Slashdot Mirror
SpaceShipOne to Attempt Second Flight on Monday
m_member writes "There is a very cool video of the recent SpaceShipOne flight (on the Scaled video page) as covered by Slashdot. It shows some angles not on the webcast and most impressively has internal footage from when the roll occurred in the ascent. There are no M&Ms this time but Melville takes a few holiday snaps!" Gogo Dodo writes "After a successful first flight for the X Prize, SpaceShipOne is a go for launch to claim the X Prize on Monday. Takeoff is at 7am Pacific, ignition at 8am." October 4 will be the anniversary of the Sputnik launch.
That looked rather dangerous.
Yeah, hopefully SpaceShipOne won't have case of the Mondays.
Congrats the the Scaled Composites team! While I hope the $10M prize will give you guys a nice shot in the arm, why not put it toward developing space travel for high-speed human transport rather than tourism? It just strikes me as something that's much more financially viable than tourism....
Does/Should the X-Prize Foundation get federal funding for the efforts they are making towards space travel? Certainly NASA could learn a thing or two about budgets from these space explorers. I think perhaps it is a better investment for the government to fund private groups like this, considering the results of the state-run programs.
It is about time that we had someone other than Government make it to space. This should open up the market! Now, if they can just make this afforable to those of us who can't afford 100K or so...
Hope they go for the $50M prize for a vehicle that will house 5 to/from orbit....
If SpaceShipOne reaches the 100km mark on Monday, will the other competitors just give in, or will they too try to prove that they have the design and technology to reach space? Even if SpaceShipOne did not launch Oct. 4th, would anybody even be close enough to take advantage of this? (Hoping that any failure of the SSO mission would not result in casulties)
..And I hope I will be abe to realize my dream in the (maybe no-so-nearest) future. But first, I have to change my job ;-)
Damnit, where am I going to get 10 million dollars?
Well hell.. we can now go to mars (a la bush) if we could just get that pesky crossenvironment biodome thing worked out.
Remind me why I would put my life in the hands of people, when we still cant account for cross programs breaking code.
"Why did the airlock fail? Someone flushed the toilet Sir."
I am guessing that there succuss will come out of the fact that a pilot can control this ship and it is not reliant on predetermined scenarios. I always worry when aircraft have too many computers in them. The pilot obviously averted disaster here.
One thing that's amazing is that Melvill turned off the rocket something like 40 seconds early!! I wonder if SS1 could survive the stresses of atmosphere reentry falling from 200km altitude.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
I think it will be interesting to see how well they can repeat or even improve on the last flight. Or will they try to run an exact repeat?
Basically, how safe and sound are their methods?
I hope that SpaceshipOne can handle the atmosphere better than Scaled's serves can handle /.!
It'll be interesting to see how the media covers any potential problem that occurs this time. They hyped up the whole roll situation like it was the end of the world, even after he safely made it back down (a majority of the questions asked of him were about the unexpected roll). Gotta love how reporters constantly repeat nearly the same question when they don't really understand the situation....
To make this on-topic, SpaceShipOne will win 20,000 of the new $50 bills on Monday. Hooray!
I have to go out right now, but when I return (soon) I will have the videos mirrored on my website here: http://www.css-auth.com/ss1/ Perhaps within the hour.
Ads? What ads?
Could be taken on a holiday.
..but still.. WOOOAAAHHHhhh
Photographs, ey? He asked him knowingly...
no
Maybe they already know the answer and that's why he shut the rocket off when he knew he would pass the 100km mark.
I think it's cool that they have a predictive altimeter.
The password is:
1 2 3 4 5
Well it's possable that it will happen again.
If he does not keep his paw's off the alirons after crossing 100k.
Its good that the roll rate was as low as it was.
Thers not enought air up there to damp the roll rate without thusters.
There is a mirror at mirrordot ... ;)
http://www.mirrordot.org/
1957, so the 47th anniversary.
It was more like 11 seconds.
CNN story
ReliefBand: Nausea relief to go.
That is what I think. He even said he thought it was kinda cool.
I think he just wanted to say "Yehaa...".
about what exactly caused the roll last time? Given that now they had time go to through the telemetry data one assumes they would know for sure exactly what happened: did they make the info public?
-- the cake is a lie
Branson is only funding his Virgin space ship line becuase he wants 2 hour flights from Australia to london instead of 20+ hour flights :o
Should have scaled their server farm.
Good idea, except they only cache the pages, not the videos.
What goes up must come down... :) :) :)
Perhaps they could spend a few thousand to get a few new servers to handle the traffic.
/. effect in T-minus 5....4....3....2....
What were the development costs of the X-15 program???
It was flying the English Channel that did it. Nobody else could even fly the Kremer course (a one-mile or so figure 8), and then the group did the English Channel.
Actually, the method SpaceShipOne uses to re-enter the atmosphere is pretty robust and safe. Most times, entry vehicles use a blunt end - think the bottom of the Apollo capsule - to slow down through a process called 'aerobraking'. If a vehicle starts to spin rapidly during that time, bad things happen. SSO can enter the atmosphere in any orientation - nose down, nose up, sideways - and it will be OK because of it's back wing surface. In an orientation the Scaled guys call "feathering" the back end flips up 90 degrees in a high drag configuration. This forces the nose into the atmosphere at the right angle, so spinning isn't a vehicle loss issue Still, you go a lot slower re-entering from a suborbital flight than an orbital speed re-entry a la Columbia circa 2003
http://www.mirrordot.org/
0 6a3f98adfc2cc05/index.html
or
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/23a07365766c74d7
I'm in AZ and would certainly drive to CA to see this. Is this out of the Mohave Airport?
I'll voluteer for the passenger seat!!!
Is a good shot of the re-entry. I want so bad to see those wings actually fold up, that's too cool!
Anyone else out there who find it almost anime-esque?
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
But when you factor in those $1 million dollar hammers they used the cost grows to 1 billion.
Download video via BitTorrent at X-Prize-flight-1.wmv.torrent
But that mirrordot site has to be in competition with games.slashdot.org and it.slashdot.org for worst colors. Good grief.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
he doesn't become a member of the Darwin Award's list.
Good luck and godspeed!
wasn't the point of the x-prize to carry 3 people of similar body weight into space in a span of two weeks? I may be wrong but haven't they only been carrying one person all this time?
did you forget to take your meds?
...with FreeCache or Coral.
Or just make it Slashdot-policy to use the past-tense when describing off-site content, like this:
Kind of pre-empts the whole /. effect, don't you think?
It would be great to start moving away from the whole organised-DDOS attack thing...
The guys from da Vinci have always said that the real money is in the post X-Prize contracts (i.e. Virgin Galactic). Having the additional prizes would help keep the focus of the design teams, the money of the sponsors, and the media's attention on the race.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
Was anybody watching the live coverage when the rolling kept going? Did you think there was a serious problem at that time? It is different to view it after you know they made it down safely.
Table-ized A.I.
I watched the webcast, but the Scaled video has some of the in-cabin footage. After Mike cut the engines, you can see him working to stabilze the roll, then as he hit the zenith, he grabs a digi-cam and starts taking snapshots out the windows.
Gotta love it!
--
Free gmail invites
Their choice. They chose one live pilot, plus the weight of two people made up of trinkets provided by the ground crew.
The other thing that is amazing is that the man is flying that spaceship MANUALLY!
Nasa never launched with a manual flight system, nor the Russians.
I am curious as to why it does not have a simple flight computer and gyros to auto stabalize the launch flight. Even a low cost autopilot out of a old jet could do the job.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From the site:
"(sorry slashdot.org visitors, overloaded...start a bittorrent feed?)"
How did they know we were coming?
You won't hate yourself in the morning if you don't get up before noon.
We got to the moon. And back. Multiple times.
We sent probes to Mars. And Venus. And beyond. And some of them still work.
We sent rovers to Mars. That still work.
We built several working space vehicles.
We space-walked.
We build a space station. And then we built another one.
We chased comets. And sent the collected materials back.
We've populated our solar system with several probes that have performed beyond expectation.
We have Tang.
We have titanium hips, golf clubs, glass frames, laptops, and spyplanes.
There are many, many, more places where our investment into NASA has benefitted us enormously.
GPL Deconstructed
Considering the wackiness factor of many of the other "competitors", I think that many will take this opportunity to exit the competition. I don't really mean this as a troll, but honestly, people, but one of these rockets already blew up on launch, and from what I've seen, most if not all the other "competitors" just don't have the R and D resources to pull off anything but a semi-spectacular fatality.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
- Videos -
... is that sag?
Oct 01 11am - VIDEOS TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE (sorry slashdot.org visitors, overloaded...start a bittorrent feed?)
So instead of just everyone jumping all over their site directly, why not use FreeCache first, especially when you know the video is 5.7 megs and it'll be popular...
(sig)^-1
The Canadian Arrow team has put together the world's first private astronaut training centre. If they were only in it for the X-Prize, they wouldn't have built the training centre. They are looking to space tourism, and are also hoping to start a new extreme sport: Space-diving (like sky-diving, except from space).
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
because they trust good old mechanics better than fly by wire with the risk of bsod due to paul allen insisting on XP being used.
As much as I'd like to see what you describe, it seems more likely that in the immediate future, it will be more profitable to give rich people $200,000 trips into space then it will to do as you suggest.
Hopefully, tourism will "bootstrap" the space industry, and who knows, maybe spaceflight will progress through the 21st century the way that aviation will progress through the 20th century.
The heat due to reentry has less to do with the altitude and more to do with the actual speed at impact.
Objects that reach orbital velocity are going far faster and thus generate far more heat then something that effectively goes straight up and straight down such as SpaceShipOne (relative to something like the space shuttle that does achieve orbit).
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
If you look at the video, as soon as the rocket is lit, the thing starts to roll one way then the other by about 30-4 degrees before finally hitting complete 360's.
Makes you wonder if the tail fins need to the larger to give better stability when in a more vertical flight?????
We got to the moon. And back. Multiple times. And what have we done since to develop on this ability?
... if we launched it before now.
We sent probes to Mars. And Venus. And beyond. And some of them still work. So how many of them - percentagewise - still work? Even better, how many worked right in the first place? And what are we doing with this information?
We sent rovers to Mars. That still work.And we could have sent people. I did a report on the Mars Odyssey years ago that said we could get people there with relative ease
We built several working space vehicles.And they are somewhat reusable. But they are expensive. A private venture would make them as cheaply as possible so as to save as much money as possible. A government organization doesn't worry about cost at first; after all, they're just spending tax money that would otherwise get spent on things that aren't worth as much, so it might as well be used to do this - that way in 5 years when their budget requirements go up (for actual work, that is) they can cut back on unnecessary programs, fund the things they actually need, and not actually need to get more money - but so they can continue to do it, they say "look at us, we had to shut down "x" program due to lack of funds."
We space-walked.Yes, many times. Again, what has it gotten us?
We build a space station. And then we built another one.Why did we build a second station? Oh wait, the first one quit working. Did we get a good return on the investment from it at least?
We chased comets. And sent the collected materials back. Yay! We have interstellar ice and small particles!
We've populated our solar system with several probes that have performed beyond expectation.And future spacecraft need to dodge the ones that don't work. And - in theory - what happens if one drifts into the path of a comet? Long odds, to be sure, but possible.
We have Tang.This is a GOOD thing?
We have titanium hips, golf clubs, glass frames, laptops, and spyplanes.True. How much of this would have been made without space travel? This isn't Civilization by Sid Meier - we didn't really *need* Space travel to get Plastics, it merely provided a reason to do so.
I don't think the space program has been entirely a waste of time and money; however, I do think they need to pay more attention to actual useful things that work rather than other stuff. How many things like Tang and Plastics have come from the Space Program since we landed on the Moon?
I suppose the big question is ... if NASA instead were merely a contracting arm of the goverment which put together specs for tender, would we have gotten further, faster, and cheaper?
And let's not forget the human cost: would we have lost similar or fewer people doing it (safety)?
No, really. I'm serious. This is not intended as a slam against government waste or corporate cost/corner cutting. It's really a question for thought. Is there a middle ground available where we get the same safety, but further/faster/cheaper?
Contractors would need to be able to find ways to compete against others for the research business. There are some things that competition is good for. But, then again, with only one possible customer at the time (NASA), would there be enough competition for those dollars? Now might be a much better time (than, say, the 1950's) to thin out NASA, spin off JPL, and then have NASA merely contract out: the competition will be competing for business from much more than NASA - airlines will be interested in some of this technology, too, I'm sure.
We sailed to England. And back. Multiple times.
We sent messengers to Persia. And India. And beyond.
We sent caravans to India. We still trade with them.
We built several working sailing ships.
We swam in the sea.
We colonized a tiny island. And then we colonized another one.
We chased whales. And sent the collected materials back.
We've sent our driftwood around the world on the ocean's currents.
We have spice.
We have gunpowder, algeabra, paper, Arabic numerals, and modern surgery.
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED FOR US TO FINANCE THIS FLEET OF YOURS, COLUMBUS!!!
Actually, the pilot has admitted to being the cause of the spin (he said he may have stepped on a rudder control).
Besides, Tang can cause Diabeetise
Well, because it's harder than you think.
Remember, he's got a stick for subsonic flight. He's got trim for supersonic flight. And then he's got thrusters for space usage. Plus backup systems, which you have to know when they should be activated. So it can't just be an off-the-shelf system.
The thing is, if you *needed* the autopilot, you'd need to have redundancy and reliability and whatnot. If you don't *need* the autopilot, it's an added expense, a waste of time, and it takes up weight that can be used for something else. So, for an experimental aircraft that's going to be flown by Scaled's best pilots, why not?
The other problem is that the main folks who have an off-the-shelf flight computer that would be suitable is the Air Force. Who obviously isn't going to sell one to "just anyone", which means that an X-prize contender can't have it.
Gentoo Sucks
This is the stream os the entire 3+hours. Fast Forward to 2:09:00 for the start of the flight.o sitesx1300500wmv
mms:wmworldmii-streamingnetmediadeepbluscaledcomp
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Estes is selling a line of X-Prize flying models:
http://www.rocketshoppe.com/images/scoop_1.jpg
http://www.rocketshoppe.com/images/scoop_2.jpg
They've since gotten rights for the SpaceShipOne design.
SpaceShipOne-large.torrent
Not my tracker. This contains documentary-style footage of the launch.
Probably not -- old jets are big creaky old busses that lumber along in straight and level flight, hardly ever changing altitude at more than 1k feet per minute. This flight plan is waay outside their operating envelope. Most of them could not be perverted into attempting it.
He probably does use gyros in his instruments, but the control feedback loop is damped by meat.
We created Burning Man.
Ecliptic Enterprises, who makes the onboard videocamera used for much of that footage, has two mirrors of the video footage:
RocketCam (TM) Videos
RocketCam (TM) Video Mirror at RocketCam.Space.TV
MPEG and QT conversions of the WMV will be going up in a few minutes, as well, for all you linux and mac users. (As of 12:30pm PST, should be up by 1:00PST/4:00EST).
Disclaimer: I'm Ecliptic's webmaster by subcontract.
Enjoy.
-Ev
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
I think they view this as an emerging market, and they want to make sure they have a piece of the pie.
Moin,
:(
is is pretty sad that you have to have Windows media (and windows or mac) to view the windows-only videos
Why not use a free, open coded? I want to watch the videos under linux, damnit!
The X15 flew into 'space' when hhe USAF set the boundary at 50 miles. SS1 exceeds 100Km (62 miles)
The X15 program was VERY expensive in todays dollars, more than $100m I believe.
> We got to the moon. And back. Multiple times
No argument, that was a great achievement.
> We sent probes to Mars. And Venus. And beyond. And some of them still work.
> We sent rovers to Mars. That still work.
> We built several working space vehicles.
> We space-walked.
> We build a space station. And then we built another one.
> We chased comets. And sent the collected materials back.
All of these were a "me-too" kind of things. Nothing else than attempts to repeat similar Russian achievements with purely political/PR oriented purposes. Most of the times NASA managed to do it _decades_ later than Russians. I don't really see the need to spend so much money on thing like this.
One of the big problems to date has been NASA's overwhelming insistence on safety at the expense of actually developing the technology. Exploring a new, developing frontier is going to be dangerous, especially when that frontier is inimical to human life. People will be killed doing so. We lose how many people per year doing things like catching fish and crab in Alaska? (I saved you the trouble of looking it up: By the latest 5-year average, about 34 vessels sink each year, with about 24 lives lost annually.) The human cost is acceptable, though tragic. Ask the people taking these risks what they'd view as acceptable...it's a lot higher than the pundits that want to shut down space exploration. You're right....it's time, or past time, to severely thin NASA and have the government space business contracted out to private industry.
I have a question for you people. If you were to increase the size of the craft by say, a factor of 3 or 4, what altitude would the craft be capable of achieving?
The other problem is that the main folks who have an off-the-shelf flight computer that would be suitable is the Air Force. Who obviously isn't going to sell one to "just anyone", which means that an X-prize contender can't have it.
That's probably no coincidence since a "spacecraft" with an autopilot, is basically an explosive device short of a missile. There may be some heavy federal legislation involving the private production of such systems let alone the government not wanting to share such technology with just anyone.
Just a thought.
Hmm... Boeing or Airbus could provide a flight computer "off the shelf". They're not really off-the-shelf, because they're custom for each type of aircraft they're put in.
Plus, there are plenty of civilian flight control systems that could probably be easily adapted to the role, but of course, in a commercial aircraft, that will require lots of expensive FAA documentation and oversight (and liability insurance for the manufacturers...).
Given Bert Rutan's history with experemental aircraft, and the things that can go wrong with automated controls, fully manual flight controls only make sense. By keeping the controls simple, and by having avionics that tell the pilot what to do rather than do it for him, they reduce the expense, while improving pilot safety. Look at all thats gone wrong with NASA's massively redundant computer systems - if the flight computer on spaceshipone completely fails, chances are the pilot will still land the craft safely, and may even be able to complete the mission safely.
Basically the same capabilities? Really? Is SSO capable of mach 6.7?
If your intent was to disparage the X-15 program, it seems to me misplaced. SSO is where it is today, in part, because of the X-15 program research.
emt 377 emt 4
The SpaceShipOne footage is available along with a lot of other cool space launch footage including the June SS1 first flight into space at Ecliptic Enterprises' RocketCam Videos page.
I just uploaded MPEG conversions, as well, so Linux users (and Macs without Windows Media Player) get to join in the fun.
Disclaimer: I'm Ecliptic's webmaster.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
sorry, but your history is warped
Companies WANT to do massive amounts of Documentation ? PuhLeeez ! I used to work in the space industry. I fondly remember delivering a 500lb satellite component. It went in a nice little panel truck. The US Government Required, Congress 'make the world safe by covering it with BS paper' documentation weighed 1 1/2 tons and went out LTL truck on a couple of pallets. We never wanted to maintain all the BS- just what was required to assure success.
It must be, hands down, the coolest place to work ever in the history of humankind... except that it's in Mojave, CA.
Anyone?
Or, they could have bought one from the "independant suppliers" such as this one:
http://www.argon.ru/production/a-60.htm.
To learn more about russian on-board computers,
visit this site: http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/0.htm.
20,000 x $50 = $1 million. The prize is $10 million.
I certainly hope they give them the 200,000 bills they are due :-)
You might as well worry "what if there were only going to be one type of car" (or airplane, or boat, or helium blimp, or etc).
Even if the other X-prize teams quit Tuesday, interest will pick up again as soon as Virgin Galactic shows a profit.
See, that occured to me.
However, in either case, you are dealing with a lot of modifications. They managed to convince the F-16's FBW system to work in the F-117 prototype and the F-15's to make the DC-X work. I don't know if anybody's tried that with Airbus avionics in the same way, but I imagine that a fighter's control computer would be much more able to handle the changes.
And these modifications would have to be tested.
It just adds time and money to the program. I think it's pretty cool that they've managed to do it with all simple controls. Remember, the Boeing "Bird of Prey" stealth aircraft prototype also doesn't require any fly-by-wire.
As an experimental aircraft, any avionics aren't required to be certified in the same way as a production aircraft. However, if it, or a derivative, makes it to the production line, it will require certification.
Gentoo Sucks
If these guys were investigating and developing a radical new technology that's orders of magnitude cheaper than the traditional ways of getting into space, then it would be really interesting. Even a stunt like the X-Prize shot would be worthwhile to help develop it. But it's not radical new technology. It's just the same old chemical rocket stuff all over again. With a lot of cut corners. (And, apparently, "unscripted maneuvers").
And they're not even particularly good chemical rockets. Hybrid rockets burning plastic/rubber/etc and N2O have inherently poorer performance than, say, the hydrogen/oxygen engines that are common on the upper stages of orbital launchers. Hybrids are simpler, cheaper and safer, and they've become very popular among amateur high-power rocketeers for this reason. They're fun. But they just don't have the performance for a practical orbital launcher, as opposed to a suborbital "stunt" flight. Or is "commercial manned space" just about quickie zero-g joyrides for people with too much money? I can already experience zero-g on an airplane or Six Flags' Superman: The Escape a lot more cheaply.
The problem is that there just don't seem to be any radical, new technologies promising to cut space access costs by orders of magnitude just waiting for entrepreneurs to commercialize them. And that means only a tiny handful of humans will ever be able to go into space in our lifetime, and for at least several more. I wish it were otherwise, but we have to face facts. In the meantime, we have to get the very most out of the expensive launchers we do have, and that means putting more and more capable robots into space to give us earthbound humans the best vicarious experience of space travel we can possibly get.
I'm also really put off by all this "go private enterprise, rah rah rah" stuff, as if NASA is full of complete idiots. (It got so thick the other morning that I had to turn the TV volume down.) Who do they think builds the rockets that NASA has been flying for decades? What about the many space launchers that have already been fully commercialized? And where did the money for SpaceShipOne really come from? (Hint: what if the US Government were to actually enforce its antitrust laws against large software companies?)
If you've got the money, you can already buy a launch from any of several commercial companies, and only some of them are American. And there are companies who routinely launch stuff and make money. Space is already big business.
But when I look at SpaceShipOne and similar projects, I see a bunch of rich guys publicly stroking their egos. SpaceShipOne is a dead-end hack. I'd actually be completely okay with that if only they would be more honest with the public about what they're really doing.
IIRC the complete autoland - deorbit to ground - has never been flight tested, so there is a hybrid with autoland typically used for a lot of it, alongside the fly-by-wire system that allows the pilot to direct the shuttle on its path, within the limits of the flight profile. Early flights needed a bit more correction and could essentially override the profile, as John Young had to once, as he didn't like the look of several "pinned" indictors. I hear those are bad in a cockpit except for scaring newbies. The pilot could do the whole thing FBW but never does, several parts are just too much piloting, the autoland could theoretically control the whole thing but similarly never has - last I heard from an astronaut tilting at the funding problems, it wasn't fully flight tested because the money wasn't there - the programs are written, in the computers, but not certified for full use. This may have changed with the glass cockpit upgrades...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If SpaceShipOne reaches the 100km mark on Monday, will the other competitors just give in, or will they too try to prove that they have the design and technology to reach space?
Hmmm,, lets see here, Intel had pretty much won the personal computer CPU "prize". Did that make it pointless for the other competitors to just give in? Well Cyrix certainly did, but there's still that darned pesky AMD hanging in there with their cheaper 32-bit chips, and now they got that real-pain-in-Intel's-backside 64-bit thing going on.... Who wins? We, the customers do! Competition is good!. Bring it on! Maybe a balloon-assisted rocket-plane might be what'll eventuially get tourist flights to the edge of space more affordable in price down from $190K per seat to perhaps $19K per seat in our lifetimes.
Wow. Did your report consider how the craft you would travel to Mars in would carry the needed water? Water for astronauts. Water for cooling purposes. The whole reason that so much research is being done in regards to searching for Mars water is TO FACILITATE a trip there. Oh, yeah. And the search for ET too.
... if we launched it before now."
"We sent rovers to Mars. That still work.And we could have sent people. I did a report on the Mars Odyssey years ago that said we could get people there with relative ease
The big problem with liquid-fueled rockets is that they blow up so damned easily. You have to mix two (often cryogenic) fuels rapidly and efficiently, and ignite them rapidly and steadily enough that no pooling or major vortex shedding occurs in the engine (BOOM). You have to pump those liquids into the engine against the pressure of combustion; just the mechanical power required to do so is a major problem for existing rockets (e.g. the Space Shuttle Main Engines, which use insanely expensive turbopumps that still require overhauls after every flight).
Rubber/Nitrous hybrid engines may have lower specific impulse than LOX/H2 engines, but they have the added advantage that it's pretty hard to make one explode. The combustion occurs on a well-defined surface (the surface of the rubber) and you can throttle the engine easily by controlling the flow of oxidizer. Rutan's insight in the SS1 design was that controllability, simplicity, and safety are more important than sheer power.
When you start treating spaceflight as a routine event, rather than an expensive stunt, then having the most power possible isn't as important as having reliable, low-maintenance, safe engine components. You might as well complain that Ford isn't getting 1,800 HP out of its 6-liter Explorer engines -- after all, drag racers achieve more than 300 HP/liter, why shouldn't your family bulgemobile?
He said he might have been the cause; he didn't state definitively that he was the cause. A subtle difference, but important.
"The heat due to reentry has less to do with the altitude and more to do with the actual speed at impact." Agreed.... i for one would have like to see what would have happened if he would have run the tanks dry!! He might have reached 200+K ... then the fun starts at re-entry.... I for one think we are on the brink of some very cool space history.. that is happening in our lifetimes...
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Annual war on drugs: $40B
X-Prize: $10M
You'd think the government could rework the budget somewhere and make some contributions towards a similar let's-go-to-space prize. It's not like they're ever gonna win the war on drugs anyhow, sparing $10M isn't going to make much of a difference. Hell, spend the whole $40B on space travel and maybe we'll finally go somewhere.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
The movie sucked, but it did feature Kirk doing "orbital skydiving" as part of a midlife crisis. I even have the action figure! Glad to see that the more irrelevant Star Trek technologies are becoming a reality.
"That's probably no coincidence since a "spacecraft" with an autopilot, is basically an explosive device short of a missile. There may be some heavy federal legislation involving the private production of such systems let alone the government not wanting to share such technology with just anyone."
If memory serves the choice to not use autopilot/fly by wire had more to do with a combination of cost and the need to keep things simple. One of the issues leading to the downfall of the Space Shuttle program is that the system is so very complex resulting in an enormous potential for catastrophic failure, more so that if that spacecraft had been designed with K*I*S*S in mind. The fact that it (the shuttle) still is largely reliant on mid to late seventies technology contributes to the problems as well. In any case the back to basics approach used by spaceship one as pertains to flight controls seems to have paid off so far. Who'd have thought an actual human pilot flying manually would have a relistic shot at the X Prize?
We do, in fact live in wonderous times.
Last time, it turned out to be complicated, though solvable: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-60/ch -7.html/
"... The X-15's maximum altitude was extended to 354 200 feet, but not until after much trial and error..."
"... though the tail surface provides stability in pitch and yaw, no purely aerodynamic means has been found to achieve roll stability, since the airflow remains symmetrical about the axis of rotation. The coupling between roll and yaw becomes more severe as vertical-tail size increases, and it has presented a multitude of problems to designers of high-speed aircraft.
"The solution to the stability-and-control analysis is the development of an adequate mathematical model. But such an analysis also requires a mathematical model for the pilot..."
Fascinating account there of how the roll problem was addressed with the earlier rocket-planes.
You're not the only one suspecting that he did intend to perform a one or two turn roll... and that the roll turned out to be vastly more intense than he bargained for.
I really doubt he rolled it on purpose. Mike Melvill has been working as a full-time professional test pilot for over 20 years. You don't stay alive long in that business if you "hot dog" it by doing things on the spur of the moment. You stick to the test card. You are especially when you are working in a part of the envelope that is relatively untested - they were heavier than on earlier flights, and with a longer engine burn.
Kevin Horton
At least IIRC...I think Feynman mentioned it in Surely You're Joking; I can't find a ref at the moment. I tried it once in X-Plane, and man, that pilot is made of ice - I ended up doing the Big Streak Across The Sky.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
A bit more from that page:
...
The X-15's Powerful Roll Damper
As speed and altitude increase, one pronounced effect on airplane control is a drastic decrease in the aerodynamic restoring forces that retard the oscillatory motions about the center of gravity. These restoring forces, which damp the motion, are effectively nonexistent over much of the X-15's flight regime, except at low speed and low altitude. Therefore, for precise control, it was necessary to provide artificial means for damping motions, through the control system. Damping about the pitch, roll and yaw axis had previously been something of a luxury for high-speed aircraft, but it became essential for the X-15. Furthermore, it had to be much more powerful than before. Previous automatic-damper systems bolstered pilot control only slightly, but the X-15 roll damper has twice the roll-control capability of the pilot. This strong stability-augmentation became a predominant part of the control system.
--> Well worth reading; check the multiple control systems for different regimes. And the one vehicle and pilot lost in flight, when the X-15 somehow yawed sideways in space and re-entered the atmosphere sideways instead of pointy-end-first.
The movie shows a slight roll right of a few degrees, brief roll to the left of less than 90 degrees, then a roll to the right, a moment of hesitation and a fast and increasing roll to the right, all in about five seconds.
....)
Looks like what the X-15 archives describe happening to them, offhand. Not that I know anything (except how little we learn from history
Ahhh, the BD-10 is a Jim Bede design, not a Rutan design.
And Raytheon bought back all the Starship airframes because the small number of them out there would have cost them far too much to support (spares, service, etc). In fact, there has been only one Starship accident, and that aircraft was rebuilt. The problems with the aircraft are performace related (basically, it's slow, burns too much gas, uses too much runway, and is difficult to load correctly), not safety related.
And yeah, most people in the production aircraft business don't think too highly of Rutan.
Merde, il pleut encore!
and his jump then read this book. It is truly excellent.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I just had to bring this up... Spaceship One's shape (except for the wings) and the whole X-Prize race reminds me of a 1950's Mickey Mouse comic book, whose title I don't recall.
In the comic, Mickey Mouse is building a space ship in his garage, for a race to the moon (for a prize? Don't recall). Black Bart is one of the other competitors. BB sneaks into the garage and attempts to sabotage MM's space ship. Then (memory fog...) somehow BB ends up stowing aboard MM's ship. Of course MM wins in the end.
The cool thing is that the similarity between Spaceship One and Mickey's ship, which had the same shape, but a single windshield and standard 1950's rocket fins. I think the overall size was similar - Mickey's was about twice as large.
One wonders, given the possible $50 million Bigelow prize for an orbital vehicle, what would be the prize for a moon landing?
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
> One of the big problems to date has been NASA's overwhelming insistence on safety at the expense of actually developing the technology.
Actually, I'd argue that NASA's big problem is its insistence on developing cutting-edge technologies and cramming as many of them as possible into its space vehicles (which need large numbers of maintenance workers to ensure their proper functionality), instead of just using and refining older technologies which have already proven to be reliable.
For those who may not have known, #SpaceShipOne channel is again available for those who wish to follow the flights for the X-Prize live. there is another channel called #SS1-FltData that was planned to carry full/live data but instead will just have current info posted there to avoid conflicts with chat in the main channel.
The channels are located on the Freenode.net servers ( irc.freenode.net ).
/Maestro software), #cassini, #messenger, etc.
The Channels are:
- #SpaceShipOne - (Primary CHAT channel)
- #SpaceShipOne-overflow - (a 'backup' channel)
- #SS1-FltData - (FltData Info Only)
- #space - General 'space' chat and links to other specific JPL (and other NASA) program's channels (also on Freenode.net). #maestro (Mars Rover/SAP
- #xprize - New channel for the yearly followup of the XPrize Discussion.
You can type !launch to see the next scheduled countdown to launch (take-off time) of SS1/WhiteKnight. The time shown primarily is in CENTRAL-Time but the Pacific and GMT times are also shown as a reference. **Pacific-Time is 2 Hours behind Central-Time.
You can type !weather for the CURRENT weather report from the Mojave Spaceport (KMHV) Weather reports should be reported automatically in the Flight-Data channel (#SS1-FltData) as well. -(NEW! added feature!)
You can also type $news xprize to see the latest links from 'XPrizeNews' RSS feed, $news spacecom for links to Space.com's RSS feed, and $news spacewire for links to SpaceWire's (SpaceRef) RSS feed. Please use the '/query SS1-Info and then type in that private msg area: "news XXXXX" or just "/msg SS1-Info news XXXXX" in your normal channel... so it will not always show in their channel window each time someone want's to see it. I will on occasion do it openly to help those to know of it and to see it in operation. It also will post new/fresh headlines as they arrive.
For XPrizenews news headlines/links, you can type ' $news xprize
For Space.com news headlines/links, you can type ' $news spacecom '.
For SpaceWire news headlined/links, you can type ' $news spacewire '.
Please remember, these are Professional and Family-Oriented channels so keep off-topic chat (esp during the flights) and abusive language/inappropriate behavior to a minimum.
Hope to see you there....
-Pandelirium
Admin/Ops/Moderator #SpaceShipOne Channel
... And here's the screenshot:
... someone please save us from bad science reporting...
http://musicalgearbox.com/cnnorbit.jpg
And after the Shuttle going "nearly 18 times the speed of light"
Tag lost or not installed.
Phil, although you're right about what this means in the context of our technical ability to get into orbit, there is another very big issue at stake here.
We are not limited only by our technical ability. We are also very strongly limited by the restraints that our badly evolved and mutated institutions place upon us, and in the context of space, that means government controls.
Rutan and many other similar "impudent entrepreneurs" are pushing the envelope of what is considered normal for privateers in small ways that governments cannot easily squash, and that in itself is invaluable. It does pave the way for ordinary people to get into space eventually, despite this having absolutely no relationship to the $100k roy rides being planned. That's just a stepping stone in meme space, more than anything else.
Don't worry about new technologies for *real* space travel --- they will derive from the very light and very strong materials already on the horizon from advances in nanoscale manufacturing, even in the absence of major improvements in propulsion.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
So I am always very skeptical whenever the major theme of some space-related startup seems to revolve more around bashing NASA than actually building a good product. It's not that NASA is terribly wonderful -- it has many problems -- but the simple truth is that the business of space flight is a lot harder than many naive entrepreneurs (and their lay cheerleaders) think it is.
Rutan is, by far, the most "real" space entrepreneur to come along in a long time. He clearly earned his X-Prize, and I congratulate him for it. But I sure do wish he'd ease off on his NASA-bashing and concede that space has always had plenty of room for both business and government, especially in cooperative projects. NASA may be a government institution, but it has a lot of real flesh-and-blood people who want to promote space exploration and development just as he does, and many of them are actually quite bright. Now that Rutan has finally reached the point NASA first passed in the late 1950s, he may discover that the next steps aren't quite as easy as he thought.
The "private enterprise in space" mantra is practically a religion with some people, and like most religions it's based more on wishful thinking than reality.
Oh, I agree, totally.
But that doesn't argue against the fact that Rutan in his role as a symbol plus a swarm of full-orbit wishful thinkers behind him are pushing the meme boundaries ever so slightly, and that's in our favour in the long run.
Although I'm a feet-on-the-ground engineer, the effect of detractors has always worried me much more than the effect of visionaries. The former place a chill on progress, whereas the latter encourage it no matter how misguided.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
By the way, how's amateur radio coming along? :-)
Don't answer that. I only mentioned it because it's slightly on-topic w.r.to my previous reply. Here's the tie-in:
After many years of trying to get networking used to its full capacity in amateur circles (I remember your packet program in the early years, and used to chat with you on the old amateur TCP/IP group), I gave up with amateur radio. You know why? Because of its detractors, both in national institutions and in local circles, always stifling innovation for one reason or another.
I applaud these slightly nutty (or at least uninhibited) visionaries at the margins of the space industry, because they have a positive effect on the spirit of man. It doesn't take away anything from the hard-working and brilliant scientists and engineers at NASA et al, but that's on a different level. And even they benefit from the mass population being inspired by the visionaries to look upwards a little more.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Sure, someday it would be nice for humans to colonize space, but that's many generations off. Cliched comparisons to Columbus and the New World aren't just flawed, they're plainly absurd.
With both the space shuttle and the space station having become the ratholes and fiascos that the many scientists with calmer heads warned they'd become, one would think that the public would be learning their lesson by now.