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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.
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'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....
What were the development costs of the X-15 program???
surely the other teams will continue to test their spacecraft.
Especially as we now have the 50mil prize being offered for orbital flight.
Sadly, these flights won't nab them that nice 10mil, but futher tests will certainly yield data that will help those who wish to pursue orbit (and I'm certain at least some do) in the development of thier orbital spacecraft.
Furthermore, just because Rutan wins the prize and is first doesn't mean that he's developed all the best technology for private spacecraft.
It seems likely that just the effort should yield some valuble research and technologies (which they might just sell to virgin galactic or scaled composites).
It's too big an investment to just toss a spaceship in the trashbin.
They had better keep going... Number 1: They have all thrown tons of time/money into it. Number 2: This is JUST the first step. The X Prize was to kick the Private sector into gear and start a competition... it's not like the X Prize guys said "Hey Burt! We'll give you, and only you, $10 Mil to get to space!" No, they wanted to see copmetition. And not that competition is going to move into the investor market... Virgin made their stake in Scaled, and now that's going to make others kick in to onto the other competitors... Like with any new market, people will throw a ton of money into it, there will be a ton of new companies trying to get their business off the ground (no pun intended)... Think Dot-Com bubble... only this one (hopefully) won't end up the same way. I hope that in 50 years, the X-Prize is remembered as well as Scaled and SSO will be.
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.
Well, the next one to get a launch vehicle working will be able to compete with SpaceShipOne for the real payoff -- commercial spaceline companies. Especially if they can do it for less money, safer, or better.
Gentoo Sucks
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
- 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
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!!!
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
I keep seeing this question, and it's starting to drive me a bit batty. Say you've invested several million dollars into making a working, passenger carrying suborbital rocket, hoping to win the X-Prize. Someone else gets the prize first. Can no one seriously come up with a way of making money off a suborbital, passenger carrying rocket ship? Do the investers not care about recouping at least part of their investment? Does no one want to go to space? Do people sit around with a spaceship up on blocks in their front yards wondering what the hell they're going to do with it?
It's even worse when people ask John Carmack this, since his rocket even has a guidance system and lands by itself (and has shown progress beyond cg animations at the x-prize website). Apparently few, if anybody, can come up with a use for a self-guided, self-landing, easily reusable rocket that can carry six hundred pounds. Should I even bother typing out "overnight automated package delivery to Japan"? Sure, there's problems with the idea, but I'd think slashdot and especially the x-prize forums could display a small hint of creativity.
Now granted, if someone spent several million on a suborbital rocket and all they have to show for it so far is a few sketches on a napkin, then I could understand them throwing in the towel. But they'd probably be giving up no matter the status of the X-Prize if their investment hasn't shown any progress.
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.
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.
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?
What probably bothers you is that this is real life and not the movies. There aren't usually sudden radical new technologies that can be used in a field that people have been spending billions on for decades.
The world is not a movie. To make progress takes hard work and years and years of time.