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Burt Rutan On his Upcoming X-Prize Attempt

Posted by timothy on from the good-fine-americans-like-dr-wernher-von-braun dept.

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."

31 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. He's doing it for the chicks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do you know how well "Have you ever had sex in outer space?" works as a pick-up line?

    1. Re:He's doing it for the chicks by addaon · · Score: 4, Funny

      Do you know how well "Have you ever had sex in outer space?" works as a pick-up line?

      Yes. Yes, I do.

      --

      I've had this sig for three days.
  2. Inspiration from movies by stroustrup · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Inspiration from movies by toetagger1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or you might just read the book: "Rocket Boys"

      Did anyone else know that the title of the book and film contained the same letters? Just goes to show how much effort they put into making the movie as close to the story in the book, and at the same time make it a good movie.

      --
      who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
  3. Big pile of cash? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was under the impression that more money was being spent than he'd win on the X-Prize.

    It must be like that joke: I made a small fortune on the stock market. Problem is, I started with a large one.

    1. Re:Big pile of cash? by JarrettHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, but if you are a principle owner in THE company who proves that common humans can visit space, and provide the means... His relatives will be happy that he did shoot for the X-Prize. (See also Joan Kroc, Wife of Ray Kroc, McDonalds Founder)

  4. Great interview by apsmith · · Score: 4, Insightful
    After hearing that NASA wasn't going to fulfil his dream of routine spaceflight in his lifetime:

    "The first choice was to give up, and admit that I would never go into space, never see that black sky. The other choice I had was to do something about it."


    Putting dreams into actions - gotta love the guy!
    --

    Energy: time to change the picture.

  5. Re:Ironic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Gates foundation has donated Billions to Global Health care issues.

  6. September 29 at the Mojave airport, California by Degrees · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you live in Southern California, its not too far to go to see the launch. From the Ansari web site:
    launch currently scheduled for approximately 6:47 a.m.
    Mojave Civilian Flight Test Center
    Address: Mojave Airport
    1434 Flight Line Mojave, CA 93501
    Parking is $35. My boss is letting some of us trade 1/2 day off Wednesday for some Saturday work - we will car pool and split the fee. There is more expensive, premium parking available - but we can't tell what that buys us.

    Lucky me, I have cool boss. ;-)

    --
    "The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
  7. Re:Ironic by UncleJam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You can't but like Paul Allen sometimes just because of how insane he is. Watching an old Windows 1.0 "commercial" he did, it almost seems like a parody of a computer commercial. It might be, but I cannot tell ;)

    They talk a lot about space tourism in the article, but I believe that is a long, long way off still. The first thing that would happen is private launch of payloads, but that already happens..
    Even so, even something like $20,000 is cheap for a ticket and right now you'd only get a 10 second ride in space, and back down ya go.

  8. Well... by Lifix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  9. Wrong by voidptr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The X-Prize is a 10 million dollar privately funded prize, not a 1 million dollar government program. NASA, the FAA, and any other agency of any government have nothing to do with it other than issuing launch waivers.

    It has everything to do with kickstarting private, commercial space flight.

    --
    This .sig for unofficial government use only. Official use subject to $500 fine.
  10. what, no tiles? by ir0b0t · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:what, no tiles? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.
      Thats because this is a suborbital flight and not an orbital one so there is not the insane amount heat generated when Rutan's craft re-enters the atmosphere.
    2. Re:what, no tiles? by mj_1903 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, etc. did not use tiles. SpaceShipOne is using similar ablative compounds to remove the minor heat that it produces.

      Of course, if they were doing orbital flights where you would have to remove the insane amounts of kinetic energy they would probably use carbon-carbon or something similar. Tiles are too complex a beast for extremely reliable space flight.

    3. Re:what, no tiles? by AeroNate · · Score: 5, Informative

      Is there an advantage to orbital flight? Why couldn't an orbiting craft stop orbiting before reentry and return to the atmosphere like SS1? In order to stop orbiting, they have to slow down from very high speed, and that requires getting rid of a huge amount of kinetic energy. In the case of the shuttle, capsules, etc, that energy is just turned into heat by the atmospheric drag. If you want to avoid that heating, you need to slow down in a different way. The only other choice is to use an engine burn, and that is hugely expensive because it means that you have to lift a lot of extra fuel into orbit along with your payload. In fact, it takes as much fuel to slow down as it takes to get into orbit in the first place (unless you get rid of some mass by tossing out a satellite). But carrying that extra "deorbit" fuel means that your original load on the launch pad has to be much much bigger too. It is better to just let the atmosphere slow you down.

  11. Re:Ironic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's a sad reflection of the /. bias that everything has to be turned into a bash Microsoft topic.

  12. Another news by semijoin · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is another newest story about the topic. http://mirror.metamenu.com/news.bbc.co.uk/3676312. stm

  13. Any truth to the rumor . . . by ir0b0t · · Score: 4, Funny

    he's going to cue up Steppenwolf before takeoff and ushering in a new era of peaceful space exploration and mini-skirts?

    --
    I'm laughing at clouds.
  14. Education? Who keeps modding parent up? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

  15. Wtf... by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The X-prize isn't a government program. Why would the government spend $1 million on private research when they can spend $1 billion slobbing pork-fat all over the pockets of Halliburton and other government contractors, and projects in every district.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  16. Re:Education? Who keeps modding parent up? by PaulBu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How much do you think your friends at Google gave of their IPO profits?

    Hey, some free web searches for all the school kids, maybe? Or (wait!) for teens, and adults, and seniors as well? As in YOU and ME?.. ;-)

    And somehow they managed to do that even BEFORE their IPO! Must be sure that $$ are coming their way...

    Paul B.

  17. No heat by autopr0n · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  18. NASA screwing us again? by sdcmk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    " 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.

  19. SpaceShipOne Chat 'ready for launch'... by pandelirium · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)

  20. but isn't his design a dead end? by JoeBuck · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It looks like he's built a vehicle that has a good shot at winning the X-prize. But it's not like you could tweak the design a bit and make something that could go into orbit and then return to earth. It's strictly a suborbital vehicle and it needs gravity to re-enter.

    But he will get to see black sky during daytime. So maybe he can die happy.

    1. Re:but isn't his design a dead end? by Inominate · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  21. Amazing video of their first flight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  22. Scramjets have nothing to do with space access by XNormal · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:Scramjets have nothing to do with space access by Thomas+Shaddack · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

      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?

  23. Re:Will the revolution be televised? by Stridar · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 =)