astronaut wings in a non-government sponsored vehicle, and the first private civilian to fly a spaceship out of the atmosphere. SpaceShipOne then coasts up to its goal height of 100 km (62 miles) before falling back to earth.
Seeing as a) most people in the aerospace industry defines space as 'anything above 100km over SL (sealevel), and b) they havn't gotten any money from the big, evil goverment to build their vessel, this is correct. Off course, he won't be completly out of out atmosphere, but then the edge of that isn't a sharply defined line.
The pilot experiences a weightless environment for more than three minutes and, like orbital space travelers, sees the black sky and the thin blue atmospheric line on the horizon.
According to This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury (freely avilable from NASA's website), this is a very good description of what Alan Shepard experienced on his suborbital flight on the 5th of May 1961 (see chapter 11-4 of the aforementioned bood, or see what Wikipedia has to say on that flight).
Interestingly enought, when I first heard of the X-prize, I assumed it would be won by a reusable capsule modeled on the early american designs (Mercury, Gemeni or Apollo) launced by reusable solidfueled rockets. I'm happy a more inovative, less 'brute force' approach seems to be winning.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
This would make an excellent crew transfer vehicle, but a poor 'space truck'. What's needed is a commercially produced heavy lift launch vehicle. 100 tons to LEO would provide the ability to send modular lab or manufacturing stations into orbit, with crews sent up by craft like SpaceShip One. It doesn't have to be totally reusable, just cheap enough that it won't cost ~$1 billion plus the cost of the material being launched. Lower this by half, and maybe large companies could use it as research or manufacturing stations, with the benefit of NASA being able to use them to mount high-quality manned missions to the Moon and Mars, and unmanned missions to deep space, powered by nuclear reactors that would increase the amount of data by increasing both bandwidth and mission length.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Corporations have been going into space since the 1960s. Did you think that your DirecTV dish is picking up signals from NASA?
The reason this is big is that this is private manned spaceflight. As long as the government has a stranglehold on who does and doesn't qualify for space, then there can be no real human expansion. The sooner private interests are getting into space (eventually it'll be orbit, then beyond) the sooner we'll have meaningful colonization of places like the moon and Mars. This is vital to the survival of the species, as long as we're all stuck on this rock, the next comet or solar flare can wipe us all out.
A poem that I heard on the BBC once (think it was on 'Tomorrow's World'):
Twinkle Twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are
A red giant, or a shooting star?
No, just an advert for a little blue car...
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
Yep, this is more or less correct, but let's clarify one point. The only significant difference between this attempt (or any similar 100km up-then-down mission) and an orbit mission is how far you fall.
You can go a thousand kilometers straight up, and fall straight back down, and never go into orbit. You never can "ignore" gravity - even out at the lunar orbit distance, at hundreds of thousands of kilometers, gravity is still a factor. Fact is, that's what keeps the moon nearby.
An orbit is, essentially, simply falling in an arc that never intersects the ground (or atmosphere). You have to get a whole lot more energy into the vehicle so that the trajectory falls past the planet's "edge" - at which point you end up "falling" forever around the earth. (And yes, for you rocket science purists, you also have to expend some additional energy to reshape the path through which you fall, usually at the highest point of your trajectory, to make the orbit more circular - that's called an "orbit injection maneuver".) So it's not a matter of HEIGHT, it's a matter of which DIRECTION you expend the energy.
As a matter of fact, if the atmosphere and terrain were not an issue, you COULD do an orbit a hundred feet off the ground. And you could enter this orbit by going straight sideways. It just requires moving a lot faster than a higher orbit. Our current launch profiles are designed to minimize the fuel (and therefore change in energy, a.k.a. "delta-V") required.
So to wrap up the thought here, weightless is BECAUSE the vehicle trajectory is a free fall (one that's not being modified by expending energy or using winged lift or drag). Doesn't matter whether it's a complete orbit or one that will hit the ground before going around one complete time.
And here's the most relevant point to SpaceShip One - to achieve true orbit (a true free fall all the way around the earth), quite a bit more delta-V is required - which requires more fuel, which requires more vehicle structure, which increases vehicle weight, which requires more fuel to lift, which requires more structure... etc. (And let's not even THINK about reentry heating yet...) So as neat as this trick is, SpaceShip One and any other X-Prize vehicles are a LONG way from a viable orbital launch vehicle.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
This is not correct - the ship carries no cargo nor paying passengers so it's not "commercial".
"Private space craft" would be a more correct term.
cause you know, world hunger, poverty, and the uneducated masses dont mean shit.....
Remember, we are talking about commercial space travel starting from the same point as NASA's Mercury program. They are taking evolutionery steps just like NASA did. Currently, the X-Prize is for a sub-orbital system. Once that has been accomplished, I have heard that they plan on offering a $20 mill prize for the first orbital flight.
Just like the beginning fo powered flight, governments have held all the cards and technology till now. What you are seeing is the highly efficent start of commercial space ventures. They will evolve through vehicles much faster than NASA did because they already have more knowledge to build on, and they also have the ability to make changes and adjustments faster and cheaper than a bureauracy like NASA. NASA isn't projected to have a new man-rated vehicle for another decade, and at the cost of BILLIONS. It is likely that before they accomplish that, the commercial industry will catch up and have a 4-man orbital vehicle by the end of this decade.
Finally, the dollars will be there. Right now, if you asked NASA to get you into a sub-orbital launch, it would probably cost them $100 million minimum in development to get you there. Your price tag might be as high as 10-15 million. Rutan is doing it for less than 5 million (that's including vehicle development) and your price (once operable) will be about $80-100K per launch. Once these cheap methods are solidified, I could see an orbital flight dropping down to a $10-12K price tag for 4-5 orbits. If they get it that low, then space tourism will be the economic demand this industry is hoping. Hell, I would pay $20k to go into orbit!
What I am saying is that you need to be a little patient. These companies will get you there far cheaper than NASA, and in a much shorter amount of time. This is just the beginning, but all things will come.
An old NASA saying is "space is difficult", it should really be "space is easy, bureauracy is difficult".
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Ok, am I the only one who thinks that we should not be encouraging the Rutans? Sure, they were enemies of the Sontarans, but that doesn't make them our friends. Just ask Leela.
On the other hand, taking the first real steps into space will pay long term benefits to all humanity. And by "real", I mean economically viable, commercial ventures. Not some "what's the most dangerous and expensive path to space" government pork project. I intend to offense to NASA engineers or their Russian counterparts, but governments just aren't very good at this sort of thing.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Worried about world hunger, poverty, and the uneducated masses. Sell your computer and give the money to them. Really the problems of world hunger, poverty, and the uneducated masses will not be solved by throwing money at them. Most hunger is not caused by lack of money to feed people. It is caused by politics, poverty? There will always be poor but the crushing poverty that you often see is not going to be solved by throwing money at the problem. The uneducated masses? Truth is books are pretty cheap these days and you do not have broadband and P4s to be educated. The old "we can put a man on the moon but we can't...feed the poor, cure the common cold, or take your pick" statment is old and tired. How about this on. "We can't put a man on the moon any more! Are you happy!"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...if this project makes the 2-week turnaround for re-launch required by the X-prize rules. Their launches to date have not been even close to the required frequency.
This launch, as I understand it, is just the first try. If it goes well they will prepare to do the 2 launches in 2 weeks. Still, the first manned commercial space flight is a momentous event. Go Scaled go!
Thought project! If I were to build a vaccum sealed tube and wrap it around the earth in a perfect sphere (obviously that would be hard to do with mountains and whatnot so you'd have to build it a bit off the ground to accomidate, or maybe someone can find a path... srhrugs). Could you orbit the earth inside it, and would there be any practical uses for such a thing.
Any chance there will be a camera on the nose?
Maybe with the video slowed down so the flight will take as long as a drive to Oregon?
"Space Ship One will temporarily leave the earth's atmosphere, and the pilot (yet to be announced) will experience about three minutes of weightlessness."
:)
"Yet to be announced" eh? Cool, that means I'm still in the running.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Yes. And No. :)
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Very interesting thought there :) I can't really think of a practical use for it... Maybe a really quick light-mail delivery service, for important hard-copies of documents? Hmm.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I just booked the last 5 rooms in one of the motels in Mojave. I'm taking a lot of kids to see this one.
Who cares about the avionics crashing (which they did on the last flight IIRC)?
What I care about, or would if I was the pilot, is whether it has a slot loading CD player into which I can slap a CD in the last few seconds before launch!
You cant make anything foolproof, they'll only invent better fools.
All good luck to the crew. I certainly hope this leads to something, but let's don't forget that it is a very long way from coasting up to 100k to entering orbit.
First of all, this craft is at least 6 times to slow to achieve orbit. You can coast as high as you want, but without achieving orbital velocity, you'll fall right back.
Second, the craft's unorthodox reentry technique isn't amenable for use coming back from orbit. That means that this particular design probably doesn't lead anyplace useful.
Third,leaving the atmosphere isn't strictly necessary to achieve orbit. It's just a whole lot less messy. You could achieve orbit at one kilometer if you dealt with atmosphereic heating.
We should also remember that the private sector has had the capability of achieving orbit for decades. They built/build/launch the rockets that have been enterng orbit for more than 40 years. Two things have kept them from actually doing it: 1) A clear business case: Can you really make a profit selling tickets to orbit? 2) The fact that any rocket capable of putting a person in orbit is also quite capable of carrying a warhead to the next hemisphere. Governments tend to worry about, and regulate, those sorts of things.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
So, in effect, orbit is achieved by falling and missing the ground? I thought that was called flying?!?
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Since Rutan and Co called the Space Ship One project Tier One, it makes sense that they are planning a tier two. Probably an orbital flight.
Knowing Rutan he's probably already got the design figured out for an orbital vehicle and has been running simulations of it.
Who knows, maybe there is even a tier three... the moon.
Bryan
CT
One thing I've always wondered about SS1, the other X-prize entries, and the X-prize itself is whether there is a clear series of steps which lead to some goal like regular space travel.
By this I mean questions like: can the design used for SS1 (and the other X-prize teams) be scaled to orbital operations, more people/cargo, etc; or is it just a special purpose vehicle designed to win the X-prize?
Sure, it's inevitable that we'll learn something when doing a complicated engineering project like this. But at times it feels like the X-prize is being treated like an end goal instead of an early step on a journey.
If there is ANYONE that could build the world's first privately funded reusable spacecraft that can achieve low Earth orbit (LEO), it's Burt Rutan's company.
Scaled Composites could work with Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division and come up with a low cost vehicle that could be launched on top of a modified 747-200 to carry up to six astronauts and/or its equivalent in cargo to LEO. Unlike the unfortunate X-33 project, this project is probably going to be much cheaper to pull off since the vehicle that actually flies into space will not need to carry so much fuel during its boost phase.
Funny you should ask. Along with the pilot, the other two seats will just so happen to be occupied by a monkey and a meatloaf! That way, if the space craft blows up, hey, it's only 1 pilot, a monkey and his meatloaf. They just saved 2 pilots!
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
To be even more pedantic-
If you were to orbit the earth at ground level, you could go a little bit slower than orbiting at 100km (ignoring problems like friction and the fact the the earth is not a perfect sphere). Orbital physics are a little counter-intuitive, but you must expend energy - and speed up - to rise into a higher orbit. Yet your angular velocity (the rate at which you circle the center point of orbit) decreases.
Time for my standard response that makes people hate me for getting them hooked:
First off, the reason we fly straight up and then sideways is that it's a lot easier to accelerate sideways at 70km than it is at 0km altitude, because of the thinner atmosphere. Since the only significant delta-V in an orbital launch is the tangential component, you can tune your ascent to minimize fuel requirements and save up for the big sideways burn.
Now, for the fun part: Orbiter is a free (as in beer + SDK for making your own ships) space-flight simulator that is both mathematically accurate and visually stunning. It includes the space shuttle Atlantis (don't even bother starting out with that one, as it takes practice to get to orbit) and some fictitious spacecraft capable of getting you to Mars or even beyond.
You can even look around online and find add-ons such as my latest favorite, an Apollo mission including a pretty realistic cockpit complete with the Apollo computer system. You even have to do your own LEM extraction and so forth.
and that says a hell of a lot of interesting things about what Allen thinks is the risk vs. reward ratio in this investment, doesn't it
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.