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SpaceShipOne Flight Not as Perfect as it Seemed
ArbiterOne writes "SpaceShipOne's flight wasn't as perfect as it seemed, according to Burt Rutan and New Scientist. Apparently, at one point in the descent, the pilot completely lost attitude control. According to him, "If that had happened earlier, I would never have made it and you all would be looking sad right now." Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?"
I don't see anyone doing any better than they did (yet).
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
Build...test...improve...retest...etc
It's how aeronautical design's been done for decades. I very much doubt this'll be a major setback for them.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
...the pilot's skill. However, this is to be expected with any prototype. It's always the early pioneers who take the risks; I guarantee that Rutan and crew are working on fixing the attitude problem as we speak. And, knowing those guys, the next flight will be perfect.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
A few of my friends were very surprised that this run wouldn't count at all for the X-Prize, since it didn't have enough people or weight to replace them.
This is exactly why, it was a test run, things can, and did (though fortunatly not bad enough to have resulted in loss of life) go wrong.
I think this was exactly the right way for them to have approached this, go up with as little extra as possible, see what goes well and what doesn't, and make revisions based on that. Though an extra 300lbs might not have mattered much with this particular problem, in other cases it could have turned a small problem into a disaster.
paul reinheimer
Sure. They can roll the vehicle until its upside down if they want. In space, I think they have even more control - even being able to point the nose of the craft AWAY from the direction of travel or straight up (subjectively speaking, of course).
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
And despite this: it *is* rocket science, and an experimental vehicle to boot. It isn't surprising there are some problems. Let's all be happy the pilot actually survived.
Attitudeis the crafts orientation. The article originally said altitude control, I emailed CmdrTaco to fix it before the article went live.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Is this a mistake or do pilots really have control over their attitude?
Uh... I would hope they have control over the plane's attitude.
Main Entry: at-ti-tude
5 : the position of an aircraft or spacecraft determined by the relationship between its axes and a reference datum (as the horizon or a particular star)
"Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?"
Of course it could, bubblehead. Getting into space is HARD.
"The position in space of a spacecraft or aircraft. A satellite's attitude can be measured by the angle the satellite makes with the object it is orbiting, usually the Earth. Attitude determines the direction a satellite's instruments face. The attitude of a satellite must be constantly maintained; this is known as attitude control."
You're welcome.
Hmmm.
F#$@ing X prize!! Damn this m*******ing piece of flying s#@$! No way there going to drag me back into this tin can next week! I WILL HUNT YO... oh look, shiny wings!!!
Sig? What sig?
This is something that has always impressed me with Rutan; he has always been pretty honest with regards to the performance and safety of his designs.
He could have just as easily hid the issues and blamed the time to fix the problem on the FAA or a vendor (like the rocket motor supplier).
The attitude changes on motor light are significant problems that will have to be addressed although I wonder if it is due to center of gravity changes caused by the fully fueled motor. The big bang and deformed panel is a potentially bigger problem and may require significant changes to the structure.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
For spaceflight it seems to take fewer imperfections to kill you. For a first run mostly perfect is fantastic...especially since the not perfect parts didn't involve dying.
The flight was a success, the pilot survived, and the ship wasn't damaged? Good job guys! Don't get lazy!
As a society viewing the initial private sojourns into space we need to prepare for the risk these people will take and we need to prepare ourselves for the first casualties. Otherwise, when someone does die, we'll knee-jerk the issue to the point that someone will suggest "There ought to be a law...".
There's been quite enough of that already, thank you very much. Get ready for it, it's going to happen. Every pioneering effort accumulates causualties.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
The article says that he lost attitude control at the end of the burn as the ship was leaving the atmosphere. What else would you expect, considering the primary attitude controls are atmospheric flight surfaces? Once the ailerons, elevators and rudders have no air to push agains you're pretty much stuck with gyros, attitude thrusters or a controllable main engine thrust nozzle. This craft had NONE of those, so It would be completely reasonable to expect it to tumble until the air friction had built up enough for the fins to reorient the aircraft along the motion vector.
Consider as well that even the big boys have had their fair share of problems, and still managed to get out with everyone alive.
Space flight is dangerous. What amazes me is that even big problems don't result in fatalities whereas, in the case of Challenger(maybe Columbia), a minor problem resulted in the death of the crew.
May the Maths Be with you!
Indeed! NASA never has accidents that kill people. Through the mass application of science and billions of taxpayer dollars, all risk has been eliminated from space travel. Carry on, sir.
There's an old story from Analog (a science-fiction magazine) titled 'Amateurs' which reminds me quite a bit of the guys at Scaled Composites, except in 'Amateurs', they didn't have a government prize to spur them on, just a drive to get into space, and a willingness to ignore and/or bend a few laws, such as re-using the ID of a salvaged Lear jet for their experimental SSTO vehicle[1], called 'Dervish Also', because the original, titled 'Dervish', blew up.
On the top of the hatch that led into the interior of the ship was stenciled the words: "Experimental Space Rocket -- Dangerous As Hell"
[1] Probably one of the funnier points in the story is during a radio exchange between the pilot of the Dervish Also and the ground, where the pilot requested clearance to take his "Learjet" to a flight level of 600. *grin*
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Perhaps Taco should read check his submissions a little more closely before approving them: Melvill lost attitude control "end of the rocket engine's firing time of about 70 seconds, just as Melvill reached space". That would be in the ascent phase.
Credit Mike Melville and Burt Rutan for being so open about the problems they experienced. Remember, this is 1 day after the flight! Compare that with how NASA closed ranks and divulged Columbia information with an eye dropper for weeks after the disaster. The only statements made by the mission controllers were through their lawyers. The Russians and Chinese would never admit to problems at all. Burt Rutan is a genious, he puts his work on the line for all the world to see. Space Ship 1 is a class act all the way around.
an ill wind that blows no good
Attitude of an aircraft: The relationship of longitudinal axis (fuselage) and lateral axis (wings) to the earth's surface or any plane parallel to the earth's surface.
In my opinion, they have the greatest chance of winning. Scaled is the only team that have performed actual flight tests with their real spacecraft and not only testfiring their rockets or prototypes. They have come a very long way through a careful series of testflights, going higher and faster every time. Now they've reached space. Even the other promising teams (Canadian Arrow, Starchaser, da Vinci, etc.) have yet to fly a fullscale rocket, manned or not. They still have six months to do it. They've come the farthest, and unless they experience some serious setbacks, they have a great chance of winning. Sure things might not go perfectly now or later, but if noone is making mistakes, then how are they supposed to learn from them?
Seing as they are the first to exit the atmosphere in the way that they did it. Its not entirely unexpected that the ship would encounter things that it had not previous to this. The stresses (and lack of conversely as atmospheric pressure lessens) required to do what it did are hard to calculate and test. I wouldn't even count this as a set back...my bet is that they will take June and Most of July to figure out what was up during this flight make design changes and do another single pilot test flight in Late July Early August. And then another in September, the winning flights will probably take place in late October early November...just my guess...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
According to one article they had to run on backup systems, another said the pilot heard a loud BANG at one point (lost that link). Not happy stuff, clearly they moved too soon.
For me, i'm not all that interested in the higher cost version of scaled composites, Rutan IS a pioneer, but previous work has also been government related. Which is why I laugh at the whole notion of public/private. Don't get me wrong, govt funding/projects are a good thing. But im sick of the BS pretending that there's the government and there's private industry. They are interelated, and we would do well to discuss, and plan, that relationship and public funding of r&d. And dont get me started on healthcare.
All your preview button are belong to hello kitty.
Its (possibly) called attitude because it resembles a person's mood - whether the face is pointing up or down ;)
The word comes from Latin aptus, meaning fastened or fitted. Actually, the aeronautic meaning is the primary one - originally the word was used to describe a position of an object related to some framework, backdrop or just the horizon, only in the modern times it attained the new meaning, a position of human being versus the society.
I'm really impressed with the White Knight launching vehicle and the new rocket design but all the Spaceship One team have proven that given enough money, anyone can build a spaceship. We knew that already however.
Really? It seems to me that Scaled Composites have redefined "enough money" to be a hell of a lot lower than it used to be. So far they've spent about $20 million, which sounds like a lot, but let's put that into some perspective: That's less than the cost of a brand new 747. It's about 5% of the cost of a single shuttle launch. It's less than a 5th of what the Canadian government recently pissed away on cronyism in the recent sponsorship scandal. It's the amount of cash Peter Jackson is getting paid to direct King Kong. On the scale that these guys are operating $20 million is a piss in the bucket. It's more than you or I might happen to have lying around in spare change, but compared to the costs for standard everyday (non space going)performance aircraft it is unbelievably cheap.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3829489.stmh ey quote Rutan:
T
"The fact that our back-up system worked and we made a beautiful landing makes me feel very good."
I find it quite insightful of Rutan to have designed a backup system into his space-plane. And it did work as designed... a clear demonstration that should win even more future safety-weary customers/passengers.
The full quote it:
"Any landing which you can walk away from is a good landing.
Any landing after which you can use the plane again is a great landing."
Or, if you work for American Airlines:
"Any landing after which our customers, or their surviving kin, don't sue us is a good landing."
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?
;-) Not everything works seemlessly out of the box. If anything this is a perfect reason why there should a human behind the controls. "Yeah, the controls got stiff then I lost attitude control. Then they became softer." That is the kind of feedback that engineers, especially those making it up on the spot, live by.
C'mon. What are you a Mac user?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
And yes, Chuck Yeager (IMHO) was the greatest. The book reminds us of the distinction between real pilots and astronauts (mostly passengers). The guy who piloted Richard Noble's Thrust (supersonic on land) and the guy who piloted the Rutan craft are pilots.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I want to know what poor guy gets stuck cleaning the M&Ms out of the cockpit. I'm sure they all melted in the desert heat once the spacecraft sat on the runway for a few minutes. This isn't exactly the best way to treat a cockpit full of fancy electronics, to bathe them in blobs of sugary fat.
regardless of who wins the X-prize... we win. everyone of us.
it was actually the roll not pitch angle..
if he had done a 90 deg turn at that speed he would not be talking about it.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
From the New Scientist Article:
r ea gan_challenger.html
But it was the sublime view that affected him the most. "The sky was jet black, with light blue along the horizon - it was really an awesome sight," he said. "You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God."
That just brought me back to 1986 when the Challenger exploded during ascent and Ronald Reagan's address to the nation that night...
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/speeches/
Say what you will about Reagan, regardless of how you felt about his policies (many were quite controversial), he sure could deliver great speeches.
I'd have to say that number would be even greater now, actually. Think of it this way-- 62% of /. were willing go with a total unknown, where the chance of failure was just as high as the chance of success. Now you not only have a successful return, you have some major issues brought to ligh that will undoubtably be corrected before the next flight that will only raise the chances of success.
:D
I'd vote yes again
You need a FREE iPod Nano
20 million is about 1/10th the cost of a 747 according to boeing :
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/
wrong.
Most objects do not spin cleanly about most axes. Rigid bodies (such as books, spaceships, rocks, lollipops, and bullets) have three "principal axes" that pass through the center of gravity and are determined by the mass distribution in the object. There's a "minimum" axis that minimizes the kinetic energy for a given angular momentum -- that's the axis around which the thing is the most clustered. For a screwdriver, the minimum axis generally points down the length of the scredriver shaft. There's also a "maximum" axis around which the thing is the most spread out of any direction. For a flat object like a book or a pancake, the maximum axis points directly out of the flat face. Those are the only two axes around which you can spin the object and have it stay stable.
Any other direction will give rise to precession and tumbling, even in vacuum! You can try it with a book -- most closed hardback books have the minimum axis pointing up through the top of the middle pages, and the maximum axis pointing out through the front of the cover. The third dimension -- pointing out through the spine -- is not stable. Tape a book shut and flip it in the air: if you flip it around the maximum or minimum moment axis it will do what you think -- just flip over before you catch it again. If you flip it around the intermediate axis (by, say, starting with the book facing you right-side up with the spine on the left, and pulling the bottom edge toward you as you throw it up in the air) then you might expect the spine to stay on your left side -- but it will flip back and forth, often ending up on your right side, as the book tumbles in the air. (Remember to tape the book closed before tossing it!).
Anyhow, that's a problem for stopping spin and tumbling, because it's not always obvious which way to fire the cold-gas jets to slow down your rotation: by the time you actually fire them you might have tumbled around so that they are speeding you up instead of slowing you down.
I guess that's why "carefree re-entry" is such a great feature of SpaceShipOne -- it's remarkable that they were able to land safely even without good attitude control at apogee.
The flight was convered in greater detail in yesterday's news. While they weren't expecting loss of trim, they did anticipate the possibility, and had a backup system.
There was a show recently on PBS about the Joint Strike Fighter selection competition. The first flights of the aircraft were done with the landing gear down because with all the other uncertainties they didn't want to take the chance that the gear would fail to lower. They had glitches with hydraulic leaks, landing gear brakes, the VTOL systems, and refueling equipment. In any kind of new aircraft, you expect there to be lots of little problems, more than a few of which are capable of killing the test pilots.
Rutan doesn't seem to be taking any unnecessary chances; he's taking this step by step. If he was just rushing break-neck to win, he'd be going for the prize today. We don't know at this point how much of a setback these glitches were, but I'm reasonably sure he has time for dealing with them charted out in the project.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The history geeks among us will remember that Yeager had the same problem with that modified F-104 used for NASA pilot training. Enough out of the atmosphere for the aerodynamic controls not to work, but not enough into space for the peroxide jets to function either. I hope SS1 recovers from a spin better than an F-104 does.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
What's even more amazing is that the cost per flight is amazingly low, they're saying about $80,000.
This is about what it costs to fly a 747 across the country.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
So the flight didn't go perfect. There were problems, but there is a long ways between "almost failed" and "failed". So there are kinks and I'm sure this flight gave the engineers the information they need to improve on the design.
Look at it this way, the last time NASA screwed up people died. Scaled Composites screwed up and a craft buckled slightly but returned home safely. I think they are doing alright.
You just reminded me of this message, stenciled on the block that mounts the space shuttles to their 747 transports: "PLACE ORBITER HERE... BLACK SIDE DOWN"
You know what we call almost late?
On time.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
Let' recap, shall we?
(1) The ship was successfully launched
(2) The ship achieved it's goal
(3) Both ship and pilot returned safely to the ground
I would call this a success, wouldn't you?
I'd also point out that the pilot - who, I'd wager, has more experience testing experimental craft than all of Slashdot put together - was so concerned over the irregularities of the flight that he...played with M&M's while weightless.
Yep, ol' Mike was riddled with doubt and fear over the safety of his ship, he was.
Hand-wringers, space never was, and never will be, for you.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Oh, you mean nose-uppy and nose-downy?
Nose-uppy/nose-downy (ptich), wingtip-uppy/wingtip-downy (roll).
But (unless I misunderstand the term and it's specificially excluded) the dictionary missed yaw: Nose-righty/nose-lefty.
An aircraft's position at any instant has six degrees of freedom: Three of attitude (roll, pitch, and yaw), three of location.
Additionally there are the deriviatives of each of those (i.e. position gives three each of velocity, accelleration, jerk, snap, etc., attitude gives roll/pitch/yaw rates, etc.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In space, I think they have even more control - even being able to point the nose of the craft AWAY from the direction of travel or straight up (subjectively speaking, of course).
You can do that in the atmosphere, too.
It's just that some attitudes have consequences, and (at flight speeds) sometimes the consequences involve sudden disassembly of the airframe, so you can't maintain certain attitudes for very long. B-)
Of course if your airframe is strong enough, some of these unusual attitudes can be useful. For instance: In WWII it was a real bitch if you got an enemy on your tail. If his craft was roughly as manouverable as yours he could just follow you through all your manouvers and keep shooting at you, while you mostly got to run. (I never DID figure out why they didn't mout a rear-pointing machinegun on fighters.) That's why fighter craft worked in pairs and the pairs worked in groups (so you had a spare "buddy" if yours got shot down.
Nowadays fighter jocks can just nose-up suddenly and fly belly first for a couple seconds. It's like hitting a wall of pillows in the air: Airspeed drops abruptly, and now YOU'RE the guy at the rear of the parade. (But try that in a WWII craft and you're likely to find it only worked for the wings...)
I hear one of the common models of the learjet gets significantly better mileage flying upside down.
Story goes this was discovered by a three-man consulting firm of autopilot-programmers, who bought one that had had a fire wreck the cabin furnishings at scrap prices, had it redone by a van conversion outfit, and used it for recreational cross-country flying. Of course it costs a LOT to do that, and this was limiting their recreation. So they tried different things to reduce fuel consumption.
After discovering they saved about 10% flying upside down, they rehacked their autopilot to fly it that way if desired, and played cards sitting on the ceiling.
Well one day they were flying near a military base and NORAD got a bit concerned: Seems the radar signature of a lear flying upside-down wasn't in the database. Oops: UFO. Did the Soviets come up with something new ala the U2? Up go a couple fighters to check it out.
They look out the window and see a fighter pacing them. Fighter jock points up. ("Are you aware you're flying upside down?") They nod and point up, too. ("Yes, we are. This is intentional.") (Sometimes pilots get disoriented and fly upside down. This can lead to crashes if he doesn't get it figured out in time.)
So fighter pilot flips over so HE's upside-down, too, paces them a moment more, then flys away, still upside-down.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?"
::: surprise :::
Duh? You think? This kind of flying is full of all kinds of problems. Of course that would be the question we would all expect from the local News at 5 info bimbo. "Like oh my gosh... This stuff is like really difficult..."
Get Over it. It's a test flight. Stuff like this happens. Engineering fly toys isn't perfect.
Example: Early test of the big engine to be hung on the 777. All the engineers said the computer sims and such said the new big engine was good to go. That it could be hung on the 777 for its first flight no problem. The boss over-ruled the engineers and played it extra safe. One of the big new engines was hung on a 747 ( with the other 3 of its engines being regular 747 ones ). Right after rotation, the engine starts stalling in the high angle of attack air. -bang- -bang- -bang-, So the first flight of the 777 could have ended up as a big smoking hole.
You try and be as safe as possible, and not kill your monkey pilot.... Even then; stuff happens. That flight yesterday was based on great engineering. It was still full of enough danger and isn't like going out and cranking up a Cessna 172 or something.
"As I came out of the atmosphere I no longer had any attitude control,"
Well duh... welcome to spaceflight buddy. Got thrusters?
Despite Melvill's 25 years of piloting experimental craft, he found even the normal operation of the rocketship alarming, as it travelled faster and higher than any previous privately-built craft.
Again, welcome to a new way of flying
"Coming down is frightening, because of that roaring sound," he said. "You can really hear how that vehicle is being pounded."
You zero experience space wannabe's wanting to pony up some $$$ for a fun ride, better wear some diapers, so as not to be embarrassed at the post flight photo op. Freight train ride down to hell.
Having said all that... that team did a great job.
When was the last time you saw any innovation in commercial aviation?
September 11, 2001
Sure, mod me down, troll and all. It's an honest answer, at least.
Like what I said? You might like my music