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X Prize Launch At Mojave Spaceport [updated: success!]
knovis writes "The Ansari X Prize is being attempted at this moment: 9:30am EST. Bert Rutan and Paul Allen's Scaled Composites is preparing to make the first of 2 launches necessary. For the uninitiated, the X-Prize is a $10M prize available to the first entirely privately funded organization that creates a vehicle that travels to 100km above the earth's surface (low earth orbit) twice within 2 weeks. IIRC, SpaceShipOne is planning 3 flights for that 2 week period, for safety. Best of luck to Private Spaceflight. Did anyone else notice that Virgin Galactic has just been launched?"
Project Zen writes "MSNBC has an article about how the seats won't be filled with people but mementos of the crew." Several readers sent links to CNN's story on the flight, and space.com's continuing coverage, including by webcam; NASA TV also has an eye on the launch. (Watch this space for updates.) Update: 09/29 15:57 GMT by T : Disconnect writes "As reported all over, SpaceShipOne successfully flew its first X-Prize flight attempt. As of now (11:45:40EST) the officials have not cleared the flight as successful, but it's looking good."
Our hopes and prayers go with you.
I hope they found a good way to tie all those momentos down. It would be a shame if flying slide-rules created a problem during the launch.
Please lock your seat back trays in the upright positions...
CNN is covering it, not sure how great the video will be. but it appears it was delayed due to high wind. The White Knight just took off about 5 minutes ago. give them another hour or so before they actually fire the rockets in SpaceShipOne.
Let's just hope Mike does ok with this, i'd hate to see someone die on an absolutely amazing thing these guys are doing. Granted I think they'll do ok but I am still worried about the guy, especially his family.
Go Mike GO!
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
White Knight took off a little under 5 minutes ago, but it has to reach an altitude of 48,000 feet before detaching from SpaceShipOne. The NASA TV coverage says that will take about an hour.
I would consider skipping class for this but I have a test.
Although I am unable to conceive of the type of spacefaring mishap which could result in a mere broken leg...
I jest, but good luck.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
100 km is not low earth orbit. It's just the lower boundary for being declared an astronaut.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
There's a webcast link from the people actually sponsoring it (who presumably know more than the normal press:
XPrize.Org
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
...at least here in the UK. The last flight I was able to make plans in advance to see it live, but this is the first I've heard about this one - and it's the real thing!
Still, very best of luck to everyone involved - proof that some folk still have the "Right Stuff".
This is where the serious fun begins.
Given that the webcast is fscking useless, the best coverage I've dug up so far is that by "Spaceflight Now": http://spaceflightnow.com/ss1/status.html
Real Media
Real Media high quality
Windows Media
Many more...
until it got /.'ed to hell. What sort of story will we tell our grandchildren?
"Yeah... I remember when the first commercial space launch occured. I was sitting in front of an idle browser window..."
What is music when you despise all sound?
Best of luck. hopefully by the time I'm having my midlife crisis, I can afford a trip up there too.
This is really historic and very exciting. This is capitalism, pioneering and ballsiness at its best. All the stuff that made America great in the past. Nice to see it in the present.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Its Burt not Bert and Scaled Composites is Burt's company not Burt's and Paul Allen's. Paul Allen is just funding this particular project. Scaled has done many other interesting projects over the years.
Obvious, but needs pointing out...
Up and Down - still impressive, what were the Virgin tickets $100,000?
-paul
My hopes go with you. There are no prayers to speak of from me for you or anyone or anything.
-I am an elective eunuch.
The Real stream on Nasa's website worked fine for me.
I'm amazed how elegant this space craft is. Granted, the NASA flights were about half a century ago. And these guys have a lot more to work with. But it seems to me like they are doing an amazing job! Think of the NASA budget and manpower as compared to these guys. They have yet to acomplish all that the space program has accomplished - but dang are they doing a good job. Every time I see the separate space crafts and how elegantly they maneuver... I'm just impressed. I think about the old rockets just dropping pieces into the ocean. But this two staged design that flies to altitude and then separates into to pilotable vehicles seems very well thought out.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Branding the X-Prize at the (relative) last minute, post-establishment, has always seemed like a real second-hander move to me.
Once upon a time, I was truly excited and idealistic about the X-Prize. Now that it's the Ansari X Prize, and the Microsoft billionaire's project is going to win, it feels a bit "so what?"... it seems like Ansari and Allen could have just teamed up and accomplished the same thing - only, I guess, there wouldn't be as much publicity that way (and maybe no subsequent deals with Virgin). But the "contest" aspect now rings false and feels extraneous.
Hmm... Lets hope it doesn't need military Helicopters with long polls to catch it when it re-enters the atmosphere!
Visit London Scalextric Club
Nope, the official rules say you have to have the weight of 3 people, but you dont have to actually have 3 people.
Most of O'Keefe's speech seemed to be about Bush's Mars proposal and how SSO is here because NASA let it be? A whole lotta credit-grabbing.
Yes, I'm sure some of the technology used in WK/SSO could be traced to some NASA programs, but, please, credit where due. This is an original effort, from a true innovator who has been developing original fuselage fabrication technology for thirty years.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
I am using RealPlayer 8 and it's fine using Mdk 9.1.
I just wish stories would mentioned when links would allow only MS Windows Media, <i>c.f.</i> space.com.
From what I hear, they'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
erh...
OH! Mo-jave Spaceport! My bad.....
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Scaled Composite built SpaceShip One but the spacecraft is not owned by them, it is payed for and owned by American Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which is owned by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen.
See Flying to Orbit, with an update for SpaceShipOne
They are essentially recreating the X-15 experiments made in the early sixties.
e r.html
.com boom.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/x15/cov
Those missions a rocket plane would detach from a B-52 and fly to suborbit and then glide back to earth and land like a plane.
What is really important is that resently there was an article about there being more billionaire's in the United States then there ever was in the history of the United States.
http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04092701.htm
And now Paul Allen and Burt Rutan are about to prove (I hope!) that these rich kids can have their very own space program for a mere $20 million. Which hopefully will lead to an increase in aerospace start-ups and maybe a boom in aerospace technology similar to the
I hope this happens because not only will we finaly start seeing the promises made during the space race come to fruitation, but we can also learn from our past mistakes made during the dot com era and make a shit load of money by bailling out when the getin's good.
It's going to take a few years for this to start, Virgin is (assuming it's true and not a publicity stunt it's libel to be) not planning launches for another three years. That's time enough for everyone to change their major's and hit the books for the next big thing.
Of course if spaceshipone crashes and burns you can just forget about what I just said.
>
343,000 feet accomplished just a minute ago. SpaceShipOne's on the way down now.
Sweeeeeet....
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Spaceship One is going up 100km. What happens when you have something sitting a tiny amount above the Earth's surface and let it go? It drops like a rock. To stay up it has to move really fast horizontally, so that by the time it falls to the ground the ground is already gone from under it. If it keeps doing this it ends up circling around the planet.
The orbital speed is in the ballpark of 17000 mph, which these guys are not even close to, and is the main reason for skepticism of cheap access to space. It's not going to the height of space that is hard-- managing to get to 17000 mph is the hard part, and the X-prize is not addressing it. Something tells me that various commercial launch systems like Delta, Soyuz, Arianne, etc. are already as cheap as it gets, and the problem does not get easier no matter how you slice it.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Oh man, watching this live. For a while I thought this was going to be a disaster. Thankfully we all got it wrong.
- sigs are for wimps.
The CNN interviewer kept interjecting nonsense, so I muted the TV and listened to the web feed, where they didn't feel the need to talk when they had nothing to say.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
when asked how the altitiude of 100k+ was verified to the satisfaction od the x-prize organisers, the commentator replied "It's not rocket science".
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
For sentimental reasons, we should probably rename SpaceShipOne to "The Doohan" -- in honor of James Doohan. Before he passes into oblivion, he would certainly feel honored that the first prototype of a commercial spacecraft is named after him.
There is always the remote possibility that the winner of the space prize will evolve, 100 years later, into a real starship.
Did anyone notice this?
I was watching the live feed, and saw the plane spin wildly before he cut off the engine.
The SpaceFlightNow status update page said "The craft is in a major tumble!". Several minutes after that, it was 'corrected' to : "The craft is in a major roll!"
I think they still have some issues with the aerodynamics at this speed.
Not that this will affect them in their bid in the race. They seem to be well poised to win.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
was a real "screw up" eh??
WHAT THIS MEANS is that I get to visit space in my lifetime, for the cost of a nice round the world cruise.
Was watching the live webcast, and there was a point during the ascent where SpaceShipOne went into a series of barrel rolls on the way up - and it looked (to my uneducated eyes) like the pilot lost control of the craft for a bit.
In the descent SpaceShipOne was rolling left to right quite a bit, and there was vibration clearly visible in the winglets when it went into shuttlecock mode.
I'm watching to see how the landing goes. Fingers crossed none of the landing gear was damaged.
1509 GMT (11:09 a.m. EDT)
DROP! SpaceShipOne has been released from the White Knight mothership.
1510 GMT (11:10 a.m. EDT)
IGNITION! SpaceShipOne is firing to space in pursuit of the $10 million Ansari X Priz
1512 GMT (11:12 a.m. EDT)
Altitude is 250,000 feet. Craft appears to be in a tumble from the tracking cameras.
1512 GMT (11:12 a.m. EDT)
Altitude achieved was 330,000 feet, which was needed for the X Prize.
1514 GMT (11:14 a.m. EDT)
The ship appears in a much smoother orientation following the major roll experienced at the end of the burn. The wings have feathered for the descent.
1516 GMT (11:16 a.m. EDT)
The descent continues. SpaceShipOne looks to be under good control as the wings are folded back down and locked for a powerless glide to landing on the runway.
1518 GMT (11:18 a.m. EDT)
SpaceShipOne is descending through 35,000 feet and cleared for landi
More here
SpaceShipOne has landed safely, bringing Mike Melvill back to Earth after a seemingly frightening flight that experienced a major roll during the engine firing!!!
More info here
I love these guys.
Either way, it worked. The spacecraft has landed successfully.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Did anyone notice how none of the Scaled guys wanted to take the microphone? They all kept offering for the other guy to take the stage, not wanting to take any of the credit - these guys are the real deal!
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
X-Price goes the way of Nascar. http://www.nascar.com/
Point out to your manager, the one who hires hotshots straight out of school instead of proven workers with years of experience: Mike Melvill, the pilot who just made history, is sixty-three years old. In some businesses he would be just two years from mandatory retirement; at Scaled Composites, Mike Melvill is still the hotshot.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
Not to say that a few people shouldn't try to eek out some bucks in a startup, but on the other hand it's easy to forget the aerospace crash of the '80s and the dotbombs in the 00's to realize that you really need to have underlying value to sustain something in the long run.
Do what you want to do and be the best at it you can, don't take a java class and hope for a dot-com million (unless you are already the type that regularly plays the local lottery). That's a bit of free advice (of course you get what you pay for).
Also it's interesting to note that no mass transit system in history has been consistantly profitable over time (e.g., busses, trains, airplanes, ferries). There are some isolated local successes, but overall the failure rate is really high and it's often the government (or a government licenced monopoly) that comes in an ends up picking up the slack (usually justified as infrastructure investment).
Some food for thought on your future career choice.
I got the machine rebooted and was very relieved to to see that Mike was still alive and on decent.
I just hope that ship doesn't use windows, and if I does, I hope it has 5 backups. Because the I wouldn't want to bet my life against the chance of 2 windows machines crashing at the same time.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Yep, and Burt Rutan was the guy who designed "Voyager" (the plane that flew round the world on
one tank of gas). His brother Dick + Janet Yeager
were the pilots.
He's also working with Steve Fossett + Sir Richard
Branson on a *new* project where Mr.Fossett plans
to do the same round the world trip *solo*.
One funny thing here: Sir Richard Branson is the
*backup* pilot - even though he doesn't have a
pilots license.
Awesome engineering. Thank god they don't believe
in computers. Can you imagine Windows CE or XP
**AARRGGHH ?
Yes, the scientific method relies heavily on Occam's razor.
If two competing theories can explain the same set of phenomena, then the simpler one wins. There might be a luminiferous ether through which everything moves, that is compressed by that movement in a way that completely compensates for the motion, leaving one unable to detect ones motion relative to the ether. Complicated, complicated, complicated. Or there might be no ether. Simple.
Which theory is better?
There might be gods that push the planets around in complete accordance with Newton's inverse-square law (except for Mercury). Or the planets move of their own accord.
Which theory is better?
WOO HOO!!!!
(Seriously, I've been glued to the broadcast all morning. This is an exciting event, especially to someone like me who grew up in a house decorated with framed NASA mission patches, and photographs of Apollo rockets and the Earth as seen from space. The Right Stuff, indeed.)
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Didn't make it out to Mojave today. I should've and I'm kicking myself for it. My friend Steve and I made it to the last launch, however, and brought our digital cameras (his Canon 10D and my Canon 300D). We didn't have any super-telephoto lenses and the launch was way up there, so there aren't a lot of images of the actual flight. However, there are plenty of launch and landing photos and shots of SpaceShipOne and WhiteKnight at low altitudes. Besides giving you a better idea of what the flight was like (and seeing how long it would take to kill this account), there should be a geek-appeal in that doing this with digital cameras meant that Steve and I uploaded the images to my powerbook which I had connected to a kyocera 7135 smartphone acting as a wireless modem. The images were up by 1100am.
The images may be used for a book, but the speed of this project was mostly a proof of concept for us, and while we posted it on a design news site (which took forever to do the posting therefore generally made me hate them) but I'm thinking of going up again, but if I did, I'd like to find a real outlet that might host the images and gain us some wider exposure.
http://www.simultaneous-environments.net/
Seem fairly profitable to me. In fact, Ryanair are profitable while still charging ridiculously low fares. Of course you qualified your statement with "consistently" and "over time" which basically makes it worthless. Who'd have thought that any business would be profitable all the time and for ever.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Wow, this is actually the most excited I think I've been about the space program since I was a little kid, dreaming of being an astronaut.
To NASA: I'm sorry that you are officially so down on the concept of space tourism, but it's this kind of exposure that is going to get people interested in space again. What if the oceans or skies had been reserved for scientific research only?
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
Full story here
Space tourists for $200k a head? Yawn.
A slightly reconfigured SpaceShip One could probably earn a handsome profit lugging small (~300 pound) satellites into orbit, opening all kinds of GPS & communications markets to small and medium sized companies presently locked out by exorbitant boost prices.
Although additional lift would be required from 100km to stationary orbit, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to engineer a (relatively) inexpensive modular "shell" around the satellite with 100-200 lbs of fuel and a small motor to propel it to it's desired parking place. After all, most of the energy required to launch satellites is wasted just fighting your way out of orbit, and that is what SpaceShip One has solved. A cheap ride to LEO. Significantly less energy required from there to your parking spot.
As more private space companies emerge, and the usual business expansion/contraction/merger phase cools down, we'll be left with a handful of competitors for various corporations and governments to shop around for cheapest boost prices. Everyone wins! Consumers get cool new gizmos & services.
Today's launch is but a sliver-sized glimpse of the future.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Is there an industry with an exception of entertainment and pharmacuticals that has sustaining value over time? ( There probably is, I just can't think of them at this time)
.com bust think about how much better the world is because of it.
I will reinforce your arguement with another example before I counter it.
In 1905 detroit there were over two hundred american automotive companies in or surronding detroit. Automobile Startups popped up left and right with entrepenuers opening their wallets to anyone with a neat idea about cars and how they will impact society and how everyone will want one. How many of those companies exist today? Not many. Why? Well there was a big boom in automotives in the early twentieth century and like every other bubble it burst.
Sounds familiar? Well it should be, just replace the words automobile and car with computers and internet and change the dates and we have history repeating itself. Oh yeah and change the location from shitty Detroit to Cali.
It happens it's economic dawrinism, the comapinies that did not have a solid business model, product, poor managment or were founded on some half-baked idea failed. The compainies that did succeded for the most part.
Is that to say that the automotive industry is trivial and nonimportant and becoming an automotive engineer is a waste of time? Of course not.
Same with radios, tv's, movie theaters (just ask your parents about movie theaters in the sixties, alot different from the multiplexes of today). Look up old television design from the fities during it's boom and you'll see some funky cool designs from companies that are not around anymore.
Is the aerospace industry going to have the same bubble? I hope so. All usefull and some not so usefull tech has it's boom but when things settle down where better off for it.
Despite all the bad that has happened about the
>
I just wish I could work there where future is wrought.
Did anyone notice how on both their flights they managed to lose control? I saw video on the news, and the thing was just free falling for awhile (not gliding, mind you, rolling). Surely the XPRIZE officials cannot deem this a success.
hi
As I mentioned in another post - this rocket does not go orbital. It's a completely different beast to go orbital and be reusable. The SS1 design would have to be modified greatly. Further, there is already a carry-and-drop rocket that puts satellites into orbit: it's called Pegasus.
Glenn Mahone
Headquarters, Washington Sept. 29, 2004
(Phone: 202/358-1898)
RELEASE: 04-323
NASA SALUTES SPACESHIPONE TEAM AFTER SECOND FLIGHT
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe congratulated the
SpaceShipOne team on the second successful flight of a human on
a private spacecraft. Administrator O'Keefe was in the Mojave
Desert, Calif., today to watch SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill
take off and safely land.
"Burt Rutan and Paul Allen and the rest of the team are great
examples of the kind of determination and creativity that is
helping America achieve its exploration goals," Administrator
O'Keefe said. "We at NASA applaud their terrific achievement
today, as well as the spirit of competition behind the Ansari X
Prize.We wish Mike continued safe travels to space," he said.
>From the orbiting International Space Station, NASA astronaut
Mike Fincke took note of the SpaceShipOne flight. "Well, it was
nice that [cosmonaut] Gennady [Padalka] and I weren't the only
two humans off the planet, even if it was only for a little
while," he said during space-to-ground transmissions today.
"So, good job and congratulations to the SpaceShipOne team!"
Fincke's comments are available on the NASA TV Video File
available on the Web and via satellite in the continental U.S.
on AMC-6, Transponder 9C, C-Band, at 72 degrees west longitude.
The frequency is 3880.0 MHz. Polarization is vertical, and
audio is monaural at 6.80 MHz. In Alaska and Hawaii, NASA TV is
available on AMC-7, Transponder 18C, C-Band, at 137 degrees
west longitude. The frequency is 4060.0 MHz. Polarization is
vertical, and audio is monaural at 6.80 MHz. For NASA TV
information and schedules on the Internet, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For information about NASA's exploration and discovery
programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
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...to get excited about space flight again. I haven't been this interested in manned space flight since the first shuttle missions when I was a kid.
Yes, I do.
We have to nip this whole "religion" thing in the bud, before it gets too popular.
Otherwise, it won't be too long before even government officials are using it as a basis for policy decisions.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana