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.
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?
Well, it cost something in the neighbourhood of $20M to build, so they're not really *gaining* any financing from this ;)
There is a mirror at mirrordot ... ;)
http://www.mirrordot.org/
It was more like 11 seconds.
CNN story
The Canadian DaVinci project has already stated that they are a couple weeks from launching, so if SpaceShipOne for some reason is unable to complete its bid for the X-prize in the next 2 weeks there is a possibility it could occur.
In addition, they have stated that they will be proceeding with the launches regardless of whether the SpaceShipOne project succeeds in claiming the prize or not. Their goal is to prove that they can do it, even if they don't win the prize.
This is not a sig.
According to Wikipedia, da Vinci Project was planning to make its first competitive flight on Oct 2, but has to delay. So at least someone is close.
At the last launch, the X-Prize Foundation announced that they will be continuing the $10 mil prize every year, which will allow other teams to win the prize and give several different designs to the world.
I think it was announced that it was wind shear which caused the roll on the first flight.
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
Download video via BitTorrent at X-Prize-flight-1.wmv.torrent
They do have to carry 3 people, or the pilot and weight of 2 passangers (probably used sand bags).
BTW, Burt Rutan mentioned just after the last flight that he might be a passenger in the next one.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
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
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
Actually, the pilot has admitted to being the cause of the spin (he said he may have stepped on a rudder control).
They could put tickets for the two additional seats on E-bay
No, actually they couldn't.
N328KF is registered as an experimental glider. Under Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) that means two things:
a) You can't carry passengers at all until the craft has been satisfactorily flight tested.
b) You can never carry passengers for hire.
Whether or not at this point SSO has been flight tested is up to the FAA. It's usually about 40 hours of testing, and I have no clue whether they've put that much time on the airframe at this point or not and whether the FAA inspector is happy with the suborbital flight tests they've done. In any event, they won't be able to recover costs from passengers until they develop a certificated platform.
This
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.
Not true. The X-15 twice broke 100km, both times piloted by Joseph A. Walker.
Can you find a reference? Because all I see is reference to the X-Prize Cup which is entirely different than a "X-Prize a year" concept.
The X-Prize Cup is a bit more oriented towards "racing" team competition than as a stepping stone towards commercial space travel/tourism.
Not that the racing concept isn't useful for publicity and development of parts of the playing field, but they aren't the same prizes.
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.
There is only 1 rocket nozzle.
The theory is the roll was started by upper level winds, which was correctable. Mellville says he stepped on a rudder pedal a bit too agressively which started the unrequested roll.
If you look at the design, the rudders are above the thrust line. If you give a rudder input, you will get a roll in the same direction. Its like having built in dihedral. Once the roll started, they were in the upper stmosphere. The aero surfaces would be pretty much ineffective, but the RCS would not be strong enough yet to control the craft. By that time the feathering system could be opened, and any roll/yawing moments would be dampened as the craft comes back into thicker atmosphere. You even see the pilot stop fiddling with the controls once the roll was slowed and start taking pictures.
You could ask 'well why not put the wings and vertial stabs in line with the thrust line?" My thinking is that you want the weight further below the line so that on reentry it will want to come down right side up. It would help it be more stable on the way down and make sure the craft reenters at the corect attitude (rather than inverted or backward).