SpaceShipOne Flight Completed Successfully

knothead99 writes "CNN is reporting the successful liftoff of SpaceShipOne from a runway in the Mojave desert. Around 10:30 EDT the craft will reach an altitude of 50,000 feet and they'll separate from White Knight and ignite the rocket for space entry. More information can also be found at the Mojave Airport website" Update: 06/21 15:36 GMT by S : An MSNBC story confirms that SpaceShipOne 'glided safely back to Earth, landing back at the Mojave Airport' around 8.15AM PST.

Comments

Question

[PrvtBurrito]

So they made it. Congrats. Now how high would they have to go to enter orbit?

Re:Question

[Dr. GeneMachine]

It's more a question of speed than of height - with the current design, Spaceship One won't be capable of reaching orbital speeds, which far exceed Mach 3.

Re:Question

[Paulrothrock]

38 miles higher, and 18,000 mph downrange velocity. Roughly. Baby steps, man, baby steps.

Best part, Rutan has admitted that SS1 is scalable, meaning it could become an orbital launch vehicle. Sweet.

Re:Question

[Yarn]

it's not a matter of height, it's a matter of speed.

Here is a nice orbital velocity calculator.

Getting up to that speed is not the only problem, you have to loose all that kinetic energy before you land, unless you fancy spreading yourself thinly across a continent.

Re:Question

[StupidHelpDeskGuy]

Generally somewhere between 250-300 km (where air drag starts to become important) and 1000 km (where the inner van allen radiation belt starts to get serious). Low earth orbit usually implies a modest inclination to the equator, (i.e., the lowest achievable from the launch site). The Space Shuttle flies in low Earth orbit.

For more information see this article from ScienceWorld

Re:Question

[AKAImBatman]

Yes, but couldn't they just go higher and fall into orbit?

Attaining orbit is not a matter of height. It's a matter of going so fast that you continuously miss the Earth. The only reason why a space craft has to fly so high is that the thick atmosphere will slow it down.

Re:Question

[Ford Prefect]

Best part, Rutan has admitted that SS1 is scalable, meaning it could become an orbital launch vehicle. Sweet.

Maybe there's something in all the naming - the project's called Tier One, the spacecraft module is called SpaceShipTwo...

What's Tier Two going to be?

Re:Question

[pyrrhonist]

So they made it. Congrats. Now how high would they have to go to enter orbit?

Low Earth Orbit is 350 km (217 mi). Obits lower than this are not stable.

In addition, they would have to be going about 8 times faster to reach orbit.

Re:Question

[Ignorant Aardvark]

Your post is kind of misleading. May I remind you that escape velocity is defined as the initial velocity necessary to leave the Earth's gravity well provided that there is no additional acceleration. As long as your acceleration away from Earth is greater than than the Earth's gravitational acceleration at your distance from it, you will eventually escape Earth's gravity well, and at a speed of much less than Mach 25 to boot. Think of a balloon: they certainly never travel very quickly, but they get very far towards escaping on very small velocity.

A spaceship is not launched like a cannon, but rather, it has engines on it that provide thrust. In this way it is possible to escape Earth's gravity with continual acceleration and never actually experiencing speeds of Mach 25. You are right, to get into a low-Earth orbit one would need to be travelling at Mach 25, but that is simply a result of the Newtonian mechanics of an orbit plotted at that arbitrary altitude. Any number of different orbits - such as a parabolic orbit arcing away from the Earth - could have any number of different (higher or lower) necessary velocities.

And besides, once you are in space, without having to worry about air resistance, it's trivially easy to build up that extra velocity. Your post makes it sound like getting to Mach 3 is trivial and they need to put in eight times the work to reach LEO. This is simply not true. Getting to 100km through most of the atmosphere has already accomplished most of the work. The rest is easy. It's not as simple as looking at the difference between the numbers 3 and 25 and saying, "Oh, they have eight times more speed they need to get!"

Re:Question

[An Onerous Coward]

Hmm, that does bring up an interesting question. Has anyone considered using balloons to get up past most of the atmosphere? Strapping a couple of balloons onto the ship and letting them do most of the lifting, then let them go and continue upward using regular rockets. The balloons would then deflate and fall to Earth where they could be retrieved and reused.

It would add a lot of time to the flight, but you would save all the fuel needed to get up through the first 50K or so, without having to piggyback off a 747.

I'm sure somebody else has come up with the idea, but is anybody pursuing it?

Re:Question

[Rei]

Not true. It is not trivially easy to build up that extra velocity, because you have to lug all of the extra propellant through the atmosphere. The amount of propellant doesn't rise linearly, either: it rises exponentially. If they want to keep their current launch design, they're going to need the world's largest carrier plane to take them to altitude.

It gets worse: currently they're hardly addressing *the* most difficult concept for cheap reusable spacecraft: reentry. This single problem has contributed to the majority of the space shuttle's turnaround cost. Standing on the shoulders of giants (as the vast majority of their work thusfar has been), they can at least avoid the ceramic tile mistake; however, they still need to solve the problem somehow.

They're not 3/25ths done - they're *less* than that.

Re:Question

[hedgehogbrains]

Check these out:

• Rocket Equation Calculator
• Specific Impulse

For a 400 s specific impulse, getting to mach 3 requires a 1.276 takeoff to payload ration. On the other, making Mach 25 requires 7.66 takeoff to payload ration. That's why Spaceship One is self contained, whilst the Shuttle requires vast external fuel tanks and external boosters. It's hardly trivially easy.

Re:Question

[randall_burns]

The folks at JP Aerospace are using baloons for assist--in fact they are taking this even further and claim they can take a lighter than air craft to orbit using ion drives or something similar.

Re:Question

[cosmo7]

Sorry but your knowledge of basic high school physics (first semester) is appalling (leads me to believe that you're a little young ).

Also space rockets only work inside the atmosphere, where there is air to push against. There was a special on Fox all about it.

Re:Question

[Smidge204]

It's about both height and speed. Speed required for a stable orbit is inversely proportional to altitude. All you have to do is balance the centripetal (F = (m*v^2)/r) with the gravitational force (F = G*m1*m2/(r^2)). The only special case is geo-synchronous orbit, in which case you must be at a specific altitude in order for the period of your orbit to match that of the earth's rotation. Other than that you can "orbit" at any speed (v) you want as long as your altitude (r) makes the above equations balance.

So as long as the ship has the guts to get far enough from the earth, it can certainly go fast enough to be in orbit.
=Smidge=

Re:Question

[KDan]

It's not a matter of speed, it's a matter of velocity! If your speed is directed towards the earth, it won't help you much.

Daniel

Re:Question

[delibes]

And besides, once you are in space, without having to worry about air resistance, it's trivially easy to build up that extra velocity. Your post makes it sound like getting to Mach 3 is trivial and they need to put in eight times the work to reach LEO. This is simply not true. Getting to 100km through most of the atmosphere has already accomplished most of the work. The rest is easy.

I disagree that it's easy. Although accelerating at a height of 100km isn't too hard, you need to get the fuel and oxidizer up to that height and keep burning it. Carrying enough propellants up through the atmosphere in order to burn your way up to about 7,500 m/s velocity is pretty difficult.

Another way to look at it is to use the equation for kinetic energy (1/2*m*v^2). Since it's proportional to v-squared, if you need 8 times more velocity, that's 64 times more energy. As you say, "The rest is easy." :)

Re:Question

[pclminion]

Sorry but your knowledge of basic high school physics (first semester) is appalling (leads me to believe that you're a little young ).

You MUST be trolling.

YOu are simply incoprrect when you say that you do NOT have to reach 25,000 (or Mach 25 as you out it) to escape Earth's gravity because of the *engines* on a craft sigh). In point of fact you simply DO.

Out and out wrong. The escape velocity is merely the speed at which the craft would be traveling if it had fallen toward the Earth from infinity. You do not have to travel at the escape velocity to move away from the Earth. If you have a source of thrust, you may move at whatever velocity you please.

The rest of your post is (unfortunately) just a layperson's opinion about physics and I'm sorry but a rather poor opinion at that.

And you're what, a professional physicist? Certainly not, since your error is a grievous one.

At any rate, your post should be marked "troll," not "informative."

Re:Question

[myc_lykaon]

Why, oh why isn't there a Moderate: Missed the Point -1 available?

Re:Question

[grahamlee]

My karma's probably blown now for this post but I have a thing for truth....

The truth has a tendency to be true, unlike your post. Let me just give my background for disclosure - I'm a rocket scientist.

#1. YOu are simply incoprrect when you say that you do NOT have to reach 25,000 (or Mach 25 as you out it) to escape Earth's gravity because of the *engines* on a craft sigh). In point of fact you simply DO.

No, you don't. If you were blasted off from the surface of the Earth at Mach 25 and the atmosphere didn't exist, then (to use the kind of lax definition of infinity that us physicists are proud of) you'd come to rest at infinity and wouldn't fall back into the Earth. However, if you provide a continual thrust that everywhere is greater than the local acceleration due to Earth's gravity, you will never fall back down. You could achieve this at a constant velocity of 1m/s if you liked, by suitable modification of the thrust.

#2. You are incorrect when you say it's "trivially easy" to build up speed outside the atmosphere. Newton's laws still hold whether inside or outside the atmosphere...and you STILL have to carry the reaction mass up there somehow.

To go forward in space, throw something backward. To go forward in the atmosphere, throw enough stuff backward to push enough air out of the way. It's easier in space - as you don't have to overcome resistive drag (unless the solar wind is non-negligible) then the same acceleration can be had for less driving force - the net force is the same yes. This means you can take it easy, and do something like throwing photons or ions out of the back of your spaceship.

The rest of your post is (unfortunately) just a layperson's opinion about physics and I'm sorry but a rather poor opinion at that.

As opinions go, it was just as valid as anyone else's. As statements of physical understanding go, it was superior to yours.

Re:Question

[CrimsonAvenger]

One of the teams competing for the X-Prize is planning on balloon lift for that purpose. The da Vinci Project, as I recall.

Re:Question

[HeghmoH]

Escape velocity has nothing to do with orbit. Escape velocity is what you need to attain to leave Earth completely, for example if you wanted to go into Solar orbit. Balloons never do anything remotely approaching "escape" in this context.

Getting into orbit is way, way, way harder than getting to 100km. It takes 24 times the energy to get to orbit, and you therefore need massively larger fuel tanks and engines to do so. You are correct that "eight times more speed" is misleading, but you got it backwards; since kinetic energy goes up as the square of the speed, you need more than eight times the energy to reach orbit.

Re:Question

[DynaSoar]

Ignorant Aardvark (632408) sez: "May I remind you that escape velocity is defined as the initial velocity necessary to leave the Earth's gravity well provided that there is no additional acceleration. As long as your acceleration away from Earth is greater than than the Earth's gravitational acceleration at your distance from it, you will eventually escape Earth's gravity well, and at a speed of much less than Mach 25 to boot."

Your numbers are correct, but there's a difference between factual and practical. In order to lift a craft at constant thrust at say, Mach 3, out of Earth's gravity well would require so much fuel that it would weigh too much to get off the ground. And the well stretches out quite far. The Apollo shots were 200,000 miles out before the moon's gravity well became stronger than Earth's for them, which means Earth's hadn't really disappeared yet. The 25 kmph escape velocity represents the minimum energy escape.

The same thing applies to the "trivally easy" comment with respect to getting from Mach 3 to mach 25/orbit. There may be no air and so no max Q to overcome, but the fuel needed has to be carried up there in order to be used there, and that increases the takeoff weight, and that requires more takeoff fuel, and that means a bigger craft with more drag and so even more takeoff fuel and weight....

Besides, SS1 had little concern with aerodynamic drag. It launched from 50,000 feet. That's how it could be so small.

A French paper in 1913, reprinted in a 1958 book by Andrew Halley, the then president of the International Aeronautic Federation, calculated the minimum energy needed for a constant thrust trip to the moon (and Mars and Venus). The moon is 48 hours and 59 minutes away, the last 28 minutes of that being retro-thrust. Unfortunately the then greatest conceivable energy source, hydrogen/oxygen burning, such as the Saturn or the shuttle, has less than one percent of the energy needed to do the job (actually, 116 times too weak).

Until we get a light weight zero point energy source or some other exotic widget for energy without weight, punching holes in the sky is the only reasonable way to get past it.

Re:Question

[JabberWokky]

Off the top of my head I seem to recall that at a .1G acceleration, it's seven hours. It's 3 days if you don't have any fuel and basically drift the entire way (a la Apollo). A real presence in space means gas stations, something the Apollo project didn't have. They basically drove real fast to the base of the hill, threw it into neutral, shut off the engine and coasted up, over the top and down the hill and then started the engine and did reverse to slow down.

A .1G acceleration is pretty light on fuel (relatively speaking - right now we do the cheapest method no matter what), and it gets us there pretty quickly.

I may be off by a neat order of magnitude one way or another, as I'm pulling remembered figures, but I think they are right.

--
Evan

Re:Question

[Rei]

Ablatives aren't reusable. :) They require just the same reapplication/inspection turnaround effort that the shuttle's tiles do. Of course, the materials can be quite cheap - in fact, the chinese investigating wood as an ablative, and some US rocket engines and payload shrouds actually use cork. The main cost, however, is the man-hours.

Neither NASP or X33 ever fully overcame the reentry problem, despite a lot of research.

There are a number of other interesting proposals out there that may cut the turnaround time for reusables - for example, a Russian/German joint venture developed an inflatable reentry system, which seems an interesting idea (do your breaking in the thinner atmosphere first with a giant surface area to radiate off the heat).

Another idea is the use of a plasma torch in front of the reentry vehicle to create a hollow cavity that the hypersonic craft moves through. As the shockwave created by a leading edge can create a cavity which the rest of the surface can pass through without touching the superheated air (hence the reason why they only need the carbon-carbon panelling on the leading edges of the shuttle), so can, in theory, a plasma torch - eliminating the need for contact all together.

Re:Question

[AKAImBatman]

There's some info on the Air Force's desires for the Shuttle on NASA's History Site. From the article:

One Air Force requirement that had a critical effect on the Shuttle design was cross range capability. The military wanted to be able to send a Shuttle on an orbit around the Earth's poles because a significant portion of the Soviet Union was at high latitudes near the Arctic Circle. The idea was to be able to deploy a reconnaissance satellite, retrieve an errant spacecraft, or even capture an enemy satellite, and then have the Shuttle return to its launch site after only one orbit to escape Soviet detection. Because the Earth rotates on its axis, by the time the Shuttle would return to its base, the base would have "moved" approximately 1,100 miles to the east. Thus the Shuttle needed to be able to maneuver that distance "sideways" upon reentering the atmosphere.

Given a choice between straight and delta wings, the latter perform much better in terms of cross range capability. Delta wings produce more lift at hypersonic speeds, enabling more maneuverability (Heppenheimer, p. 220). Given the requirement for cross range capability, a delta-winged vehicle became the clear choice. Additionally, delta-winged vehicles do not heat up as much as straight-winged vehicles during atmospheric reentry (Draper et al., p. 26), thus decreasing the need for expensive and potentially heavy thermal protection systems, although the thermodynamics are too complex to cover fully in this paper. Moreover, some aerodynamicists argued that delta-winged vehicles were a proven technology that provided good balance, stability, and aerodynamic control (Draper et al., pp. 29, 35).

Now you know why the Space Shuttle has stubby delta-wings for hypersonic flight. I'll see if I can dig up some other links.

Re:Question

[mlyle]

That isn't it.

The air force wanted "large cross range capability", in other words, the ability to glide in large distances. The Air Force's desire for 1100 miles of cross-range doesn't put the shuttle anywhere near the capability of doing a low altitude flyover of Soviet airspace-- Florida is a LONG glide from Russia for something that effectively drops like a brick.

The nefarious use of cross range capability would be for the Shuttle to be able to enter a polar orbit, grab a spy satellite, and come back around and land in the same field. The problem is, in the hour and a half that orbit would take, the Earth would rotate about 22 degrees. So for the Shuttle to land at the same field, it would need to glide about 1000 miles (depending on how far from the equator it was).

This has pretty obviously not been used. But the versatility that the high cross range capability provided has greatly eased shuttle operations and also makes the vehicle safer by adding additional abort capabilities.

Another point: cross range capability has nothing to do with the heat shields. The Shuttle has a huge amount of kinetic energy that has to be dissipated one way or another; and really, you don't have a lot of choice in how quickly you aerobrake. The high cross range capability required more wing area and wing mass; and if you had a lower surface area to mass ratio, you'd actually aerobrake more quickly and require additional shielding.

AoA doesn't really come into it much. Once you enter the atmosphere, you're losing huge amounts of velocity. At hypersonic velocities, L/D ratios are awful, pretty much no matter what your AoA is.

Re:Question

[Rubyflame]

Um, that last "9" in your sig should be a "6".

Re:Question

[AKAImBatman]

Thanks for your corrections.

AoA doesn't really come into it much. Once you enter the atmosphere, you're losing huge amounts of velocity. At hypersonic velocities, L/D ratios are awful, pretty much no matter what your AoA is.

It depends. Obviously, the atmosphere is much thinner the higher up you go. The sooner you can obtain a flight envelope (rather than the "falling refrigerator" configuration of the shuttle), the longer you can take in your descent. Keep in mind that the Space Shuttle intentionally bleeds off a lot of speed by doing a supersonic slalom on the way down. This is such a difficult flight path, that only one human has ever flown reentry on manual. All other flights were handled by the computer. There's a nice description of reentry here.

At least two designs other than the shuttle's current one were considered:

On faster descent:

Despite these arguments that eventually prevailed, at least one straight-wing design was prominent for a time, in part because of its designer. Max Faget, the chief engineer at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (later renamed the Johnson Space Center), drew up plans for two straight-winged vehicles--one an orbiter and the other a booster stage--that rode piggyback and were both piloted and fully reusable. [snip] Faget argued that his design would enable the orbiter to return to Earth at a sharp angle that would significantly heat only the orbiter's lower surfaces (Faget, pp. 52-54)

On slower descent:

If it weren't for the payload bay requirement, a lifting body configuration might have worked well. Lifting bodies could have been a good compromise between ballistic capsules and delta- or straight-winged vehicles. They are lighter, have simpler structures, and encounter fewer reentry heating problems than winged vehicles. Lifting bodies have better lift-to-drag ratios than ballistic capsules, which enables them to be piloted more accurately (Peebles, December 1979, p. 487). Lifting bodies had even been considered for the Apollo command modules (Peebles, November 1979, p. 439). Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, NASA and the Air Force had conducted significant research on various lifting body programs such as the X-23A and the X-24A, demonstrating, among other characteristics, the maneuverability of wingless vehicles (Reed, pp. 129--131, 140).

Source

I don't have a link at the moment, but descent was a big problem in the early rocket plane experiments. If they descended too slowly, they'd lose their flight envelope and become difficult to control. But if they descended too quickly, the craft would heat up at an incredible rate.

Re:Question

[CrowScape]

Except the twit is saying you must reach 25,000mph in order to escape the Earth's pull, not simply "reach escape velocity". If I travel at a constant 1m/s up from the Earth's surface, I will eventually put enough distance between myself and the Earth that a mere 1m/s is enough to escape Earth's gravity well, as gravity's strength decreases exponentially the further away you get.

Re:Question

[HeghmoH]

Yes, I'm fully aware, that's the whole point of the sig. You're only the second person to find it, though, so congratulations. :-)

And More importantly...

[Gudlyf]

...the successful landing!

Early shutdown?

[American AC in Paris]

According to most reports, everything went swimmingly, but the Globe and Mail are reporting that SpaceShipOne's engine shut itself down prematurely (according to CNN reports.)

Anybody with more details on this? Is this an Issue Of Significance, or is it no big deal?

Note to editors: It's not like you didn't have advance notice of this. It's not like this isn't a huge story. SpacesShipOne successfully lifted off over an hour before this previewed on the front page. Step lively!

Re:Early shutdown?

[nonameisgood]

If they hit the 100 km mark, as planned, it was obviously not premature, although it might have been shut down earlier than planned due to any of many reasons (better conditions aloft, etc.) If it was earlier than planned, and they made the target altitude, then that shows they have planned well and the systems worked. Everything I would expect from these people.

Nothing here...move along.

Re:Early shutdown?

[thentil]

I read that too, and was frustrated that I couldn't figure out where they were coming up with that. According to this story:

"For a few minutes after SpaceShipOne began its descent, it was unclear whether Melvill had reached his goal. But the mission announcer finally said the mission had been successful as the craft prepared to land at Mojave Airport, accompanied by three chase planes. "

Looks like Globe and Mail just jumped the gun. thpt.

Re:Early shutdown?

[amabbi]

According to the mission status page on SpaceFlightNow, Melvill heard three large bangs in flight (see 11:11am update)... if there was a premature shutdown, perhaps this was the reason?

Re:Early shutdown?

[evenprime]

Probably nothing major. I expect that it was just burning a little hotter than normal, and that it ate up enough of the exhaust nozzle to destroy the fiber optics. (That automatically shuts the engine down.) This was discussed a few months back in AW&ST, but I can't find the link. This will have to do: http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/RLV/2003/ RLVNews2003-08.html

Scaled itself makes the case-throat-nozzle structure, which consists of an "inner layer of silica phenolic insulator and an outer graphite epoxy structural case." Burn-throughs of the insulator occurred in five firings but did not reach the sensor layer of fiber-optic cable between the insulator and case. They want to do a test in which they fire the engine until a burn-through reaches the sensor layer and it triggers a shutdown.

Re:Early shutdown?

[Andy_R]

A sonic boom is heard onboard a supersonic craft when it catches up with and overtakes the noise it has recently produced.

There is no sonic boom associated with travelling at multiples of the speed of sound, since at multiples of the speed of sound it just leaves it's noise further and further behind.

blow by blow

[Pharmboy]

get the blow by blow here.

Just refresh your page to get the newest news.

Re:blow by blow

[meringuoid]

Just refresh your page to get the newest news.

So... you're telling Slashdot to go to some page and keep hitting refresh?

Reckless, don't you think?

Re:blow by blow

[RobertB-DC]

My favorite update so far is this one:

1250 GMT (8:50 a.m. EDT)

The International Space Station will be flying high above Mojave at approximately the time SpaceShipOne is scheduled to launch. The Expedition 9 resident crew will attempt to photograph the launch and contrail.

The ISS crew, likely to be remembered as caretakers of NASA's failed scheme, will be witness to the future of space exploration. Poetic, isn't it?

It also occurs to me that if something bad happens to the Russian space program, the ISS crew may have to wait for Rutan's future orbital project, if they hope to get home at all...

Re:blow by blow

[HeghmoH]

It also occurs to me that if something bad happens to the Russian space program, the ISS crew may have to wait for Rutan's future orbital project, if they hope to get home at all...

The ISS has lifeboats with enough capacity to get everyone down without help from Earth. That's one reason why they never had more than three people on it at a time, because there is currently no vehicle capable of acting as a lifeboat for more than three people. Even if all spacecraft on Earth disappeared tomorrow, they'd be able to get back fine.

Re:blow by blow

[Rxke]

My favorite:
Melvill: ""Man!" Melvill said, shaking his fists together as he climbed from SpaceShipOne. "I went pretty high, though. When I got to the top, I released a bag of M&Ms in the cockpit. It was absolutely amazing. M&Ms were going all around. It was so cool! We have got to have video of that because I did it in front of one of the video cameras. I haven't ate them. They are in the cockpit."

Imagine a NASA astronaut doing that on a maiden flight...

Re:blow by blow

[Galvatron]

Well, Alan Shepard was sitting in a spacesuit full of urine, does that count?

Sweet

[cmaxx]

I saw the take off and the landing live on BBC News24 and it looked very smooth.

Apparently there may have been some slight damage to the nose, but Mike Melvill declared it a 'mind-blowing experience'.

Burt Rutan seems quite moved too.

I never thought

[tmork]

I never thought that my generation (I'm 26) would see commerical space flight in our life time. I thought that the world was too caught up in war and and greed for the next great step to the stars. NASA's stalled and caught in buracrecy, GovCo's got a poltical agenda for the Mars mission.

I am happily, gratefully, wrong. I hope with all my heart that Rutan and his contemporaries continue the privately funded drive to the stars.

Re:I never thought

[john82]

NASA's stalled and caught in buracrecy, GovCo's got a poltical agenda for the Mars mission.

You're too young to remember that we've been here before. Kennedy went to space for political reasons too. Americans were trying to one-up the Russians. Check this and this out. For those who don't like to RTFA:

Contrary to the popular view of John Kennedy as a space visionary, the president had little interest in space and strove to put humans on the moon only for its political importance. "I'm not that interested in space," he told NASA chief James Webb late in 1962.

Re:I never thought

[GileadGreene]

What's he's done is little different from shooting a man out of a slick looking cannon that can happen to blow him 60 miles high.

And little different from what Alan Shepard did in the original Mercury/Redstone launch. But it's a start. And it does count as "space flight".

And don't forget...to go that fast you need special materials to withstand the heat effects (>1000 degrees F) that occur at such velocities when back in atmosphere.

That's not necessarily true. There have been designs for aluminum-based thermal protection systems. Of course, most of them make use of complex transpiration-cooling systems to stop the aluminum from melting :-) Personally, I would wager that Rutan and Co. will go with some form of ablative shielding (like the old Mercury/Gemini/Apollo capsules), probably a spray-on ablator that can be reasonably quickly replaced. That kind of approach seems in line with the general philosophy of the SpaceShipOne design (for example, their use of a hybrid rocket engine).

but he's NO WHERE NEAR achieving a true suborbital flight

Actually, they just achieved suborbital flight. It's orbital flight that they are still a ways from achieving.

Re:I never thought

[Flamerule]

As other replies to your post have pointed out, you are laboring under some misconceptions. Allow me to clear them up for you.

I never thought that my generation (I'm 26) would see commerical space flight in our life time.

You still haven't I'm afraid. Rutan has built a vehicle that can attain a 60 mile altitude...AND COMES IMMIDIATELY DOWN again.

You are incorrect. As Wikipedia's article on space notes, "The altitude of 100 kilometers or 62 miles established by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale is the most widely used definition as the boundary between atmosphere and space." Because SpaceShipOne can attain this 100 km altitude, Burt Rutan has, indeed, achieved commercial space flight.

To actually ORBIT a craft must reach about 18,000 mph give or take....rutan's craft can only go about 1,500 mph....not even 10% of what's needed to achieve orbit.

This is all well and good, but SpaceShipOne wasn't intended to reach orbit. Orbit isn't required to achieve space flight. Orbit isn't required to win the X Prize.

[Rutan]'s built a BIG cannon that can launch someone 60 miles high nd come back down again...but he's NO WHERE NEAR achieving a true suborbital flight which needs HORIZONTAL velocities AT LEAST 5 to 10 times what he could possibly hope to achieve now with his current design.

Again, you're incorrect. Wikipedia's article on suborbital space flight gives a definition: "A sub-orbital spaceflight (or sub-orbital flight) is a spaceflight that does not involve putting a vehicle into orbit." Thus, because SpaceShipOne enters space, and does not achieve orbit, it is a suborbital spaceflight.

From live coverage on CNN

[icejai]

Basically at first, they said the engine cut out early on their own (they were supposed to be switched off by the pilot instead). They don't know why the engine cut out early.

As a result, they weren't sure if they reached the 100km mark at first, but were told they did afterward.

On the glide back to the landing strip, some loud pops were heard coming from the back of the rocket. Chaser planes inspected, and reported everything looked ok.

Hooray for private spaceflight!

Old News?

[thedillybar]

Posted by Hemos on Monday June 21, @11:31AM [EDT]

Around 10:30 EDT the craft will reach an altitude of 50,000 feet...

What's wrong with this picture?

Hoorah for the human species

[Ignorant Aardvark]

This is a great day for man. I firmly believe that our future lies in some day getting off this Earth and spreading throughout space. As such, the accomplishment we have witnessed today was great. This heralds a new era of spaceflight, not one in which governments spend billions, but one in which small companies pay millions, to get into orbit. At this rate, in ten years, commercial space flight might be a reality - and space exploitation (and as a side-effect, human colonization of space) would occur. See any number of novels by Stephen Baxter for more details.

Next stop: Kessel run

[patmandu]

Let's see 'em try to do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs!

Wonderful!

[MachineShedFred]

Next time please provide a link to the actual story so that when CNN takes it off their front page due to the next Clowns Fighting for the White House story breaking, we can still see "stuff that matters" mmkay?

A Truly Historic Day

[yohaas]

This is truly an historic day.
IMO the most historic event since 9/11.
No, it's not the beginning of commercially available space flight, but it is an important proof of concept. I think it's analagous to the Wright brothers flight. Obvioulsy a lot more time and money will have to be spent to achieve widespread space travel, but today's flight accomplishes two things:

1. It gets spcae travel into the private sector. Yes, government programs are responsible for creating many of the technologies we use today, but there's nothing like a little privateization to get things moving.

2. It shows that is can be done. This is more of a psychological thing, but important nonetheless.

Congratulations to the SpaceShipOne team, Godspeed and Thank You!

My (late) submission

[Kulic]

CNN is reporting in a developing story that SpaceShipOne attained an altitude of over 62.5 miles (100 km) in its historic flight earlier today, making it the first privately built craft to fly in space. More information can be found courtesy of Scaled Composites here and Space.com also has a story.

"Space flight is not only for governments to do," Rutan said. "Clearly, there's an enormous pent-up hunger to fly into space and not just dream about it." "We are heading to orbit sooner than you think," he said. "We do not intend to stay in low-earth orbit for decades. The next 25 years will be a wild ride. ... One that history will note was done for the benefit of everyone."

Panel was buckled aft.

[reality-bytes]

I was listening to the radio relay on the bbc.co.uk live video feed.

On the way back (I think after completing the 'feather'), Mike reported a 'loud bang' and his chase plane, the Alpha-Jet reported that an aft fairing had buckled.

When they got back down they were saying that they suspect the loud bang was caused by that same panel.

Re:Panel was buckled aft.

[Anonymous Coward]

No! It was on the wing, tearing at it! I swear it was there!

Re:wings?

[JabberWokky]

The FAA is presenting them to him on Wednesday... it's a certificate, according to the (semi-knowledgable) MSNBC on-site guy.

The quality of the anchors was a notch above filming cottage cheese. They clearly did not understand what was going on, why it was important, and they thought they made $10 million when they touched down and that it was all about science. They treated it like a NASA launch, expecting it to be months until the next one, and there to be a bunch of ill-explained science as a rationale for the launch.

I'd like to say it again:

The United States now has a certified and *operational* civilian space port. Holy frick.

--
Evan

Real news for a change

[hackstraw]

This is the best "news", I believe that I have experienced in my lifetime since the launch of the 1st space shuttle. No, I do not consider wars and killings as news. My life is not really affected by them. Sorry.

My life has been affected by explorers that came to this country (USA), and by those who have gone into space. Both war/killing and exploration provide an idiology for rustling up resources to get a common goal accomplished, but I kinda prefer the latter.

One thing to note is that the X Prize will be awarded to "the first privately funded group to send three people on a suborbital flight 62.5miles (100.6 kilometers) high and repeat the feat within two weeks using the same vehicle."

That is a pretty high goal, because I do not know of any space vehicle that has accomplished this (am I wrong?).

"Just Keep Going"

[Bob_Robertson]

Now we're into the realm of engineering. They can get above the atmosphere with the composite craft, all they have to do is keep going.

I agree with you that this is the easiest and best way to do the job. I loath the "blast-off" mentality, where 99% of your craft is thrown away just getting up there. Waste!

However, "just keep going" is easy to say and hard to do. It will require substantially more fuel to be carried, which itself requires far more fuel to be consumed accelerating the greater mass. The return flight also must be considered, heat shielding means more mass too.

Will Rutan's formula of nitrous oxide and tire rubber lend itself to this task? In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, "Nyaaaaa, (munch munch munch) Could be."

It will happen. It may be Armadillo Aerospace, it may be Scaled Composites, it may be someone none of us have heard of yet, but someone will do it and private people who care about their investment won't do it by throwing 99% of their property away.

Bob-

Re:Sweet - Luckily they're in California...

[jpellino]

"5. ... The flight vehicle must return from both flights substantially intact, as defined by and in the sole judgment of the ANSARI X PRIZE Review Board, such that the vehicle is reusable."

"Uh, son? Seem's like y'all got a taillight t'aint workin'."
"Really officer? Which one?"
*BLAM!*
"That one, son. Y'all gonna hafta get this vee-hickle offa this heah runway. Heh heh heh..."

Definitions and achieving orbit

[gevmage]

100 km is the official "edge of space", which is presumably matched to some definition of the "thin-ness" of the atmosphere. It may be the height at which 99% of the atmosphere (by mass) is below you.

Achieving orbits is a 2-step process. You need to get high enough that the atmospheric drag is small enough that it's possible to acheive orbital velocity. Then you have a vehicle with enough thrust to kick you into orbit. Height/velocity isn't the only issue. If you accelerated a vehicle to escape velocity at the earth's surface, it would have the energy to leave the earths gravity well completely; however, the energy would turned into heat by friction with the atmosphere, and the craft would be vaporized.

Still below the X-15 flight of 1963

[Animats]

Lest we forget, back in 1963, the USAF's X-15 made a similar flight. Lifted under the wing of a B-52, the X-15 reached an altitude of 107960 meters.

The X-15 could do everything required to win the X-prize except carry three people. It reached 100km, and it was flown repeatedly, for a total of 199 X-15 flights of three aircraft.

Re:Still below the X-15 flight of 1963

[Chris_Jefferson]

Except of course the whole point of the X-prize is for a private group to do it, not the US Air Force. Of course the government can get into space, it's been doing it for years by using billions of tax dollars , as only it can.

Flash Gordon

[CompWerks]

This might be a little too old for most /. 'ers but the first thing I thought when I saw SpaceShipOne is that it looks alot like Flash Gordon's Ship

Free video link

[caffeine_monkey]

cbc.ca has video clips in realvideo and quicktime.

Predictions?

[Paulrothrock]

How about some predictions for the next 10, 25, and 50 years?

10 years: Private enterprises are making regular orbital flights, including docking at the ISS and doing crew transfers for various governments. Medium lift (~10 ton to LEO) launch vehicles in test phases. Private probes to Moon, Mars to search for raw materials for harvest or colony support; Cost for suborbital flight: $15K; to LEO: $1 million

25 years: First private space station, specializing in $20,000/night hotel rooms and microgravity research. ISS abandoned, parts sold to private industry. NASA has a probe orbiting Pluto; Lunar colonies in planning stations, private rovers on Mars. Deliveries using suborbital craft are now regular (for when it absolutely, postively has to be there yesterday). Many people confused about time zones.

50 years: I move off the mudball to Mars for retirement. Private citizens now moving into Lunar and Mars colonies. Private industry exploring asteroid belt. Suborbital flight as common as airline flight; Cost to LEO: $15K. Space tether under construction at several points around the globe; Nairobi is a major spaceport.

can't resist

[fliptout]

Tier Two: ???

Tier Three: Profit!!!

Joking aside, I hope the design scales well.

Amazing

[Sunspire]

It's amazing what a small private company can do with just 20 million dollars. Hopefully this will open up the market for suborbital flights in the future, at the very least it's an example of how to go about getting your permits and really start doing private space business.

But what it really goes to show is that what we need is more of these innovative competitions and less half-billion dollar shuttle launches. Image if the government and private sector came together to offer the prize of, say, 200 million for the "X2" prize to the first private orbital fligt. And then later on a cool billion dollars to the first private moon mission. It would still be a bargain! A 747 plane costs around 200 million, and even a billion won't get NASA far these days (*cough, x33, chough*). A billion will get you a single B2 bomber, how many more of those do we need? Imagine all that money fueled into milestone driven private development.

But the best part is, if you're a teen now or in your early twenties, you could one day be working in the space industry! Maybe not as an astronaut, but as a mission planer, technician, sysadmin or accountant :)

mental picture

[greysky]

Why is it when I read articles about this all I can picture is an episode of monster garage where jesse james comes out and tells the contestents "okay this week you're going to turn a '91 honda civic into a sub-orbital spacecraft, and you have to make is safe 'cus I'm gonna fly it."

Re:Chase planes?

[Watcher]

You were right on the first guess. They usually look for damage or other external problems (like the landing gear not actually being down). There really isn't anything they can do to help, except warn the pilot that something has gone wrong.

Re:"2001 Odyssey": commercial space flight by 1980

[john82]

...Reagan Cold War

You mean the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Castro, Krushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Gorbachev Cold War don't you? It's not like Reagan started this all on his own in '46.

My apologies to readers from the UK for leaving out Churchill from that list (given that he coined the term "Iron Curtain").

Re:Escape Velocity is a non-issue

[Etcetera]

I can't get over how many Slashdotters don't know the simple physics of satellite orbits.

Yeah, that bugs me too... I mean, come on people, it's not rocket science!

Re:Chase planes?

[iabervon]

Now that would be embarassing... "June 21: Went up to 100km. Saw black sky during day. First civilian to pilot in space. Would have gone higher, but accidentally turned off engine (nobody looking, still high enough). Heard loud noise on way back. Forgot to put down landing gear (11,000 people watching).

"June 22: Biked into tree (nobody looking). Space is easier; nothing to run into."

Re: YES The da Vinci project!

[ArcticCelt]

--I'm sure somebody else has come up with the idea, but is anybody pursuing it?

Yes the Canadian Team called The da Vinci project

"The da Vinci Project, led by Brian Feeney of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, registered as a contender for the X PRIZE on June 2, 2000. A reusable helium balloon will lift our spacecraft, "Wild Fire" to an altitude of 80,000 feet. This is where Wild Fire's rocket engines will fire and propel the crew to the 100 km altitude goal -- space."

They developed the project in a kind of "open process" way; every people who wants to contribute is invited to join the project and can even open a local club in is university. They accept help from people of all fields: engineering, public relations, marketing etc...

"The all-volunteer da Vinci project is the largest volunteer technology project in Canadian history with upwards of 100,000 man-hours having been spent on the project thus far."

They amased a huge amount of sponsers and are well advanced in the project.

Physics. Orbit.

[rew]

To get to 100km height, you need m * g * h in energy. per unit of mass you get: g * h = 9.8 * 100 *10^3 ~=~ 1 MJ /kg.

In orbit, you'll circle the earth every 1.5 hours. That means a speed of about 7.4km/sec. This requires (again per unit of mass) 1/2 * v^2 = 0.5*7400^2= 27 MJ/kg.

So, reaching (low earth-) orbit requires about 27 times more energy than what was demonstrated now.

Now there are a few things to keep in mind. You'll have to lug along the fuel to accelrate the last part of your ascent. That means that just taking 27 times more fuel won't cut it.

We're at least two orders of magnitude away from commercial manned spaceflight. (where spaceflight is defined as "in orbit"). Sure: Big step, but not quite there yet....

Re:A question for the Rocket Scientists on /.

[Baldrson]

I'm an amateur "rocket scientist", mainly versed in high pressure liquid fuel engines, so I'm a bit biased against the low pressure engines used by Carmack etc. but even so my prior response to this issue bears repeating:

The big deal about the 100k altitude goal of the Ansari X-Prize is the space tourism potential. Space tourism is a great business to pursue for advancing the state of the art of rocketry because there are an increasing number of wealthy people who can afford this sort of luxury. The problem is that the real ultimate value of increasing the state of the art of rocketry is access to space, and while SC's and XCor's aerodynamic vehicle approach is a tremendous accomplishment -- it doesn't really give "access" to space without substantial redesign.

Carmack's vehicle does.

That's one reason I chose 200km rather than 100km for my amateur rocketry prize . I'm pretty sure SC's and XCor's aerodynamically-limited approach would both lose in a race to 200km because they aren't really "space" vehicles.

Carmack's vehicle is.

I'm tempted to change my prize award to be private rather than amateur so that I can give it to Carmack's team. The problem is that my goal was, and is, to make space accessible to much lower levels of capital than even Carmack's group has expended -- which is already phenomenally low by aerospace standards.

Carmack's accomplishment, with his simplified fuel and system, is more profound than anything that has come along from the aerospace business since the hybrid rocket motor back in the 60s. Sadly -- compared to the golden age of aviation -- that's still not saying much. Carmack is, howeer, bound to inspire teams capable of running a modern day "Wright's bike shop" -- and that is saying much.

Re:Is Burt Rutan the Roger Moore of flight ?

[feargal]

He seems to 'crave' publicity with his projects.

Of all the X-Prize competitors, Scaled Composites have been the most media-shy. He receives lots of publicity for his projects because they are pretty, innovative, and successful.

Also I heard on Cnn interview of Rutan that he didn't develop this rocket with the X prize in mind.

They have spent more than double the prize money developing Tier One. They'd have to be pretty stupid to be in it just to win the X-Prize. While it would be nice to recoup $10m by winning the prize, they will continue their developement whether they win or not. (Mass fatalities excluded.)

Just another contest bought out by the richest guy.

Yes. That was the point. Encourage the private sector to invest in commercial space travel by rewarding the smart investor with $10m.

Really. I'm sure you can find out more on CNN.

Re:Ethics and priorities

[0123456]

'Nevertheless, I can't see the justification for this kind of thing while people starve right here on Earth.'

I take it that you donate every single penny of your disposable income to those starving people, rather than waste it on frivolous uses like internet access, beer and vacations?

No, didn't think so.

Re:Summary?

[AKAImBatman]

Does this link help? NASA is surprisingly honest on what went right and what went wrong with the program. The one thing they don't cover is that it was Nixon's decision to scale back the space program and merge it with the Air Force. After we reached the moon, Nixon decided that having a low cost "token" space program would be enough.

The truly amazing part is the work that the engineers did. They were given a set of impossible requirements that were all at odds with one another, and the engineers still managed to develop a craft that met the specs. In almost all ways, the Shuttle problems were political, not technical.

Just got back from Mojave

[Mafiew]

Just got back home from the Mojave airport and let me tell you the experience of watching this amazing aircraft reach the edge of space was awesome. Six friends and I drove from Los Angeles to Mojave and when we arrived there around 3 am and the place was already full of people. For the next few hours we explored around the field, bought some very reasonably priced breakfast burritos and ran around the tarmac. All the vendors seemed to be local groups and didn't rip you off (except for coffee and krispie cremes which were a somewhat large dollar a piece).

Mojave airport is really cool in itself, no fences around and you can wander all over if you want. We got some good spots as near to the takeoff and landing as possible ( they did restrict where you could watch the event, and the ships wheels actually left the ground about 50 yards north of us) and camped out. Everybody around was really excited. Many had come from really far away, like this pair of guys we met from Seattle. I'm sure that there were many who were from much further than that. There was a big mix of people. Lots of old timer aviation types, college age kids, and families. I'm sure much of the town of Mojave were there. We talked to this one guy who was bringing a group of kids from the local high school who were in their special engineering program(something I didn't have at my HS).

When they announced that the ship was actually going to take off on time I was pretty surprised. I just had a feeling it was going to be delayed. At about 6:40 the low altitude chase plane took off, it was a bright red little single engine plane which according to the announcer was flown by the spaceshipone pilot the night before in order to pull 6G's so that he could go to sleep! Next (I think) came the medium altitude chase plane, which was this really cool and modern looking craft with propellers in the back and a little wing on the nose. Then came White Knight, carring SpaceShipOne which look completely unorthodox and bizarre in person, even if you've already seen pictures of them. It taxied along the tarmac that ran past the crowd did a U turn then sped up and soared off of the runway to a cheering crowd. As everybody watched the ship gain altitude, the high altitude chase taxied and lifted off. This jet was pretty interesting, It sort of looked like a fighter jet that had been squashed to make it all squat lookin, sort of a caricature of a fighter jet. The ship climbed really slowly, about an hour of circling around the airfield getting smaller and smaller. Then we got the word that the rocked was going to take off . The ship was about 2/3 of the way almost directly between the horizon and the sun (the sun being fairly low since this is about 7:45 am). Then all of a sudden this huge contrail appeared and traveled straight up just to the right of the sun traveling at an amazing speed. The crowd loved it , after watching the ship climb slowly for an hour this was really dramatic. The trail kept moving up until it seemed to be about 70degrees above the horizon when the engine cut off. After a few minutes with everybody searching the sky for the craft *boom*, a little sonic boom let loose and the ship then appeared. It circled around a few times on its way down and met up with the chase planes. They all flew in a pretty tight formation and the ship finally made an amazingly smooth landing considering it was an unpowered odd looking bulbous craft. Everybody was ecstatic as SpaceShipOne rolled by, this odd looking craft had reached the edge of space and had made it back in one piece. After that, the low altitude chase plane made a flyby, which was pretty cool but then the topper was when White Night flew towards the crowd then pulled up proudly displaying it's bizarre silouette.

I'm really really happy that I got to have this experience. This amazing flight was the first time in my 19 years that I felt that I was actually witnessing history being made with my own eyes.

Re:Just got back from Mojave

[netringer]

Next (I think) came the medium altitude chase plane, which was this really cool and modern looking craft with propellers in the back and a little wing on the nose.

That's a Beech StarShip which Burt Rutan also designed. The design was too unconventional for business types so it didn't sell well. Sadly Raytheon, current owner of Beech, is buying all of the few of them ever made and is destroying them to avoid any future legal liability.

*Thanks*, ambulance chasing lawyers.

Pop open the champagne, my boy Rutan made history

[sllim]

Sending this out to my friends, to celebrate today, June 21'st, a milestone in aviation history.

Anyone that knows me knows that aviation is my thing. So it should be no surprise to anyone that I am following this.
I was sitting here contemplating what happened today, and for only the 1 millionth time since I learned of this venture I was struck by how purely good this news is. I mean, you turn on CNN or Fox, you pick up the newspapers or whatever and they are filled with this negative crap. So much more these last few months, and for no better reason then 2004 can be divided evenly by 4.

But this, I am hard pressed to see how anyone can put a negative spin on this.

In the fall of the year 1903 The Brothers Wright made a flight of just a few hundered feet in a wooden and canvas contraption that would change the world. They would have been hard pressed to have imagined what there hard work would lead to. These Brothers did this thing of there own accord, they had no help, no government hand outs, no proclamations from the president that a thing will be done because it is hard, just two brothers that owned a bycicle shop and had a thought about how to make this thing work.

A mere 60 years later that creation had blossomed into the likes of which the Wright Brothers would never have imagined. People that had picked up the newspapers in 1903 to read about this marvelous flying machine were now turning on the TV sets and tunning in the radio to learn of Sputnik and rocket ships. Space travel was hard, but our society had marked it as a necessity. As a society we knew we could achieve the impossible, setting foot on the moon, photographing continents and solving communication problems that had plagued mankind since the dark ages. But getting there would not be cheap, and it was decided that only a government could afford to solve this problem.

In the 70's humans would set there feet on the moon. A place that has for the entirety of humanity, been nothing but a backdrop in an inkjet sky turned into a land of wonders. Armstrong said his famous words, left his footprints, astronauts would play a bit of golf, mirrors would be left, flags planted and after about a decade we would leave that place as we found it, inaccessable - a land where we only talk of going.

And now today. Burt Rutan designs airplanes. Up until today his most famous creation is displayed in the Smithsonian. It is called 'Voyager' and it traveled around the globe non-stop without refuleing. You may not be impressed, but consider how much money you will spend in gas just to get to work this week, it was quite an achievment.

Burt Rutan has built a spacecraft that he has called 'Spaceship One'. It is a small, quaint thing that CNN describes as shaped like a 'shuttlecock'. As accurate a description as any I have heard. Today Mike Melvill piloted Spaceship One, with the help of it's mate 'White Knight' and slipped the surly bonds of Earth, and returned again. What it did, admittedly, by the standards of shuttle flights that until last year seemed to be monthly occurances, doesn't seem that spectacular. It leapt a mere 100 kilometers (62 miles) and came down again. Landing at the same Mohave airstrip it took off from. But when Mike came back had the distinction of being the only person ever to earn his astronaut wings without any government help whatsoever.

Take a few minutes today and Google 'Gemini Series'. This is what Burt Rutans craft is compareable to. The early Gemini rockets did not achieve orbit. The went up, and came back down again. Then go to http://www.scaledcomposites.com or google 'Spaceship One' and compare the crafts. What you are looking at isn't just what 50+ years of technology advances will get you. But you are also looking at is a clear illustration of how the private sector (Wright Brothers) can often shatter paradigms that the government has put in place.

Congratulations Burt and Mike. Today is your day.

Re:Dead end projects

[Arcturax]

He proved it could be done. No matter what becomes of Space Ship One, this is a crowning achievement and could pave the way for further advancement.

Any research like this is well worth doing, even if the end benefits are not immediate.

Re:That's supercavitation!

[sense_net]

The use of a plasma torch as you described is called supercavitation. It works in water, too: the Soviets developed a rocket powered torpedo which vented some of its exhaust out the nose to create a bubble in the water which the torpedo flew through. THe supercavitating torpedo had severe manuverability problems: none of its control surfaces were touching the water, and if it tried to turn too much, the rocket exhaust bubble would collapse. Would the plasma torch reentry system have similar problems?