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?"

Comments

Still a great flight

[PFactor]

I don't see anyone doing any better than they did (yet).

Re:Still a great flight

[RevDobbs]

From Post: Apparently, at one point in the descent, the pilot completely lost attitude control.

Besides, isn't that usually a "nut behind the wheel" or PEBKAC kinda issue?

Re:Still a great flight

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why he had such a problem. It isn't exactly rocket scien...

Oh wait. Nevermind.

Re:Still a great flight

[fdiskne1]

Apparently, at one point in the descent, the pilot completely lost attitude control.

Hey, losing control of one's attitude in such a situation isn't such a suprise. At least he didn't lose bowel control or bladder control. Of course, maybe he did. Something like that wouldn't typically be reported. I know I would have in such a situation.

and yes, I know that the attitude control they're talking about is the orientation of the craft in flight

Re:Still a great flight

[MrChuck]

Except for the part that It was a damn test flight!. There were no passengers; there was no weight. This was the Hello World of commercial space flight.

One might also offer that certain Apollo (1) folks might have not wanted their TEST FLIGHT to go deeply wrong.

Rockets are dangerous. Space flight is dangerous. This isn't a run to the 7-11. So far, NASA and the US have been excessively successful in space flight.

It's perfectly normal

[JosKarith]

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.

Re:It's perfectly normal

[Iamthefallen]

Yeah, developing spacecraft is a lengthy process, just look at NASA. But they'll get it right. I mean, it's not rocket science.

Re:It's perfectly normal

[Dutch_Cap]

I thank you on behalf of all the people who did not get the joke.

This says quite a bit about...

[Dagny Taggert]

...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.

Re:This says quite a bit about...

[at_kernel_99]

This says quite a bit about... ...the pilot's skill.

It does. Though I'm not sure what it says about his judgement. I certainly have the highest respect for Melville as a pilot - he's been testing for Burt for decades. However, when you look at the flight - he noticed control anomalies immediately after separating from White Knight, but chose to continue the flight - maybe he did indeed get very lucky. What caused the bang? What caused the control problems both early and late in the flight?

In flight training, my instructor called it 'get home-itis'. When you're close to home you're a lot more likely to press on in deteriorating circumstances than if you're still far from home. With the public & press invited to this launch, was there too much pressure on Melville to make the flight despite early signs of possible problems? I hate to second guess a professional of his caliber, but it feels like there was a lot of luck involved in this flight.

This is why more people didnt go

[PktLoss]

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.

Re:This is why more people didnt go

[stanmann]

Well, because TECHNICALLY he entered space. He IS an Astronaut.

100km is defined as space... and its not a big deal that its being done, the big deal is that he did it for cheap.

If I get my wife Barely pregnant, barring complications she will nevertheless have a baby

if I barely hit you with a hand grenade, you will be just as dead.
if I barely hit your house with a nuclear weapon, you will still be dead.

the wright brothers barely went 100 meters, but it was powered flight.

Barely is the difference between hitting and missing.

Re:This is why more people didnt go

[gborland]

If I get my wife Barely pregnant, barring complications she will nevertheless have a baby

Why on earth did you marry someone called Barely?

Re:This is why more people didnt go

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Maybe her last name was Clad?

Re:Attitude?

[PFactor]

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).

Still 62% willing to fly?

[johannesg]

The poll indicates 62% of the /. crowd would happily fly in that ship on monday. It would be interesting to repeat the poll now and see if it is still this high.

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.

Re:Still 62% willing to fly?

[Raven42rac]

I would still suit up and hop in if asked. Granted, I have zero experience flying (although I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!), but I would still do it. The view alone would be enough to make me happy before I die. These guys knew what they were doing, and that minor things do go wrong. Minor things can be catastrophic things at 3.2G, though. We are all glad that the pilot was unhurt.

Re:Attitude?

[JesseL]

Attitudeis the crafts orientation. The article originally said altitude control, I emailed CmdrTaco to fix it before the article went live.

Re:Attitude?

[Anonymous Coward]

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 problems?

[PinchDuck]

"Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?"

Of course it could, bubblehead. Getting into space is HARD.

Nice to see them so honest

[mykepredko]

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

Re:Nice to see them so honest

[errxn]

He could have just as easily hid the issues and blamed the time to fix the problem on...[somebody else]

If he did that, his name would not be 'Bert Rutan'. it would be 'NASA'.

Minor Issue + Space = Scary, but keep trying!

[Ayandia]

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!

Accept the risk

[mratitude]

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.

It should have been expected

[Jetson]

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.

Re:It should have been expected

[worst_name_ever]

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

SpaceShipOne does indeed have cold gas attitude thrusters. You can see a photo of one firing during a test flight here.

Re:It should have been expected

[Shadow Wrought]

Not to point out the obvious, but I'm pretty sure that they are aware of this as well. I believe the issue had to do with the crafts attitude as it left the controlability envelope. If you enter space while already tumbling, then that's when the bad mojo happens.

Once you are in space your inertia will carry you along what ever path you started. So if you start in the proper attitude, and under control, you'll return to the atmosphere in much the same condition. If you leave the atmosphere tumbling out of control, you'll hit it out of control and you'll be far less likely to ever regain it. Indeed, at that air speed, as you drop you into thicker air out of control you are far more likely to suffer complete structural failure. That's bad.

Re:It should have been expected

[Thagg]

SpaceShipOne is fairly unique in that the horizontal tail surfaces are outside the span of the wings. It uses differential movement of these tail surfaces to control roll. At subsonic speeds the pilot controls the elevons at the back of these surfaces, through a fairly normal linkage, but as you get to supersonic speeds the aerodynamic forces become impossible for human strength to overcome. So, at high speeds the front half of the tail control surfaces are moved electrically to generate pitch and roll forces. Apparently one of these electric trim systems failed.

The Bell X-1 used a similar electric trim for pitch, to overcome instabilities going through Mach 1.

Because the elevons on SpaceShipOne control both pitch and roll, Melville was left with no control on two out of three axes at the end of his climb. I cannot imagine how this must have felt, but he recovered with astonishing speed -- and was playing around with floating M&M's a few seconds later. It's unclear to me just what kind of "backup system" he used to control the ship after the trim motor failure, perhaps it was the cold-gas thrusters.

SpaceShipOne depends on still being within the vestiges of the atmosphere for control while the rocket is firing, although the parent poster is correct, control will get sloppy toward the end of the burn as they get above 150,000 ft. The ship has the advantage that it is going very fast indeed at that point, so while there is not a lot of air up there, the forces is generates is more than you would expect.

I was surprised watching the launch that the exhaust plume did not change much during the flight from 50,000 ft to burnout -- I would have expected to see far more expansion as it left the atmosphere -- as you see during a MinuteMan launch, for example. This again points to the ship still being atmosphere of some significant (while small!) density at burnout.

That Mike Melville is one hell of a pilot, his skill and Burt Rutan's innovative feather recovery saved the day. Every previous manned exoatmospheric craft depended on flying an extremely precise attitude before and during re-entry. Failure to maintain this attitude led to the loss of an X-15 and the NF-104 as dramatically recounted in The Right Stuff. SpaceShipOne has no effective attitude control during re-entry, but feathering the wing put the ship into an extremely stable high-drag configuration. Once the ship was subsonic and the wing was folded back into its normal position, the manual control of the elevons was used to fly the ship to a perfect landing.

If you look at SpaceShipOne as it flew yesterday, there was significant work done in the tail booms after the previous flight and prior to this one -- the most obvious change is the installation of a few more camera portholes (presumably with cameras behind them). That's the first place I'd look for the cause of the trim failure.

The launch yesterday was great fun to attend, and I really do think that it will mark a profound change in our access to space.

Thad Beier

Re:It should have been expected

[MrBlue VT]

Actually, it's kind of funny that they encountered this issue. John Carmack predicted it last week in his weekly update (second to last paragraph):

Speaking of next week... I think Space Ship One has good odds of success in the single-person-to-100km flight. I only see two real issues they may hit: The extended burn above the atmosphere may run into some control issues as the nozzle ablates, which will be hard to correct with only cold gas attitude jets. This would be a fairly benign failure, with the pilot just shutting off the main engine if he can't hold the trajectory.

Indeed

[adequacy]

Maybe there is a valid reason why Nasa is so expensive after all.

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.

Re:Indeed

[Gyorg_Lavode]

In NASA's defense, NASA designed the space shuttles how many years ago with what level of technology? Their spacecraft is how many years old? Working how many years after it's expected lifespan? Carries how large of payloads? Acts as living quarters for how many people for how many days? Is capable of supporting what range of experiments? Can dock with what other types of space craft?

SpaceShipOne and Scaled Composites are very good, but they are like the japanese entering the car market. Also, they are designing to a much smaller scope than the space shuttle.

Re:For all the Attitude Jokes....

[thogard]

One of my favorite t-shirts has a picture of an Artifical Horizon showing a plane in an inverted dive with the words "Bad Attitude".

Amateurs

[Hiro Antagonist]

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*

Ascent phase, not descent

[GordoTheGeek]

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.

Class act

[amightywind]

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.

Re:Class act

[SilentChris]

"Compare that with how NASA closed ranks and divulged Columbia information"

I don't think that's fair or even justified. NASA is (primarily) a government organization. They have contractors to pay, politicians to appease, etc. Every flight is a multimilion dollar undertaking, and consider the vast majority for them have gone well, they must be doing something right.

Yesterday's flight, while incredible, was done with a very low budget (and in some ways, seat of the pants). Not that that's inherently "wrong", but they'd have a lot less people to answer to if something catastrophic happened. They'd probably have some investors to explain to, but NASA had over 300 million with Columbia. Would you rather the answers come out quickly or correctly?

Dictionnary to the rescue

[WormholeFiend]

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.

Re:Dictionnary to the rescue

[cordsie]

Oh, you mean nose-uppy and nose-downy?

they will win

[VanillaCoke420]

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?

Not surprising

[haplo21112]

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...

minor setbacks and some carmack links :P

[FaerieBoy]

I've been following armadillo for some time, and though armadillo/carmack doesn't think armadillo is going to win the x-prize, carmack stated before that control systems/requiring a pilot could lead to major setbacks for Space Ship One and change the odds (back in august). And more recently he discussed his focus on control systems.

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.

Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P

[neurojab]

>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

Commie. :)

The fact is, in a capitalist society (or at least one that's MOSTLY capitalist), spending tax dollars and non-tax dollars are different things. If tax dollars are spent, you get a $900 toilet seat, $5 million in wireless equipment that never leaves the loading dock, etc. It's impossible for government to be efficient, because there's no incentive for efficiency. On the other hand, if private dollars are spent, there's a very big incentive to be efficient: They get to keep the money they don't spend! (or at least whoever is funding them gets to).

That is the very reason SpaceShipOne cost $20 million instead of $2 billion. If we ever want space flight to be within the reach of the average person, NASA is NOT going to get us there. It's private programs like this that will make the cost reasonable.

Re:minor setbacks and some carmack links :P

[at_kernel_99]

That is the very reason SpaceShipOne cost $20 million instead of $2 billion. If we ever want space flight to be within the reach of the average person, NASA is NOT going to get us there. It's private programs like this that will make the cost reasonable.

To expand on your point, that is the way it should be. Governments should not be spending tax dollars on building amusment rides for the public. How much did whats-his-name (tito?) spend to ride on Soyuz up to the space station? Not enough, if you ask me, the the Russians apparently disagree. If the common man is going to space, it is private enterprise that should get him there.

Re:Don't be too harsh

[malfunct]

Um, I don't call an exploding rocket booster a small problem.

I also don't call a big hole in the heat resistant paneling when you plan to endure metal melting temperatures a small problem either.

In contrast getting your ship pointed in the wrong direction for a while is smaller in that at least you get a chance to correct the problem (and in fact he had already corrected some issues in control moments after he fired the rockets proving he is an excellent pilot, damn lucky, or both).

All in all this flight was probably as perfect as any adventure into space can hope to be.

Re:This isn't what I expected

[Coryoth]

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.

Meanwhile, at the BBC

[WormholeFiend]

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3829489.stm
Th ey quote Rutan:
"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.

No, no, no!

[Hiro Antagonist]

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."

Chicken Little

[The Ape With No Name]

Could this pose some problems for the X-Prize contender?

C'mon. What are you a Mac user? ;-) 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.

The Right Stuff

[panurge]

In the book, Tom Wolfe comments at length on the problems experienced with the X-craft on the edge of the atmosphere, including total loss of control surfaces and craft spinning sideways. It's worth re-reading (surely every self respecting geek has read it at least once?) now that the Bell X approach to spaceflight seems to be on the road again.

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.

Who's cleaning up the M&Ms?

[sakusha]

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.

we will win

[WormholeFiend]

regardless of who wins the X-prize... we win. everyone of us.

Fixing tumbling not as easy as it seems...

[Dr. Zowie]

One might think that tumbling is easy to control -- after all, if the craft is spinning and you have cold gas thrusters, you can just fire the jets to oppose the spinning, right?

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.

This isn't really news if you RTFAd yesterday.

[hey!]

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.

Yeager

[Genady]

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.

Re:Yeager

[Genady]

Yeager's ejection seat in that '104 clocked him in the face, shattering the helmet glass and starting a fire (something left over from the ejection rocket) his face burned as he was in free-fall.

And Gus didn't just have a problem with Liberty Bell 7's hatch, if memory serves he had a big problem with the one on Apollo 1 as well.

Re:For all the Attitude Jokes....

[oni]

her e you go

Re:Challenger reference?

[angusr]

ttp://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/speeches/rea gan_challenger.html

Say what you will about Reagan, regardless of how you felt about his policies (many were quite controversial), he sure could deliver great speeches.

The best lines in it, however, were paraphrased from John Gillespie McGee's famous poem "High Flight", which is also what Melvill was most likely thinking of. It's a standard reading at the funerals of pilots, and I personally feel that Reagan's speech would have been better, and perhaps more fitting, had he finished with the entire poem. It sums up the main reason why astronauts - military, governmental or private - will always want to strap themselves into something that will never be 100% safe and fly.

Reminds me of the old joke...

[notestein]

You know what we call almost late?

On time.

yada yada

[maxpublic]

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

You CAN do it in the atmosphere, of course...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.