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Burt Rutan On his Upcoming X-Prize Attempt
dkleinsc writes "The BBC is running an article about Burt Rutan, the head of Scaled Composites and creator of SpaceShip One. He talks about his motivation (besides fame and a big pile of cash) for the project."
The Gates foundation has donated Billions to Global Health care issues.
Lucky me, I have cool boss. ;-)
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
The description of the reentry strategy includes none of the bazillion tiles stuck all over the shuttlecraft. This seems like a better approach --- very simple and apparently a lot less heat. Did anyone notice that a Canadian team is also competing for the prize? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3539018.stm
I'm laughing at clouds.
This is another newest story about the topic. http://mirror.metamenu.com/news.bbc.co.uk/3676312. stm
Rutan attacks US policy of striving to keep space access limited to military superpowers, which he believes is evidence of the smothering of commercial activities in near earth space.
Orbital craft need to travel fast enough to orbit the earth. Fast enough to travel all the way around the planet in 90 minutes. That's why they come back in so fast.
This craft is going to straight up, and fall back down. Much slower.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As many already know, Scaled Composite's "SpaceShipOne" is set to fly on Sept 29th, 2004 in the early-morning hours (Pacific-time) in it's first attempt to fulfill the requirements to win the Ansari X-Prize. Chat will again be available for the flight and the following flights as well.
We had a VERY sucessful chat-session during the previous flight on June 21st and expect to have a good round this time for the X-Prize flights. The channel is open to all (we prefer you register/identify your nicks but is not a requirement for this channel). IF any 'over-flow' occurs, a back-up channel will automatically re-direct those as needed. A !news bot (Space.com) and !countdown bot is available.
We also set another 'special' channel ( #SS1-FltData ) to record/display near 'real-time' Flight-Data from SS1 but the final decision is still not complete and not expected for the first flight-attempt. In any case, we expect to still have some limited data/info available. This channel is to monitor only, no chatting there, unless you are 'voiced'. The #SpaceShipOne channel is for that. ;) You MUST be a registered nick and identified in order to join this channel. There is no cost to register.
The chat-server is located on the Freenode.net series. Point your chat-client to:
-- Server: irc.freenode.net
-- Channels: #SpaceShipOne and #SS1-FltData
Hope to see you back there for the flights. ;)
b>John B. -("Pandelirium")SpaceShipOne Admin/Ops/Moderator
For other 'space-related' chat on Freenode, goto:
- #space (general-combined channel)
- #maestro (Mars Rover/SAP/Maestro Planning Software)
- #cassini (Cassini/Huygens to Saturn)
- #messenger (Probe to Mercury)
- #celestia (3D Space/Solar-System Simulation)
- #roverware (NexGen Rover/Planning Software development)
Your looking to deeply.... The movie was named October sky after one of the "definitive" moments in Homer Hickam's life when he saw Sputnik fly across the night sky in October in 1957.
... "across the October sky in 1957".
or should I say
I'm pretty sure it's chapter 2 of the book.
Don't get me wrong - the X-43 is a fantastic engineering achievement. It may pave the way for things like a mach 10 airbreathing cruise missile or possibly even a hypersonic jet transport. But it has nothing to do with access to space.
A space launch is a short acceleration mission. You spend very little time at any particular speed. A scramjet is good for efficient and sustained cruising at a certain range of speeds. It's not effective for takeoff. It's not effective for accelaration to supersonic speed. It's not effective for acceleration from supersonic to low hypersonic. It's not effective for accelerating from its top hypersonic speed up to orbital velocity. It's only good for a specific range of hypersonic velocities.
Current plans are talking about using at least three different types of engines to make a single vehicle that can make it all the way to space. This is an enormous penalty in weight, vehicle shape and configuration. It's doubtful if a single vehicle can be designed for all these different flight regimes and still be light enough to make it into space at all. But even if it can be done there is absolutely no way it can be cheaper. The development and operational costs of such a complex system will be staggering.
In short, saying that scramjets are the way to cheaper access to space is a big fat lie and just an excuse for robbing the taxpayers.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
You are quite wrong.
Space-ship one is a suborbital vehicle meaning it goes straight up, and falls straight back down. Attaining orbit involves getting that high up, and simultaneously accellerating to some 20,000mph+, a feat which requires a hell of a lot more fuel than SS1 has available.
An orbit is when you get going fast enough that you fall around the planet, instead of into it.
There is also the problem of decelleration. The space shuttle has no retro rockets or anything. It uses it's rear-facing orbital maneuvering engines to slow down, and has to turn itself around to do so. Nothing SS1 couldn't do. However, the energy required to slow an orbiting spacecraft down using only rockets is immense. Because of this orbiting spacecraft use the atmosphere to slow down, which at 20,000mph generates temperatures which require special thermal protection.
SS1 cannot ever achieve orbit. It's roughly the private equivalent of the X-15 project, the beginning of private manned spaceflight.
All of that said, SS1 cost some $20 million dollars, pocket change to nasa or any military project. I wonder how much the same project would cost if NASA did it. Nowadays NASA is bogged down by bureaucracy, and controlled by PR more than anything. NASA should be dissolved and it's budget used in the form of grants to private space projects.
Answering my own question the Ansari X-Prize webiste has a link to a September 29th live webcast of the launch. The link is in the top, right hand corner.
Currently, that link has videos of the other launches made by Scaled Composites. It looks like there is an external camera, a wing camera, and a cockpit camera. Hopefully they have all three rolling on Wednesday =)
The BBC article this slashdot story references explains that Rutan says he was misquoted in that article. He doesn't believe aliens made them. He says merely that we haven't discovered the technology used to buid the pyramids yet. He doesn't believe it has to be alien technology.
Air breathing space craft are still a bad idea.
The reason is that they produce large amounts of drag due to the large cross-sectional area required to ingest air.
No, you don't have to carry oxidizer, but you DO have to schlep a big draggy fuselage along with you.
It's very hard to make the numbers come out better than a conventional staged rocket.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!