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.

Comments

Congrats!

[grape jelly]

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....

Re:Congrats!

[XaXXon]

That really doesn't make sense. The $20M is gone. Period. Picking up $10M isn't losing money. It's making $10M you wouldn't otherwise have.

If you paid $4 to drive over a toll bridge and there was a $2 bill lying there, would you not pick it up because it would still be net negative?

It also means that they only have to find a way to make $10M profit to break even as opposed to $20M.

Your comment really doesn't make any sense to me.

Re:Congrats!

[chromaphobic]

Or, just that no human being had ever crossed that bridge before and you wanted to prove it could be done, and didn't care about the $2 or the $4.

Re:Congrats!

[Romeozulu]

I'm not really sure I'd call Concorde a failure with 20+ years in service. Because of the cost, it's far from a huge success, but not exactly a failure.

The biggest problem with Concorde was the noise issues that kept it some being deployed worldwide. Had it had been, economy of scale might have made it an economic success as well as a technical one.

The 747 would have been a huge failure with so few planes only two routes.

Re:Congrats!

[Richard_at_work]

A quick note here, but Boeing had a large part to do with Concorde not flying over the Continental US. The US administration and the FAA had no qualms about sonic booms or supersonic flight over the continental US until the Boeing supersonic aircraft project failed, some years after concorde was finalised. A Boeing aircraft would have had exactly the same issues with regards to sound, but the FAA decided to ban supersonic flights across the US citing noise to be the issue. Boeing had been assured that this wouldnt have been a problem when approached by the Kennedy administration with regards to building a Concorde competitor. From where Im standing it looks decidedly like a case of "Not invented here".

X-Prize, NASA Funding

[Aceto3for5]

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.

Re:X-Prize, NASA Funding

[sql*kitten]

Does/Should the X-Prize Foundation get federal funding for the efforts they are making towards space travel?

Err, do you actually want to get into space or not?

Re:X-Prize, NASA Funding

[System.out.println()]

I think the entire purpose of the X-Prize is that it does NOT get government funding. commercial entities need to be self-sufficient here.

Media Coverage

[Plocmstart]

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....

Re:Media Coverage

[ctwxman]

The roll showed inherent design problems with this particular spacecraft. No one seriously believes Mike Melville mistakenly kicked it into the corkscrew. Now that they have commercial contracts to carry passengers (with Richard Branson) spinning is not good for business. Dick Rutan will find a way to have this craft go up once more, a new (modified) design will be built which fixes this instability and SpaceShipOne will go to the Smithsonian before it hurts anyone. I can't commend Rutan's team enough, but this is an experimental craft in a rush to fly. There will be problems - that's why a test pilot was at the controls. The press (where I work) has a right and obligation to question this part of the flight. Rutan already has PR specialists to slavishly praise.

Re:Other competitors

[deathcloset]

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.

Yes, consider the results of the state-run program

[2nd Post!]

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.

Resting on your laurels is counterproductive

[dillon_rinker]

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!!!

Re:I hope they can do it without the spin-stabiliz

[cmowire]

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.

Re:I hope they can do it without the spin-stabiliz

[pragma_x]

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.

Re:Good hacks

[Teancum]

*Sigh*

The average person "on the street" frankly is totally clueless about what is even happening. Frankly, they are asking the average geek/nerd/astro guy they happen to know and ask them just what all this hoopla is really all about, and wondering why the geek is wetting his pants. (well, some of them at least)

This is a cool thing, and credit should be given where credit is due. With the announcement of the "America's Prize" (I guess yet to be announced) a new round in the competition for going into space will soon be at hand. If you are correct about Space Ship One, that Burton Rutan can't get it (or a similar ship) into orbit, then it looks like Armadillo Aerospace and the Romanians are going to be much more in the running for that prize.

The ships from those two groups appear to be more upgradeable to make it to orbit, although I would have to agree that reentry issues have not been fully explored. Still, there are a number of private groups now that have working propulsion systems going, and have been at least sending things up a few hundred feet, if not more, and are dealing with scalability issues as well.

I appreciate the fact that the X-Prize has set the tone of the current attitude toward space exploration. While it is more than likely driving nails into the coffin of NASA, there is much more to what is happening in the space industry than even cute rocket stunts. And don't think the big aerospace companies aren't paying attention to what is going on either.

Right now the rocket industry is in a renasannce that looks very much like the early days of the automobile industry or the early aviation industry. There are a couple of very well financed companies (like XCOR, for example) that I would be surprised if they went belly up, but still anything is possible. Boeing certainly struggled in their early days when they were first starting out, and it was a construction team smaller than Armadillo Aerospace, with far less financial backing.

I predict that private commercial space enterprises (like Virgin Galactic) will be within 10 years bringing in more cashflow than the entire computer industry. One reason in particular is because there is much more room to grow into space than there is for the computer industry to penetrate into 3rd World nations. Private space companies "going public" will be the next darling on Wall Street, and will create the next round of Billionaires for those who are getting in right now.