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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."
Reading this story, I am remided of the movie October Sky. For wannabe rocket scientists, this is one of the most inspirational movies.
It's based on a true story. The protagonist is now in a very high position in NASA.
If you lost your job today, don't despair. You may die tomorrow anyway.
X-prize => Priviate citizen's in space => tourist's in space => priviate "space resort" => Advertisements in space => advertisements visible from earth in space => coca cola constlation / starbucks galaxy? Serriously, if we have tourists in space, they are gonna want to spend time up there, so we will need long term staff in space... Space tourourism (sp) is not a feasible buisness for many years to come imo.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
Say what you want about Microsoft's lack of fair competitive practices.
But you will be hard pressed to find any corporation their size that give as much back to global education AND global health care. Free PCs for entire school systems, money for AIDS research. How much do you think your friends at Google gave of their IPO profits?
Oh...
" But, he says, ask the same question of Nasa now and the answer is the same as 30 years ago. Nasa is working on it and it will be affordable in 30 years' time."
Yeah tell me about it, on the 27th NASA is going to do a dress rehearsal for the X-43 flight in October. Next month they are going for a new world record in the fastest jet powered aircraft in the world. The X-43 could have led to an airplane that can "fly into space" like Rutan mentioned as wanting to do in the article. However, from what I understand, NASA decided to cancel the successor of the X-43. Which is a shame because it is a very solid concept for finding a cheap way into orbit.
This reminds me of the X-20? The successor of the X-15, that was planned to go into orbit. If Rutan, can succeed with a spacecraft that resembles the X-15 and enter orbit, I think that would show that NASA, in all it's wisdom, has held us back as far as manned space travel is concerned.
From Wired magazine:
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Recently, one of the folks from Vulcan Ventures came to Microsoft to give a presentation about their space program. (Vulcan Ventures is the VC firm funding the program, and is owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of MS, which is why we got this special presentation.)
We saw an amazing video: a 20-minute presentation showing their first space flight from beginning to end. Lots of tiny clips have been shown on the news, but in the video we saw, the entire space portion of the flight (from rocket fire to atmospheric re-entry) was not time-compressed. We heard every radio transmission, saw every moment of the acutal space time.
It was amazing. Brought tears to my eyes. (Embarassing, when you're sitting with 80 other researchers.)
There was a long Q&A session afterwards. They answered everything from techno-nerd questions about the details of some aerodynamics problem to visionary questions about the future of their program and what this means for humanity.
It was the most moving and inspiring presentation I've seen in a long while.
Not necessarily. (Even if it leads "only" to hypersonic transport aircrafts, it's good.)
A big enemy of the space flight is the atmosphere. But it can also be a friend, when used properly. Why avoid multiple-stage system?
Every day, thousands heavy airplanes take off all over the world and climb to 30,000 feet of cruising altitude. This part of the flight is well-understood and commercialized. Atmospherical oxygen means the airplanes don't have to carry oxidizer, the atmosphere itself supplies not only drag (which is bad) but also lift (which is good), so we don't need to lift everything by jets, which is not really effective.
Once up in 30,000 ft, we can use a second stage - a smaller airplane, with smaller fuel tanks, sitting on the back of eg. an Airbus (I don't like Boeing, but you can use one too, if you have it). This plane can use scramjet engines, and maybe small JATO-style solid-fuel rocket boosters to give it a kick to take off the back of the carrier airplane and reach the scramjet-friendly speed (the Airbus then goes back to its airport and lands, as common for airplanes). This is the stage where X-43 comes to play. The scramjet is used to get the second-stage airplane as high and fast as possible. We still use atmospheric oxygen here, saving on the mass of the oxidizer, and we still exploit the atmosphere to supply the lift to our wings.
Once we get too high for a scramjet, the atmosphere is too thin for both the wings and the scramjet (which is now a disadvantage for stage 2, but advantage for stage 3, which has much less drag to cope with). We jettison the second-stage (which then returns on parachute or by computer-controlled glide), and continue on a conventional rocket engine. (We face the change of density of the atmosphere with rising altitude, which is a challenge for the scramjet design - but maybe the designs where a shock wave acts as part of the engine could provide the necessary geometry changes.)
We then return back in one of the ways available. I suppose the cheapest is the Soyuz-style approach, a reentry capsule with ablative shield and parachutes. That way we sacrifice part of the third-stage craft, but it can still be cheap enough to satisfy our purposes.
What's bad on using different engines for different flight stages?
This really just demonstrates the successful strategy of the prize. It's imperative that the momentum isn't completely lost when/if Scaled Composites take the prize.
That means a new, bigger, harder target next with a bigger prize.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The only way I see NASA TV carrying coverage of the X-Prize competition is if there is a horrendous failure. Then they'll replay the disaster over and over, with the reminder that "we told you so."
Rutan's already made many public statements about the liability that the NASA culture has become. NASA used to be the premiere space program, but degenerated into a self-serving bureaucracy.
We can't expect substantial innovation out of NASA until something changes. Rutan's thrown down the gauntlet, and given them the big "you're Number One!" If he's successful, the budget-minded politicians are going to start asking "why are we funding NASA when the commercial entities are doing a better job?" As soon as the budget's on the line, NASA will be forced to change. But until then, expect the same lackluster performance out of NASA.
Go Burt!
btw, I checked the NASA TV Event Schedule, and there's a conspicuous gap between 27 September and 1 October. On the 29th, you'll be able to watch regurgitated videos of the ISS and other NASA programs.