SpaceShipOne and Wild Fire to Go For the Gold

Fizzleboink writes "Space.com reports that with the upcoming January 1, 2005 deadline for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, Rutan and his team have given their official 60 day notice. Brian Feeney, leader of the Canadian da Vinci Project also reported today that his team is rolling out on August 5 with the balloon-lofted Wild Fire rocket."

Comments

Time to Space

[usefool]

Did X Prize specify the maximum time allowed from launch to reaching the space?

The da Vinci Project Team is using helium balloon to lift its rocket for the first part of its journey, and SpaceOne is using WhiteKnight which goes round and round until it reaches a certain altitude.

Re:And James van Allen doesn't get it.

[Sgt York]

No mention of capitalistic exploit, such as mining of minerals; low-G manufacturing; etc.

I was talking with a friend a while back, who brought up a good point for Rutan's concept having a real commercial application : travel. Not tourist travel, but actual travel to other places.

Rutan apparently has an orbital vehicle on the drawing board that is a scaled up version of SS1 (rumor only, AFAIK). If something like this could be set up, it's about 2hr to anywhere in the world. Even for $10k, there are a lot of business travellers whose time is worth that much.

Think two hours from NYC to Sydney or Tokyo, compared to 17+ by passenger jet. It's a niche market, but there are people that travel very long distances like that who would like to be able to do it much faster, and are willing to pay a lot for the ability. They already purchase day-of-travel prices with first class tickets; how much is that from NYC to Tokyo?

The niche is small, but probably big enough to sustain a company or two. And that sounds kind of like the start of the airline industry, minus the government subsidy.

Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

The interesting thing comparing Da Vinci project to the effort at Scaled Composites. There's more than enough rumors within industry, and outside it, that peg the Spaceship One project price tag in the 20 million dollar range, one can probably assume there's some basis behind that number. There's another article on the Da Vinci stuff here that pegs numbers on the Da Vinci expenses. They are quoted at $337,000, doesn't specifically say cdn dollars, but every other number in the article is tagged as $us. It's a canadian paper, the figure is likely $cdn, which puts it around 1/4 million us dollars.

It's NOT a given that Spaceship One will walk away with the X-prize. A lot of folks seem to think it is, but, those same folks thought shuttle flights were routine, uneventful, and safe. Flying into space is HARD. SS1 has a good chance at it, but this craft will be ready to give it a shot.

It would certainly go with the spririt of the X-Prize to see this true 'backyard' effort pull it out of the blue, and beat SS1 to the X-Prize finish line. Nothing against Rutan and his team, but, X-Prize was meant to spark the real backyard innovation. Da Vinci project is just that. I think it would be great to see them scoop the prize out from under the noses of the foks that spent 20 million to achieve the same goal.

Re:Interesting Numbers

[grozzie2]

I'm well aware of how the aerospace industry burns money, I've been involved in it for the last 28 years. The point is, it doesn't have to be that way.

If you take a look at the methodologies used by NASA and thier contractors, and present them with a requirement for a man rated design, from scratch, to exit the atmosphere, the project would have to be cut to the teeth to achieve flight hardware by the time they burned thru 2 billion dollars. Scaled composites did it for 20 million, that's 2 orders of magnitude less. Along comes Da Vinci, and they did it for another 2 orders of magnitude less, with the caveat it has not been flight tested yet. Even if they use 100 dollar bills for fuel on the flights, they'll still end up an order of magnitude cheaper than Scaled.

The real difference between scaled and da vinci is in methodology. Scaled is a group of professional engineers, working on a budget with a benefactor. It's a full time job, and everybody is collecting a salary. Da Vinci is driven by professional engineers, working in thier spare time, and collecting satisfaction for thier efforts. Has anybody seen this contrast in methodologies before ? It's kind of ironic that the 'big budget' x-prize vehicle is funded by Microsoft money, and the long shot contender is a volunteer collaborative effort.

The real point is, the aerospace industry as we know it is carrying a LOT of fat, mostly due to the fact it's driven by government contracts. the job can be done 2 orders of magnitude cheaper, Rutan and crowd have proven it. Collaboration and co-operation works, and it would be great to see the Da Vinci folks prove that too, in a field other than software.

At this point in time, scaled is the odds on favorite to grab the prize. Da Vinci has yet to fly hardware. that doesn't mean it's not gonna fly, or it's incapable of flying, it means it hasn't been tested in full flight configuration yet.

August could well be a very interesting month. If the Da Vinci folks can scrape up the cash they need to get thier hardware out to the launch site, and into the air, and get a couple good test results immediately, there may well be a race for the prize.

As an engineer, I have to have great respect for what the Scaled team has done, it's outstanding. As an individual, I still want to sit back and cheer for the 'back yard' guys. However small a chance they have, it would be great to see them succeed.

Re:Is this supposed to be a new form of mass trans

[dillon_rinker]

What's the point of sending people 62.5 miles by airplane? What's wrong with cars?

What's the point of sending people 62.5 miles by car? What's wrong with horses?

What's the point of sending people 62.5 on horseback? What's wrong with shoes?

What's the point in walking 62.5 miles? Can't you find everything you need within an hour's walk of the cave?

And that, of course, is the point...if you can't go 62.5 miles, you can't go 200 miles. You can't reach low-earth orbit, or high orbit, or solar orbit, or anything else. Orbital flight is currently a governmental monopoly. If you fail to see the point of orbital flight in the short term, then feel free to chuck your GPS receiver, cell phone, pager, and international internet connection in the toilet. If you fail to see the point of orbital flight and beyond in the long term, then feel free to mine your back yard for every element needed to support your lifestyle.

Wild Fire Stats

[PIPBoy3000]

From this story:

Another Canadian team, the da Vinci Project in Toronto, is also building a rocket. But their rocket won't fire its engines until it's already 80,000 ft off the ground and tethered beneath a reusable, piloted helium balloon. It will hang in an 80 up angle. After starting its engines and cutting the tether, it will fly a 90, straight up profile. This lets the designers reduce the propulsion system to one-fourth of what a ground-launch would require. The craft, weighing 7,200 lb on take off (3,200 lb, empty), uses two kerosene and LOX engines, each generating 5,000 lb of thrust, to take it the rest of the way to 100 km. The engines are newly designed with emphasis on light weight, reliability, and low cost.

A helium-fueled cold gas-reaction control system (RCS) will give the ship attitude control. The pilot uses two control sticks, one for main-engine gimbals, the other for the RCS, or relies on an autopilot. Like other X-Prize contestants, the da Vinci rocket uses an inflated shuttlecock or ballute to increase drag on descent.

For something I just heard of today, it sounds quite clever.

Re:Armadillo concedes

[ErikTheRed]

Actually, John Carmack has stated that they have a business plan that does not rely on them winning the X-Prize, or getting any other sort of cash windfall (I'm summarizing, so any mistake is mine and not his). Some great insight as to their plans can be gleaned from the Armadillo Aerospace Forum at XPrize.org.

Even though they are not as polished or well-funded as Scaled Composites, their openness with their processes, plans, trials, and tribulations makes them one hell of a lot cooler and several orders of magnitude more interesting, at least in my book.

Interesting information

[SkiifGeek]

I wonder how they are going to retrieve the piloted balloon (short of venting helium). If their design becomes commercially viable, how much Helium is going to be wasted to get their rocket to launch altitude. While there wouldn't be a problem for small scale implementation, on a global scale of tourism / usage, surely the logisitcs would drive Helium prices / usage up, and supplies down.

Just a couple of pondering points.

Re:Canadian Content

[Rei]

Um, Rutan's dumb choice of oxidizer means that he has a heavy oxidizer tank without getting a worthwhile ISP, and could never scale it up to orbital flight. On the other hand, LOX/Kerosene is a pretty darn good fuel/oxidizer combination.

I don't know enough about blimp or aircraft operating costs to say which method of lifting the craft aloft is best, but carrying a craft up to altitude is a definite bonus;that whole thing about air resistance being proportional to v^2 on the macroscopic scale is a really big pain. I am surprised to see no tow-launch craft, however.