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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."
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.
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?
but it appears it was delayed due to high wind.
I'm not sure it was delayed, per se. The high winds were anticipated as typical conditions of the Mojave - usually when the sun comes up in the Mojave, the winds die down for a while. This makes it a popular place for test flights, because the conditions right after sunrise are pretty predictable.
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.
Ah, CNN said it was "delayed." Granted CNN also had a woman report asking if there was some kind of rocket required to get it to space. It was just discussed but another reporter, it almost appears as though half the people at CNN don't have the faintest idea as to what's really going on.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
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.
That is normal, don't worry about it.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
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.
Contrary to the responses of others, I will join in on the prayers. Frankly, I am concerned for those that can't see the value of both science AND religion.
Speaking as someone who is not religious, I find it ironic that so many people are so intolorant of those that are religious. Actually, the real irony is that the people who are intolorant of religion are usually the same bunch that are preaching (no pun intended) that everyone should be tolorant of others.
I guess it's ok to be tolorant of pedophiles or Islamic extremists or cross-dressing 1st grade teachers, but its not ok to respect the personal beliefs of Christians who are not imposing it on anyone. Remember, it's not intolorance if it's against Christians, right? Just like it's not racism if it's against Caucasians.
So, I wish the best of luck to all those who are involved with the project, and hope for a safe return. I guess you could call that a prayer of sorts. Personally, I don't feel threatened by anyone that believes something different than myself.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
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
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.
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.
>
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!
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
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??
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
I love these guys.
Either way, it worked. The spacecraft has landed successfully.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
The problem is you have to wade through so much crap, intolerance, and just...poor thinking...to get to the 'pearls' that it becomes a frustrating experience. Moderation abuse has made thresholding a completely unreliable filter. I have found too many great posts moderated to -1 by some jerk with an agenda to trust moderation any longer. This leaves me no option but to browse at -1 to make sure no signal gets thrown out with the noise.
I just want to know what you think, believe and/or find amusing. That's all.
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.
Speaking as someone who is not religious, I find it ironic that so many people are so intolorant of those that are religious.
It's not the religion that bothers people, it's the acts of fundamentalists who act under the banner of that religion, whether they are pretending to be muslims or pretending to be christians. Fundamentalist religion is a major threat to peace and democracy (a lot of wars have been fought over it, and it is used with regularity to keep dictators in power). To pretend that is not the case is to open the door to the fundamentalists to destroy the very freedoms regular people hold dear.
That doesn't mean we should target people who hold strong religious beliefs, but it does mean we shouldn't expressly not target them just because of "freedom of religion." Freedom of religion is not the freedom to act as you please, and way too many religious fundamentalists seem to think that's the case and that they have some special right to go about their business, regardless of how much it harms other people, without government or law interfering with them.
Personally, I'm an agnostic, and I fail to understand why religion gets a free ride for so many things. If you hear your dead grandmother talking to you inside your head, you get sent to a shrink and are ridiculed, if you hear god talking to you inside your head, you become a religious or political leader and are respected. The mere mark of religion lets you get away with so much in life. Bush will get an incredibly amount of votes just for having faith, regardless of his actual performance as a president, and regardless of how true his acts are to what the bible says.
When you try to get a job, and you list credentials, you have to prove you actually did the things you claim. But when you run for office and use your faith to get it, you don't have to prove your acts in life are in compliance with your faith. Why? Why does religion always get a free ride, even from agnostics?
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.
Using my karma bonus to get this up a bit.
To _ME_ it looked like he got wind sheer or whatever that started the roll. You could see him fight it but it seems like he may have over compensated and sent it into a roll accidentally. But I have a feeling it was wind related and not mechanical or pilot error. It's gotta be hard to control that thing at those speeds with manual controls.
That was madness, me and my dad watched it all on CNN, i swear that reporter woman needs to be shot, dumb as a brick i tell ya.
On another note that intentional roll rocked, I seen him do that and cheered, that was amazing guys.
To me this is like my parents being able to watch apollo and all the first space flights. It's incredible and I'm glad to get to experience it. If i could i'd like to shake the hands of every man and woman involved in this effort, they made my day better by showing us what can be done with some effort and stick to your guns.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Ohh, screw you. It's a good way of saying "I'm wishing you luck."
What else is there to do? Tell him "well, statistics say you're fucked."
ahh, let the religious types have their comfort. Doesn't hurt anything until it starts to infringe on our rights.
Change the second sentence to past tense, and I'd agree.
David Gould
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