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Photos Of Rutan's X-Prize Entry
burdicda writes "I think you might be interest in what Burt Rutan has been up to, out there in the Mojave Desert. Take a look at these pictures."
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it still works, sort of. stupid still, posting a link to a gallery site. INTO A SLIDESHOW on a gallery..
nice pics anyways..
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/ the official page has some stuff too like a video clip..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Did I just fall through a time-warp, or is something very wrong with this story?
Who, exactly is wondering what Burt Rutan is up to? I mean, I realize that not everybody cares about spaceflight, but I promise that anybody who knows who Burt Rutan IS could hardly have missed the 2010 recent news stories about what he is up to. I guess unless they are a slashdot editor...
Oh, but wait, there are pictures of his X-Prize entry. That is amazing!
wikipedia has a great entry on this.
steal this sig
I wonder how long it'll get to kill my host :)
You need to make two flights within a given time period and a few other things. It'll be a little while before Spaceship One can win. So the others are scambling to win.
Spaceship One: First successful flight into outerspace by a commercial company.
This thing: Pictures.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
The photos download just fine once their "SlideShow" software finishes rendering the HTML page that has the pointer to it. I'd recommend skipping the slide show, and getting only the thumbnails - that way you can pick and choose what photos you're willing to wait 30-60 seconds for.
http://www.rokits.org/gallery/x-prize
Try taking another look. It seems slow to load, but then the images seem to display fine.
Mirror
Mirror of images, all one one page. 39 images. 3.2 Megabytes total.
FedEx may be better than the USPS, but who came first?
Private mail did. Check the history books.
Bob-
(Negative moderators, vent your abuse on this one and leave the rest alone.)
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
He didn't go to orbit. Not even close. He was about 15,000mph short of going to orbit.
What he did was hit an altitude of 100km, barely, and fell back.
Linking to a gallery slideshow is about the stupidest thing you can do.
"Unfortunately i didnt watch the launch(so correct me if im wrong) but one thing that I quite dont undestand is how he has managed to reach the space with so little fuel in such a 'fragile' structure (considering that the pictures showed a shuttle that didnt have those ceramics plates for reentering the atmosphere).
Everytime NASA put the something in orbit, they burn that boatload of fuel, and this guy just got there in a what looks more like a giant Kite! And with what I believe being a much lower budget."
He didn't need heat shielding because he didn't achieve orbital velocity - which is around mach 25. Simply going into space and coming back doesn't create a problem with reentry.
You also have to keep in mind that impressive as space ship one is, it's a toy compared to an actual commercial launch vehicle. To get into low earth orbit you have to get up to about 300 miles altitude and attain a velocity of around mach 25, while Space Ship One only went up about 62.5 miles with a velocity of mach 3. Also, SSO doesn't carry any substantial payload; a commercial launch vehicle like the Delta 4 can launch 15 tons into orbit.
Really cool video.
What's downright scary is two things.
One, no military pilot in his right mind would deliberately FOD the cockpit - release Foreign Object Debris - even as small as an M&M - it's a surefire way to cause problems later. You'd be amazed at how little it takes to induce seriously Bad problems in an airplane cockpit. Even chocolate. Even three or four flights later, when that ONE M&M you didn't find post-flight just happens to melt or stick in an unfortunate spot.
Two, watch the silhouette of the vehicle carefully during the external footage of the thrust phase. Boy, the thing is rocking back and forth badly. Serious controllability problems. Yeah, I know, we already heard all about that - but this video drives home just how nasty it was. I can distinctly see four roll oscillations greater than 90 degrees in just about five seconds. Ouch. Any pilot in a military jet would be reaching for the ejection handle right then. Interesting they didn't include the over-the-shoulder footage for THAT.
Oh, and IAAAE (I AM an aerospace engineer) and DO happen to have experience working with both military pilots and jets.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
here are some other gallerys:/ 2004/2 93.html
http://spaceshipone.airshowjournal.com
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/006
In this case, nm stands for Nautical Miles, not Nanometers