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SpaceShipOne to Try for Space on Monday
CommanderData writes "The first piloted private space flight will occur Monday at 9:30AM ET. SpaceShipOne is planning to ascend to the 62 mile (100 Km) mark and return to land at its takeoff point over the course of 90 minutes. With only a pilot (unnamed at this time) on board this does not qualify as a run for the Ansari X-Prize. If the flight is successful they will likely try for the prize soon afterward..." An anonymous reader adds: "Scaled Composites also has this page about the event."
Put me down for a window seat ;)
what sort of snacks could they serve once this stuff becomes mainstream
was last seen striding towards SpaceShipOne saying "Smoke Me A Kipper, I'll Be Back For Breakfast"
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Or namely, if they had a pilot and two weights that approximated humans.
If this is the case, I wouldn't go until about version 6. Good luck nonetheless -- as this has to be one of the coolest frontiers (private spaceflight) in space travel lately.
Launches a piloted, privately-funded spaceship, capable of carrying 3 people to 100 kilometers
Spaceship one can do that, no? Or can it only carry one person? Thought it had room for 3.
As long as nasa is in charge of americas space program we will never get anywhere. .
now at least there is another way for americans to get into space.
think back to the gouy that paied russia a couple mil to go into space, most of the experiments performed in space could be done by the lab rats themselves, why not charge people to go into space and make them work while there up to
the private industry would be quick to adopt this method, wheras the bubling morons at nasa would say noooo you cant do that.
Namaste
Because it's a candidate for the Darwin Awards instead.
Really. I mean, I think I've got a good set of cojones, but this is over the top...
The CB App. What's your 20?
I loved the fact that the Scaled Composite site says that "especially kids" are welcome, they want to introduce the next generation to private space flight. I'm taking my 14 year old daughter and two of her friends.
We're currently planning on camping at the Tehachapi glider park Sunday night, then driving to Mojave at 4:00 Monday morning. We'll see if that works -- there is so much publicity here and at other sites that it may be insanely crowded.
I've been a fan of Rutan since the '79 Popular Science cover of the VariEze, and I've got a copy of the plans for his LongEZ (too big a job for me to complete, though...) I have been looking forward to this event for a long time, I can't wait!
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
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.
That'd be cool
In Soviet India space ships launch you
The real import of this is that people are trying to get to space without the government getting in their way, and willing to risk failure. They're doing things themselves instead of sitting on their hands waiting for somebody else to do something. It's this pioneering attitude that will take us into space to stay, not the NASA mindset of "risk nothing, even if it means nothing gets done."
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Clearly, this is just the first test before X-Day (July 5th, 7 am). X-Prize, X-Day... pretty obvious.
"Build your own ship!" - Rev. Ivan Stang
It is great to see private individuals reach for achievements such as this. I hope it goes well for them. Personally, I find the private space race to be quite compelling and inspiring. It is a testament to ingenuity and individualism (i.e. we don't need a big collective or nebulous government agency to achieve somethign great. Rather, just the vision of an intelligent individual and his or her ability to organize and lead a talented team).
Astronaut icecream!
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
The technology used in this launch is going to be reused by SpaceDev to put satellites up for only $5 million a piece. This illustrates the direct effect of the X-prize.
Currently, satellite launches can cost in the hundreds of millions.
Now if only their were more prizes.
So was the German V2. Yet, it was a V2 (renamed to "Redstone"), plus a lot of small solid-fuel rockets, that put the first American satellite in orbit.
I wonder; what kind of approval do you need in order to fly into space? Is there some governmental green light?
I ask because it seems to me that a private, reusable, unmanned delivery spacecraft could be a valuable commodity in certain instances. It could certainly get to space and back much faster than something requiring full-fledged life support.
Let's take delivery of donor organs. Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm used to it), certain organs must be transplanted very soon after the host dies. So if someone in Japan needs said organ and someone in New York is killed in a motorcycle accident, a private company could ultra-priority ship this organ overseas via a 90 minute sub-orbital flight.
Or would such a market just be too niche to be viable?
What other kinds of things would someone be willing to pay any price (exorbitant to be sure) to get something somewhere ASAsoP (As Soon As Sub-Orbitally Possible)?
just because it doesn't reach orbit doesn't mean there's no value to it.
t ml
There's a whole lot of space science that happens in the altitude range that spaceship one will reach.
http://www.wff.nasa.gov/pages/soundingrockets.h
It's important as Proof It Can Be Done. Even though this vehicle has no clear path to an orbital version, it'll be much easier for any proposal for a bigger, more powerful, more practical vehicle to get sponsorship or funding from commercial interests. Before X-prize ships started doing test flights, most companies would think you'd be crazy offering them service to space for payloads, but I bet a successful 100km flight will change alot of minds and open them to the possibility.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Dude - this is a pretty darn lame comment.
Do you ever watch the discovery channel? Ever heard of the X-Planes? There were what, 15+ of them, and none of them could carry 3 people nor carry out a useful 'mission'. It's called research.
The X-Prize is not about building a hypersonic airliner, nor about going to the moon. It's a prize that at this appropriate time in man-machine innovation encouraged some awesome engineers and pioneers to break the old mold of waiting for the government to 'do the big things'.
Don't know about you, but I think 3 minutes of weightlessness in a super-efficient aircraft making sub-orbital flight, done by private individuals is not dead-end. The first (few) that accomplish this feat will likely prove to NASA and the ESA that single gigantic booster rockets are neither efficient nor as re-usable as we were all lead to believe.
Rock on Scaled Composits!
...just wait until you take a bite of the food designed for consumption in zero-gravity!
Audioscrobbler
It's designed to win the prize and nothing else. Not that it's not an important milestone, mind you, but it's just a dead-end.
I agree with your first statement, but not your second. Just because a specific vehicle isn't designed to go into orbit, doesn't mean it's a dead end. Firstly, they're planning on sub-orbital flights, mostly for tourism. Secondly, the technologies used may be scalable to a larger, orbital model. Think of a smaller, design prototype. You have to demonstrate the smaller model works before you can scale up.
The designs and business practices of ALL the X-Prize contestants will be monitored closely. Which designs work, which don't? Which are more expensive? More reliable. That's the whole point about the X-Prize, to get people (engineers, businessmen, and the public in general) thinking about spaceflight for the common man.
So I would argue that SpaceShipOne is not a dead end in the sense that it is a requirement for a scaled up, orbital "SpaceShipTwo".
If only I could get together $100,000...
The main problem, I gather, is that the fuel used just doesn't have the delta-V needed. Another poster mentions using the technology to put up satilites, but unless my very well informed source Jerry Pournelle is wrong, that's not going to happen.
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The X-Prize what? mentions
Privately finances, builds & launches a spaceship, able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)
How come they don't explicitly specify any weight?!?
Not that the participants would like to cheat, but one can send 10 persons like me in spaceshipOne
In Soviet India space ships launch you
I assume that there's a few CO's of VALVe software working for this team, to compete with Jon Carmack's team...
So they both say they'll be launching these *ahem* projects next week? the week after? Mebbe they should spend less time building model rockets, and write some software? Doom3? HL2? we're waiting.....
John Glenn to pilot space ship one. what a great day for old people everywhere.
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I never said it has no value, only that its value is limited. Expecting more from it than is possible is just setting yourself up to be dissapointed. Celebrate the achievement for what it is, as I will, but be realistic. Not only is it usefull for high altitude research, it may well inspire somebody to build a ship that can reach orbit. If so, it will have justified itself 100 times.
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More susinctly: SpaceShipOne is as much of a dead end as Mercury-Redstone was.
Did anyone else read the article about the type of
rocket fuel that Space Ship One uses? It's a solid fueled rocket with a gas oxidizer. I'm sure you'll get a laugh out of it.
Here's the link
It's this pioneering attitude that will take us into space to stay, not the NASA mindset of "risk nothing, even if it means nothing gets done."
That's a little ironic when considering that the reason the US beat the Soviets to putting humans on the moon was precisely because the Soviet's line of thinking was exactly that, and NASA had cut a lot of corners to get there.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I doubt it will be much of a show, but I just want to be there for a piece of history.
... it's our secret anti-traffic weapon. ;-)
I reserved a room in Mojave within an hour of the announcement, and we're riding the motorcycle up from the San Diego area
Does anyone know if this will be aired live? CNN? BBC News? Local Cable Access 4?
How about streamed on the net?
Replace SS1 with a Pegasus-like launcher, presto- you've got a (small) LEO launcher.
m
_ sheets/PDF /Lithograph%20-%20White%20Knight%20p2.pdf
Go check out the scaled.com page, specifically here:
http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/info.ht
note the info about the WK carrier:
http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/data
I quote:
"Other White Knight mission capabilites include reconnaissance, surveillance, atmospheric research, data relay, telecommunications, imaging & booster launch for micro-satellites."
Re-read those last four words...
...there is nothing radical or unusual about their engine. it is tried and tested technology. fwiw so is just about everything else about their vehicle. they're just the first to put it all together in one package and actually do it.
Offtopic, perhaps, if Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen wasn't a financial backer of Scaled Composites. Check out http://www.technewsworld.com/story/34205.html
But since I'm an A.C. with no Karma to burn it doesn't really matter.
As far as the X projects, I probably know more about them than most people, because I know people who worked on them. This prize is very much in their tradition, and I hope the tradition continues.
Once this prize is won, we need another, specifying that the same vehicle reaches orbit, returns to Earth and then does it again within a limited time frame. I hope somebody will have the vision to offer one.
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How hard would it be to put up a competitor to Iridium, but using more current electronics and a cheaper system like this? The satellites wouldn't have to be nearly so sophisticated and LEO would be more than sufficient.
That is just one of several businesses that currently are locked out of space because of the current government monopoly on spaceflight. Here is a toast to the commercial spaceflight. **Cheers**
The engine used in this mission is going to be reused by SpaceDev as an upper stage to put things and maybe people into orbit. Without SpaceShipOne, this wouldn't have happened. Rutan is very talented. I expect that he already has more designs ready.
g e_ article.php?pid=475
http://www.spacedev.com/newsite/templates/subpa
Look at the bottom of that article.
http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/info.htm
This will prove how much of a bumbling group of incompetant morons work at NASA. The fact that nasa has made almost zero progress in the last 25 years with regards to opening up space as a more affordable frontier is laughable. Contempable even.
The amount of corruption and coverup that takes place within all arms of NASA is a reflection of the incompetance and idiocy that is now the symbol for America at all levels.
Hopefully in the event that SpaceShipOne is not sabotaged into failure, we will see a renewal of space interest - and a cleaning of house at all levels of government where responsibility for oppressed civil space programs reside.
(yes you fools it IS a conspiracy)
Don't know about you, but I think 3 minutes of weightlessness in a super-efficient aircraft making sub-orbital flight, done by private individuals is not dead-end. The first (few) that accomplish this feat will likely prove to NASA and the ESA that single gigantic booster rockets are neither efficient nor as re-usable as we were all lead to believe.
Ditto my brother. I think the things that can be learned from this will be beyond comprehension. It will have researchers around the world going "wow, I never thought of using this material or that kind of system." And proving to the world, the world's space agencies, etc that this can all be done for less than $4.5 billion a flight (imaginary number, don't quote me or anything) will be a bonus too. It may have some agencies starting programs, have other programs looking for ways to remain competitive, etc.
"Dead-end" is such a harsh term. This could be the beginning of a "private space race" with top universities around the nation (Go Carnegie Mellon!) going to space and doing their own research and not having to rely on NASA. Think of what we could learn...and how quickly we could learn all this. Good googly...now I'm getting all excited...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I'll take your critique of Rutan's designs more seriously when I see your designs. I'll be glad to critique them.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Mod up!
I think you're reading a little too much into the term. What I meant by it is that this particular way to get a ship to 100 km can't be extended into one that can reach orbit, or descend from orbit if it were there. The hot air balloon could be considered a dead end too, if you want to stretch things, but look what came from it. The value of this flight will be in what it inspires as much as in what it does and I honor the people who designed it for that.
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If you do intend to go, you might note that, while the cited 9:30 ET time is corect, the launch site is not on Eastern time. Might be easy to miss that :-(
and assume that the cited time is launch site local. If you arrive at 9:30 local time, it will be long over.
That's 6:30 AM Pacific (local) time.
Yes ...
It's merely a scaling problem. More propellant = more delta-V.
The fuel is of the same level of efficency as most other common rocket fuels (solid / LOX+Kerosine).
So really all you need is more propellant, and a better heat shield, both of which are "solved" technology.
The thing is, Pournelle tends to be of the opinion that TSTO was the better idea and I tend to agree with him. The neat thing about SS1/WK is that improvements in either craft mean better performance. One of Rutan's rumored projects is a turborocket,
which would have WK able to reach a much higher altitude, which would therefore mean a heavier SS1 or a higher trajectory.
It's also probably the case that a inexpensive WK-launched expendable booster might be able to give Pegasus a run for their money.
Gentoo Sucks
NASA may have cut corners to get us to the moon, but they've been out of the risk business for years. There was no reason to stop the shuttle for over two years after the Challanger crash, except for NASA's desire to make spaceflight risk free.
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You make an important point, but misunderstand mine. I'm not knocking the achievement, just pointing out its limits.
You gotta learn to walk before you learn run. You gotta learn to take the first step when learning to walk.
This is "One small step for a civilian, a giant leap for mankind."
This ship was designed to win the prize and nothing else. It wasn't designed to reach orbit because the terms on the prize didn't specify that. All I'm asking is that you be realistic about this, and not expect it to do things it was never intended for.
The sub-orbital, super-atmospheric shot is the logical first step for any family of spacecraft designs - including those for inexpensive reusable craft. There are three steps:
1) Getting out of the atmosphere.
2) Getting to low orbit.
3) Getting anywhere else.
2) gets you halfway to anywhere (in terms of delta-v), and gets you over the really hard part. The second half of the trip can be taken at your leisure, while the first half involves getting through an atmosphere before the one-G field sucks you back.
1) is most of the work of 2) It gets you out of the atmosphere - now all you have to do is get going FAST while you're out there.
Yes, you have to combine 2) with a modification of 1) to get to LEO (unless you went FAR out of the atmosphere with LOTS of fuel and reaction mass to spend). But once you've got a device capable of 1) it's a LOT less than doubling the engineering to upgrade it for 2).
Meanwhile: If the private space race stalls after the X prize is won, look for a Y prize. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I hope it goes perfectly and they go for the prize soon.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
As I understand it, this ship is so laden down with fuel that it can barely make it off the runway, and with only a single engine and single pilot, has no clear path to being able to carry passengers or transatlantic mail. It's designed to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize and nothing else. Not that it's not an important milestone, mind you, but it's just a dead-end.
No. Mercury-Redstone had a clear design path leading to the Moon: first single manned flights, then pairs of astronauts, then three together, until they had a capsule that could reach the moon, land and return. The fuel this ship uses simply isn't powerfull enough to reach orbit and it can't be changed to a different fuel without a complete redesign. Accept the fact that even though it's limited to sub-orbital flight it's an important milestone on the path to space.
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Astronaut ice cream indeed.
I'm not posting a critique of the design, mearly pointing out its limits. The design is, as far as I know, just fine for a ship that's only intended for sub-orbital flight. As that's all that's needed to win the prize, that's all that they did. Sensible, really, building your design around your goal. I'm only reminding people that its abilities are limited.
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...but definitely barfbags.
Now correct me if I am wrong... but isn't spaceship one funded by Paul Allen? And if so... ack... where is the open source contingent that will make an attempt!
It seems that Open source ideology should be applied to space.
I dunnknow...the idea of Allen Spaceport scares the hell outa me....
I gather that the problem here is the ammount of dead weight needed to contain and support the additional fuel rises faster than the advantage from that fuel. Always a problem, of course, but more so when the ship is designed to be launched from an airplane. You can't get the ship so heavy that the launching plane can't lift it. I don't know if that's the issue or what, but I can certainly imagine it becoming one eventually.
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Yes, and this is a grand first step. And that's exactly what it was designed to be: a first step, and nothing more. You make some great points about the next steps. Thanks for your insigtful, informative input.
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Actually, the Russians were far more cavalier about safety than the Americans were.
The main reason why we beat them to the moon was because we had less infighting throughout, because we had smaller boosters at the beginning (which forced us to shrink the size of our electronics), and because we were able to pull off making the Saturn V (Wheras the Proton was too small and the N1 was too broken because of infighting).
Oddly enough, the Russian way of doing things actually has worked out well for them, once they stopped accidentally killing people in their mad rush to space. Russian designs tend to be simple, reliable, and sturdy, which all tends to mean that maintaining them is easier.
Gentoo Sucks
ROTFLMAO! You make your point in a very witty way. Thank you. However, AFAIK, the plane itself was a dead end. Just a proof of concept, just as this one is. Honored for what it is, with nothing else expected from it.
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I am leaving tonight to get a campsite. I will take lots of pics on Monday. I plan on posting them for those of you unable to attend.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Once this prize is won, we need another, specifying that the same vehicle reaches orbit, returns to Earth and then does it again within a limited time frame.
Actually, the X-Prize specifies that you have to put 3 people (or a pilot and equivalent weight for 2 other passengers) into sub-orbital spaceflight, and be able to turn your craft around and repeat the flight within 2 weeks to claim the prize.
Monday's flight will not be X-Prize qualified, but if it goes well, you will probably see Rutan & Co. schedule the real deal in the near future with much more fanfare.
You sure do use your time productively!
Look, people enjoy a technology, let's go out of our way to make a meager attempt to punish them for no reason! Yeah, then after we do that, maybe my mom will let me drive to my McJob!
Cool dood!
You can add AC to your foes list now.
I presume that means that the ship gets high enough that it can launch secondary vehicles from there to orbit. Usefull and probably cheaper than what we're doing now, even if the ship itself can't quite reach orbit. Great! I hadn't known that and am glad to read about it. Thanx!
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It has been an incredible hassle to get anything, and I mean anything into orbital or suborbital trajectories as a citizen of the United States of America, from any point on the surface of the planet, due to governmental regulations.
Suborbital flights are not only the first step to orbital, but also the first step into the political fray that has been, until recently, entirely dominated by NASA and friends.
Before you go lobbing projectiles over Europe on your way to orbit, you had sure has heck better be able to prove you can lob one over an empty desert and get it back in one piece.
One step at a time folks. Physics has been the least of the troubles.
Also, with regard to XCOR, until they received their launch license, they were unable to secure the investors necessary to begin their work in earnest. This, despite the fact that they have working engines and a proven team.
-Hope
You need to convince AST, the department of the FAA that is tasked with granting your launch license, that you are safe enough for the general civilian population. They do not care if you kill yourself or even members of your own team, just so long as the public at large is safe from your launch vehicle, its exhaust, re-entering expendable components, toxic propellent, etc. There's the additional burden of not landing on an endangered mouse or historical monument.
As you might guess, launching from a scorching empty desert with non-toxic propellents and nothing that separates and falls back to earth is going to be easier to license.
As an aside, most of the convincing AST needs is hand-waving and postering, but a good bit of it is also mathematical. "If the craft does not explode and creates an impact zone of this size with a maximum flight radius of this size, there are is 1 in 5 million chance of hitting Bob who has a trailer sitting out in the middle of desert. Since that's less likely than the established 30 x 10 ^ -6 expected causalties, we should be able to fly." Response: "OK, you're on; try not to hit Bob."
-Hope
Actually it does have a mission. They are going to charge people for flights. There are rich people who will pay alot of money for this. They use that money to develop a better vehicle.
My little Piper Cherokee single engine propellor airplane is certified for +3.8Gs at full gross weight (2150 lbs), when loaded in the "normal" category. If loaded only to a max of 1950 lbs within the c.g. envelope of the "utility" category, it's even certified to handle +4.4Gs. There's like a 40% extra stress factor engineered into the strength of the airframe above the rated max G load too. The most I've personally stressed it is maybe +3G's last year when I was getting spin lessons from a CFI who's also an F-15 pilot in the USAF. He laughed at me heartily when I commented that we'd just pulled a pretty high G load... it made my stomach kinda queasy, but no hint of being anywhere near "blackout territory".
... if Paul Allen doesn't claim one of the 2 potential passenger seats for the X-Prize qualifier, I'll never understand why not.
After all, he's already paid for it.
.... MOVE private funded space research to a more hospitable nation, and just ignore the united states. Pick any underfunded but enthusiastic second or third world country that needs a shot in the arm national prestige-wise and wouldn't mind being the recipient of a new global enterprise of such an import. There is bound to be a more hospitable nation that has enough resources and would embrace this enthusiastically. Hmm, how about brazil? Or on the african continent, mozambique? Does anyone else have any nations to promote who might want to do this? I initially in the last space thread mentioned russia as a possibility, because it has a national structure and resources for space research, but in a days retrospect on it, and viewing even more news from there, I just don't know if it could be pulled off there, due to...well, current business climates and political uncertainties shall we say. I wouldn't rule them out, just perhaps it might be more prudent to look elsewhere.
Anyway, there has to be another nation that would consider this without near the amount of hassle. Perhaps even "authorising" 90% peroxide as fuel for a start.
Yeah, the Atari Starship One rocks! I knew it could do it! Oh, wait...SPACEship One?
Currently, satellite launches can cost in the hundreds of millions.
Currently, satellite launches can cost anywhere between a couple of hundred thousand (as a secondary payload) to hundreds of millions. It depends a lot on what you are trying to launch, and to where. The expensive launches are typically large (1000's of kilograms) satellites going to GEO. That said, $5M a launch will be a significant reduction for primary launch capability, but it will probably intially only be to LEO altitudes.
We're in violent agreement here: the real importance is to show the world that it can be done. It took 20 years to go from two guys in a bicycle shop to the Spirit of St. Louis, and another 20 years before Joe Sixpack could realistically expect to fly across the Atlantic during his lifetime.
We've had orbital capability for over 50 years, and I, much like you, am sick and tired of waiting for NASA to get the ball rolling.
"Now if only there were more prizes"
We need to keep the aging engineering genii such as Rutan going for quite a bit longer...ergo -
The Methuselah Mouse Prize for the reveral of human aging - www.methuselahmouse.org
Quick summary:
4) Getting back.
(I don't mean this as a "funny" post. Doesn't getting back to Earth involve a huge number of problems? Such as: atmosphere; avoidance of crash landings in civilized areas; and a few other things that don't matter if you just intend to land on the moon or Mars.)
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Except for one problem, the delta-V does not scale linearly with the amount of propellant. You get less and less bang for your buck as the final velocity increases (due to having to overcome gravity). This is why you can't get into orbit from a stationary ground launch with a single stage rocket.
Centralization breaks the internet.
Okay, you've read this line of post's clear down to this level, but you haven't looked a the link. I guess I can let you in on the joke. The solid portion of the rocket fuel is a rubber compound. The oxidizing gas is nitrous oxide (laughing gas). Hence the subject of the main thread
Let me bounce this off of you...
And the line
You'll get a laugh out of this.
No. Most of the work is getting to a velocity of 8 km/sec. That's 90% of the required total energy. Getting to altitude is 10%. So SpaceShipOne is 10% of the way to orbit (in terms of energy). The additional difficulty of going into orbit is considerably greater than twice the effort: you have to carry 10 times the fuel fraction, and you have to be capable of re-entry, on-orbit maneuvering, etc etc.. It's a lot harder than just going up in a big arc for 5 minutes.
SpaceShipOne is a lot closer to a Cessna than it is to a Space Shuttle. Seriously.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
[Saying this tongue-in-cheek (and who has to spell-check "cheek") as someone who forks lots of $$ over to MSFT every year for MSDN Universal subscriptions]
I for, one, welcome our billionaire overlords, if they fund fun stuff like this!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
1) Getting out of the atmosphere.
2) Getting to low orbit.
3) Getting anywhere else.
4) Getting back.
(I don't mean this as a "funny" post. Doesn't getting back to Earth involve a huge number of problems? Such as: atmosphere; avoidance of crash landings in civilized areas; and a few other things that don't matter if you just intend to land on the moon or Mars.)
Yes indeed.
But again you solved MOST of getting back when you solved 1).
1) gave you your life support, terminal navigation, reentry, etc. (And a seasoned engineering team that has proven it knows what it's doing and can solve the REALLY HARD problems. B-) )
2) only adds (on the reentry side) dumping the extra orbital energy without tearing up the craft, and timing the deorbit manouver.
3) adds nothing to the return problem. Navigating from somewhere out there to LEO is the same problem as navigating from LEO to somewhere out there. (Actually the one difference is that it's easier, because you get closer to your navigational aids as you get closer to the END of the trip, when is when precision is required.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Now if only there were more prizes"
NASA has suggested giving out prizes:
NASA was advised to turn over most launch responsibilities to private firms, offer financial incentives and prizes for innovation, and foster small, entrepreneurial aerospace firms. Although the space agency now contracts many functions to private contractors, the panel said that arrangement had only produced a constellation of vendors rather than an independent industry.
(Moon to Mars Commission released on the June 16th)
Essentially, NASA is going to become completely private in the coming years. This is going to open up a large market that was never there before, like what happened to the airline industry.
I'm interested in that Burt Rutan calls this series of SS1 flights his "tier one" project. Is there a tier two? Rutan has mentioned something along the lines of a larger White Knight using 8 modified 747 engines to carry much larger payloads. One can only hope!
SpaceShipOne is a lot closer to a Cessna than it is to a Space Shuttle. Seriously.
This is a good thing. You worry a lot less about breaking a Cessna.
Not if your goal is actually getting into orbit, it isn't.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
SS1 _is_ a secondary vehicle. White Knight is the turbojet powered launch aircraft. A whole lot cheaper than a B-52.
I've got to agree with you. I've got to believe that someone out there is going to put up another Mil for the first organization to go into orbit twice.
If I had the money, I'd donate it myself. But I'm saving up for my first ride for now.
to wear sunscreen.
Not sure about the others, but trust me on the sunscreen.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I figure it's a good excuse to take a day off. I plan on bringing my 6" dobby telescope with me, so I will at least get two good nights (Sat and Sun) of stargazing before the launch. I won't go home dissappointed.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
this feat will likely prove to NASA and the ESA that single gigantic booster rockets are neither efficient nor as re-usable as we were all lead to believe.
I think that the reliance on large gigantic boosters is a legacy from the '50s. And that was a case of "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail." Plus personality.
They had these huge ICBMs, that were (relatively) easily convertible, plus Von Braun was in love with huge boosters. After that, design kind of ran on inertia.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Don't feel bad. *I* got it, anyway. ;-)
Clear, Dark Skies
I know this because I work at Scaled, but if you read all of the info on the Scaled website about SpaceShipOne, you'll know that SpaceDev only provides a small portion of the rocket to us. The rocket is actually a Scaled design with assistance given to us by SpaceDev on the bulkhead between the nitrous tank and the solid rocket and a lot the hardware and valves. We also manufacture the rocket casings, using a nozzle made by a supplier, and send them to SpaceDev to mold the solid fuel in place.
Wait till you see some of our future projects which could put a 200lb satelite into orbit for until $750k.
"Q: Will we get a chance to see the new astronaut and hear what he has to say about the flight?"
A: No one will be able to talk to the astronaut after the flight but we believe the inflight conversation will be something like:
Astronaut: SWEET MARY MOTHER OF GOD!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!
Okay, just kidding about the last part.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
i spotted the so-called joke right off, but it wasn't funny at all. shrug.
We're still waiting for it to compile.
On the other hand, by replacing the Redstone with an Atlas you transformed a suborbital craft into an orbital one without changing the craft itself.
And yes, technologically, it was a dead end. It would be decades before a (very different) commercially viable craft would be able to fly that route non-stop.
I think once the X-Prize is won, I think somebody ought to seriously put up a even larger prize--like US$100 million--for the first competitor to build a small reusable space vehicle that could fly to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and even possibly rendezvous with the International Space Station. And have the same vehicle fly two such missions within 30 days.
:-)
Given Burt Rutan's innovative knowledge of aerospace technology, I wouldn't bet against him for winning this proposed prize, too.
Uh... not quite. Although everyone keeps talking about this launch as if it were really a spaceflight, it's just a high-altitude airplane flight.
In Monday's flight to 100KM the top speed will probably be around Mach 3. The speed needed to achieve a stable orbit is about 15 times faster.
SpaceShipOne can't begin to achieve those kind of speeds.
Once you are in orbit, reentry becomes a serious problem because of atmospheric friction. If SpaceShipOne actually could get into orbit, it would burn up on reentry, because it would need to be coated with refractory material like the space shuttle, or an ablative shield, like the Apollo, Soyuz and other disposable craft.
Although SpaceShipOne is a very impressive engineering feat, it is still very far from being a real space craft.
For that, we'll probably have to wait for SpaceShipThree or SpaceShipFive.
Rest assured, the engineers at scaled are likely already working on a follow up vehicle that WILL make orbit, using the same systems they developed for SS1. If you visit their web site you will notice they pointedly do not disclose how much payload the white knight vehicle can lift. Also note these quotes from their FAQ pages; "Scaled has completed 34 manned research aircraft. None were announced until they were ready to fly." ..AND..." Scaled Composites is a research and development facility with other proprietary projects. Tours are not permitted." Oh yes, SS1 is not Burt Rutans' last word on space flight!
You gotta learn to walk before you learn run. You gotta learn to take the first step when learning to walk.
Not that I"m trying too hard to disagree with you, but I call bullshit. ;) My first son went from crawling to running and skipped walking. Ever since then he's been a blur with an occasional silhouette. Seriously, when he was a baby he stood up, took a step, and then took off across the room. He didn't start walking for a few weeks, but he was running all over the place in the meantime.
Again, I'm not trying hard to disagree with you, I just get sick of the same old adages being thrown around to justify something. ;) I realize the X-Prize is the greatest thing since Blue Bell ice cream shipped frozen from Texas to Washington, so I think that in the spirit of the X-Prize we need to come up with new adages to replace the out-dated ones.
So, that said, how about "You gotta learn to sit before you can wipe your ass." (Show me *one* kid who could wipe their ass before they could sit)
Like what I said? You might like my music
I'll venture my guesses for how this will unfold. It should be fun to see how many I guess correctly. These are just guesses. No inside info or anything like that.
Prediction #1 I think Mike Melvill is going to be the first private citizen to pilot a ship into space on Monday morning. He has been with Rutan since the seventies when he was one of the few people to build a VariViggen, the first built-from-plans experimental aircraft design offered by the Rutan Aircraft Factory. He later built a Long-EZ and he still flies it. In fact, a few years ago, he and Burt's brother Dick flew their Long-EZs around the world. Mike is 62, which is rare for a test pilot. "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots."
Prediction #2 I wouldn't be surprised to see some prominent people actually on board for the two Ansari X-Prize flights, after this full qualifying test flight. I saw Burt speaking at Oshkosh, and when asked if he'd take the suborbital flight in SpaceShipOne, he replied, "You bet your ass I would!" He's not usually given to such colorful speech, at least in that forum.
Prediction #3 The X-Prize will be won before this year's Oshkosh Fly-In (now known as EAA Airventure), which is July 27th - August 2nd. That doesn't leave much time to provide adequate notice to the X-Prize committee, so I expect that'll be announced immediately after Monday's successful flight. Oshkosh has been a frequent target for Burt, although it certainly isn't true that anything was ever rushed or safety compromised to make that event.
I feel like I've been waiting all my life for the privatization of space. Best of luck to the entire Scaled Composites crew for Monday morning. Despite previous Slashdot comments calling the X-Prize a stunt, I strongly believe that This Changes Everything.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
Once you are in orbit, reentry becomes a serious problem because of atmospheric friction. ... it would need to be coated with refractory material like the space shuttle, or an ablative shield, like the Apollo, Soyuz and other disposable craft.
Only if one chooses (or is forced) to use aerobraking, like past spacecraft have. If you come down slowly, you could do it in linen and bamboo.
Admittedly, with today's propulsion systems, aerobraking is pretty much the only way to slow down. But the heating (which I think is due more to compression than friction) isn't an automatic part of re-entry. The rest of your comments were spot-on, I'd say.
And what magic plan do you have to "come down slowly"? We'd love to hear it.
And what magic plan do you have to "come down slowly"? We'd love to hear it.
I have no plan, magic or otherwise, based on current technology. Aerobraking is the way to go these days, as I noted in my original post. But given enough thrust, you can choose your re-entry velocity. We just don't have enough right now, so we aerobrake.
Who knows when I'll finish editing it though.. but I'll post the torrent along with photos.
Hey Ridley, you got any Beeman's?
Yeah, I think I got a stick.
Loan me some, will you? I'll pay you back later.
Fair enough...
(And if you don't know what that's from, you don't deserve to be on Slashdot!)
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I for one would not want to fly in a SpaceShip where any fault would probably be fatal.
Then we get onto my regular complaint about how SpaceShipOne has bought the prize, etc, etc, while StarChaser waits for funding.
im in ur
That is 13:30 GMT or 15:30 CEST
No!? So sure, are you?
Yes, actually. The physics of that calculation is trivial. Also, "work" has a well-defined meaning in physics, so strictly speaking that sentence is perfectly true.
Clue alert - he wasn't talking about energy. Try actually reading his post to discover he was talking about work to solve engineering problems, not how much fucking energy it takes to attain oribital velocity.
Clue alert - engineering difficulty is closely related to energy in situations like these. With orbital velocities comes a whole range of new problems related to hypersonic aerodynamics, heating, flight control, structural design, etc etc. Look, SpaceShipOne uses hydraulic-boosted (if even that)manual flight controls, and relies of passive stability to maintain the correct flight attittude. You couldn't get away with that for a Shuttle. It also doesn't have a heatshield the way the Shuttle does (it has some re--inforcement, but not even within an order of magnitude). The rocket on SpaceShipOne has a total impulse of maybe 1 km/sec, and the corresponding mass fraction of the vehicle devoted to fuel is maybe 20%. The rest can go to building a robust vehicle; on the Shuttle the mass fraction of fuel has to be closer to 90%. SpaceShipOne doesn't have cryogenic fuels, and the associated issues. I can go on and on, but hopefully by now you've grokked that these are two very different machines, and SpaceShipOne is as close to orbit as climbing Mt. Greylock is to climbing Mt. Everest.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
You may be right as nuclear fission came before fussion.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
Is it NASA's mission to get cheap access to space?
Or is its mission to explore and design/fund new technologies that American companies can use for whatever?
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
Yes, NASA accomplished great things back in the 1960s, but that doesn't excuse them from the horrific behavior that they've demonstrated since then.
To the (limited) extent that I agree that NASA's current operations are "horrific", it has been my ongoing observation for over 20 years that NASA has done no worse than industry, education, or art over the same period.
I was first struck by this thought as the investigation into the Challenger disaster unfolded. The transcripts of the conversations at Morton Thiokol (sp?) and NASA could have been transcripts of software release meetings I had recently attended, with different jargon. The long slide that brought us to Columbia has also been reflected in my experiences in writing, shipping, and using software.
The technology is wonderful, but on a computer today I need more RAM than I had disk space in the 1980's to run a word processor. The problem is not technology; it's the value system. The primary problem is pointy-headed bosses, but the rest of us are enablers.
I could go on about education, politics, the arts, etc., but the post would be too long.
The reason I limit my agreement with the parent point of view is because I do believe that, overall, things are much better in both fields. But they aren't nearly as good as they could or should be, and the point of my post is that we can all do better at what we do, and it would be more constructive to seek inspiration from SpaceShipOne and clean up our own acts than to carp at others whose failures simply have higher profiles than our own.
open4free ©
An automatic pilot with 3 people.
The physics involved is only trivial if you use the age old high school simplification, ignore air resistance. As soon as you account for the 'real atmosphere', the physics become radically non trivial, and you quickly realize that when oribital velocity is the goal, air friction on the way up is a HUGE factor, much much larger than the potential energy of the altitude gained. As your velocities go thru the mach numbers, the energy required for altitude gain becomes 'trivial and ignoreable' compared to the energy required to overcome air friction.
To truely understand the magnitude of the issues, turn the problem around. Take a good look at the surface of the moon, it's full of impact craters. The energy involved in creating those craters is trivial to calculate. Take the mass of the impact object, and it's velocity, and you can grind the numbers and come up with a value for energy. Now look at the surface of the earth. We are 6 times the size, so it's reasonable to expect 6 times the number of impacts. There are very few visible impact locations on this earth, because the energy requirements to actually impact are considerably different on earth. The average object on a path to intersect the earth does not contain enough energy to actually penetrate the atmosphere and impact. This is the physics of launch, operating in reverse, and the little detail of 'air friction' makes it really difficult for a fast moving object to actually hit the ground.
In an ideal simple world, the simplest orbital launch trajectory is to climb vertically out of the atmosphere, and then accelerate horizontally to orbital velocity. The real world doesn't work that way very well because of gravity, the vehicle will tend to fall a long ways during the horizontal acceleration phase. The fuel required to give the extra boost to allow the extra time for the horizontal phase adds tremendously to the all up throw weight on the launch pad, so that's where you get out the very large system of simultaneous equations, apply some very advanced calculus, and solve the entire mess for the trajectory that actually minimizes the fuel weight on the launch pad.
If you still think this is trivial, take a look at the history of the computer. Eniac is credited with being the original digital computer, the first one built to actually do digital computations for 'the real world'. The first 'real task' that was assigned to Eniac was calculating the ACTUAL trajectories of artillery shells launched from the big guns of battleships. Its the EXACT same math as done for the launch trajectory of an orbital vehicle, except, in the artillery case, it never gets high enough to actually approach the zero drag conditions of 'out of the atmosphere'. One could in a round-about way credit the atmospheric drag problem as a catalyst for the entire computing industry, it was the original problem for which the digital computer was deployed.
Once the vehicle is actually out of the atmosphere, and the drag element of the equations equal zero, at that point, the physics does become trivial. The only complicating factor is the fact that overall vehicle mass decreases as fuel is burned, changing the amount of acceleration available from the energy being expended. It's still just elementry calculus, the kind of problem you assign to grade 12 students in high school. Truely understanding the physics and math of actually achieving that point is the stuff of which an entire aerospace engineering degree program is made of. It's non trivial, and a branch of engineering unto itself.
While it may be true that Spaceship One is not an orbital vehicle in itself, it is the second stage of a delivery platform, and capable of placing a minimum of 600 pounds into a sub-orbital trajectory. In it's current form, that 600 pounds takes the form of 3 humans and associated life support. If you replace the crew capsule with a clamshell arrangement, it could just as easily eject 600
off for a "camping trip" with your daughter and her two friends? riiight.
dont forget to use condoms
im sorry, but you are so full of shit, it is impossible to not reply.
Your babbling and attempt to convince people that you know what you are talking about has failed. Really. Go find a real engineer and have him explain it to you, but not here. Bye now.
Is it NASA's mission to get cheap access to space?
Yes. Look at all the Mars probes lately: more bang, less buck. So any new technology that makes going into space cheaper IS part of their mission. They are using our tax dollars as well, so it is their duty as well.
Or is its mission to explore and design/fund new technologies that American companies can use for whatever?
The original mission was to beat the Soviets to space and the moon. If you doubt that, please notice that the Soviets QUIT trying to go to the moon after we were first. Designing new technologies for American companies is a side benefit, not a mission statement. The goal is exploration for exploration's sake and to benefit everyone, not just American Corporations.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Thats just great. Now the entire Mojave Desert has been slashdotted.
Just an add-in bit of info. For those interested, we now have opened up the #SpaceShipOne chat room to the public. As they ready the project to step (well fly) into space, the buzz is high and we hope many will come in and talk about the project, the concept of privitazation of space travel, and most any topic-related item. Please spread the word! With more support, the better the general subject-matter and more things to talk about. Since there will not generally be any online broadcast of the flight, this may be the next closest thing short of watching on the news (CNN sconfirmed but expect that NASATV 'might' cover it as well (from rumor mill)... we'll see.
The chat is located on the freenode servsers at irc.freenode.net. As always, we are a family and proffessional channel so please refrain from trolling, soapboxing, or using foul-language.
See you fellow /.'ers there. News that matters, the SlashDot way. ;)
-Pandelirium
Moderator - #SpaceShipOne #maestro #cassini #Pandelirium MaximumPC
http://www.pandelirium.net
I just saw some TV footage from a Fox News preview of the White Kight and SpaceshipOne taking off. It looks so much cooler than all of the pictures I've seen online!
Actually, SpaceDev (SPDV) is using the same rocket used in SpaceShipOne as an upper stage in one of its satellite launching systems. This will be a launch into orbit. They have progressed very far with this technology. I would expect them to announce a launch date soon.
And well, Monday's launch is a spaceflight. Technically, NASA doesn't even do spaceflights anymore. They do launches. The shuttle isn't exactly flying on the way up. The closest thing that NASA had was the X-15. I believe it is an exibit now.
This flight has great significance if you look at the history of the U.S. space race. This is just the first step, and I must add, it is the right step, instead of a 1 billion dollar a launch step.
One small step in the right direction.
I think we are forgetting a goal of this new race, new technology. Alternative approaches to space travel are what these companies can accomplish, and what NASA has had trouble with.
If SS1 wins the X-Prize:
1. X-Prize and private spacecraft get interesting
2. Scaled might be onto a commercial winner offering space hops to rich tourists and university researchers and make enough money to have a go at building the world's first private orbital craft.
If the x-prize is won, you can't tell me somebody won't have a go at building a private orbital craft. C'mon, I bet there were slashdotters out there saying "100km private spacecraft - can't be done!"
Troll!!
Don't you try to make fun of the commies and think of getting modded up
we went back a few times, the problem is "why" go back, since we had gained most of what could have learned with the technology we had at the time. There are thousands of new tests we could do NOW, but we didn't have the technology to do this kind of testing then.
Also, consider a large portion of our justification WAS to beat the Soviets, which had already been done by the first flight.
Also, consider we almost lost 3 guys during Apollo 13, which made us sit back and ask why we were doing this when we already had most of the science we could reasonably gather considering the technology we had at the time. We would have been better off figuring out how to go back every 10 years instead of once a year for a few years, so we could develop better tests, and get better ideas for tests.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!