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SpaceShipOne Captures the X Prize
I got to Mojave yesterday evening (it's a long way from El Paso), slept in my car, and got to the airfield itself just before 4 a.m. Traffic on state highway 58 was brisk already, though not clogged (which it later became), and nearly every car was turning onto the two-lane entrance heading for acres of packed-dirt parking spaces near the runway from which SpaceShipOne would take off.
The crowd which built up in the following hours was surprisingly quiet on takeoff, which happened right at 7:45 local time. Not exactly hushed -- perhaps "hesitant" is a better word, or maybe just waking up. Only scattered clapping (guilty!) as the White Knight / SpaceShipOne piggyback duo lifted off, followed shortly by two chase planes, an AlphaJet and a Beechcraft Starship. The enthusiasm grew, though, as the flight progressed; a P.A. system kept the spectators informed of the trip's progress.
When SpaceShipOne finally separated and fired upward ("Good release, good release!" over the P.A, followed by enthusiastic cheering), it was after three separate two-minute warnings, then for one-minute and 30-second intervals. After an 84-second burn followed by a clean shutdown, SpaceShipOne coasted to its final altitude. At 90 seconds into the flight, the ship was well past 100,000 feet, and out of sight to the unaided eye. At 7:51, an altitude of 328,000 feet was reported, but the ship was still climbing for the next 40,000 feet under its own momentum. The reported peak altitude is enough to top the previous record, set by an X-15 at 354,200 ft. in 1963.
The descent was happily uneventful. At 60,000 feet, Binnie experienced "slight oscillations" -- consistent with previous flights, according to the announcer, who continued to count down the altitude. At approximately 45,000 feet, the conditions are right for contrails, and more cheering erupted when those popped into view. The crowd perked up and cheered even more with the first of two sonic booms audible on the ground (the booms that occur during ascent aren't), pointing and shading their eyes from the sun, following the ship as it traveled in wide arcs to bleed off the energy of the ascent, followed by a smooth 3-point landing.
(Special thanks to the members of the Foothill High School band who traveled the three hours from Orange County to watch the flight and play both before and after the flight. The launch itself was surprisingly low on ceremony, and their playing provided a bit of well-deserved pomp.)
That's a bit of a let-down, actually. I was hoping a few more people would have a successful first launch before someone managed to do it twice in two weeks. It would have been a little more dramatic.
What do you think will happen to the other projects? I suppose they must have been funded well enough to not depend on receiving the prize.
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Say what you will, but this guy is a true visionary and genius. First the round the world on a tank of gas flight, and now this.
Congrats to Paul Allen as well, for his vision and support.
"budget embarrassingly smaller than NASA's"
Of course Rutan didn't perform any of the fundamental research that lead to the first manned flights, so his efforts are piggy-backing on those of NASA.
What a bullshit comparison.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
On the webcast. Wow. I mean really - ok, it isn't the moon landings, but it is one of the more significant things I'm likely to see in my life I think.
I have to say, it brought a tear to my eye when they did it. Yo, America - you guys have something to be proud of today!
fortune -o
This is a great day for Human Innovation! Well done lads :)
Its also a hell of a lot later than when NASA did the same, with technology that is more widespread and cheaper to boot. When NASA did their shots, it had to invent pretty much all of the technology, whereas Scaled Composites had the benefit of all the public knowledge now available about space travel. Not to put a cloud on this success, but come on guys, comparing it to NASA and saying its much cheaper just isnt fair.
>...repeatably (if only technically) reaching space, on a on a budget
>embarrassingly smaller than NASA's.
Let's see them reach orbital velocity and then I'll be impressed by the budget difference.
It is not that I am unimpressed by the flight, but I'm not really impressed by comparing the budgets of two totally different projects with totally different goals.
The problem is money. Scaled has Big Bux behind them. All the others involve huge model rockets (a good way to die). And it's not just the model rocket thing (hey, the V-2 is proven technology that eventually lifted man into space via NASA), its R and D. All these other programs just don't have the technical skill to build something other than a Roman candle.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Oh COME ON! Yes, that was a fantastic achievement ... I've been cheering Scaled on from my desk, and grabbing every bit of information I can about this. I find it incredibly exciting. But your comment "Take a look at Scaled Composites' expenditures and then compare then with those of NASA for one damn shuttle launch. Then shut your mouth." is incredibly silly. The space shuttle is doing a far more difficult job, a job that SpaceShipOne cannot conceivably do. Comparing SpaceShipOne to X15 is fairer, but then you *CAN* justifiably say that Scaled has benefitted from NASA's research.
None of this takes away from Rutan et al.s fantastic achievement. But let's keep a little perspective : NASA has problems, but it still has achieved an incredible amount, and it (and the smart people who work there) deserve a bit more respect from the slashdot crowd.
Congratulations are particularly in order for Anousheh Ansari's family without whom the X-Prize would not have been funded.
Hopefully guys like Paul Allen and Bill Gates will get the idea they can do a lot more with their philanthropy money if they put up prize awards than if the schmooze it up with toadies. If they do they will start making major advances not just in space migration but in life extension, intelligence increase and fusion energy which will finally embarrass the government into doing what it should have been doing all along the right thing as well:
Fund prizes, not proposals.
Seastead this.
I think its interesting to point out that Rutan & co. have made it into space, sure, just space, not orbit (but seriously, when did we start getting so picky? It is _still_ rocket science, and getting to space is still a technical achievement that took over 10 millennia of human technological progression), three times while NASA is still trying to cobble together a way of making their space shuttle (launch cost: about what every slashdotter COMBINED will ever make) safe enough to fly again.
So basically, the ONLY way that the US can send anyone into space right now is with SpaceShip One - making it one of 3 vehicles, including Russia's Soyuz and China's Soyuz-esque rocket, that can go into space with people in it.
Its also significant that I think this is the only completely reusable vehicle to ever go into space, as being able to do a one-week turnaround shows, having this capability has some pretty big benefits.
Tim
I watched the documercial last night on Discovery called Black Sky about the Scaled project, it's on again this week and there is a second piece coming up as well, it's worth watching.
After I watched it I was thinking about who it really shows as being behind the ball. Well NASA is the obvious choice, but NASA made an investment from the 70s on into Shuttle and with the tangled web they have to tread with Congress and internal inertia, I don't think we can say "Look, NASA sucks!"
Who it really makes look foolish, in my opinion, is the Chinese space program.
They have been ramping up for thier space program for decades, and thier way of doing it was to buy Russian hardware, reverse engineer it and then build it again. No one knows how much that cost the Chinese, but look at Scaled. 250 people and about 25 million in venture capital is running a space operation out in the desert. Yea they haven't orbited yet. But they will, I've read it costs about $80,000 in fuel and prep.
The difference being that with the X-15, it hadn't been done before. With SS1, the science and technology used was proven, mature and readily available.
Not to say SS1 isn't a teriffic accomplishment, but it's not fair to compare the costs of these projects so directly!
=Smidge=
Second, I notice Rutan did NOT go on the second flight. In fact, from the fact that the two "passengers" were balast (again!), I'm concerned that Scaled Composites were more concerned about the rolls in the first flight than they let on.
Remember, Rutan was all dead-set on going into space on the second flight, and the spirit of the X-Prize rules was that the vehicle was to carry passengers. The fact that only the pilot was on the second flight indicates that the potential publicity coup of being on the second flight was outweighed by the risks.
The only risks we're aware of are the "bang" heard on the first sub-orbital flight, and the propensity for SpaceShipOne to lose control on the edge of the atmosphere. The first problem was likely overcome, which means that the second problem likely has not.
Whilst I certainly applaud Scaled Composites for what they have achieved, I think it's worth stressing that they will need to achieve a lot more (on the technical front) before the technology becomes viable.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The government was pretty cooperative as I understand it. A lot of things they could have done would have prevented this, but permits have been forthcoming.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
Oh, and cost US$200,000
And have a non-trivial chance of killing you
One day this will all be routine and our children's children will be fascinated that people went into space on those Saturn V powered mostrosities or even the space shuttles. You have to look past the present and visualize the future. After a few crotchety space stations, what's to stop someone from building a hotel/resort/convention center in space? Money. Practicality? Don't talk to me about practicality, I've been to enough convention centers and you oughta know people go there to get away, shoot some golf, etc. All of which and new entertainment possibilities be made possible in Zero G. The only concern I'd have about such a thing is radiation and stray space garbage smacking into it, but I think they could get that sorted out too.
Dream a little.
we've got another broken window, cruise over to the space K-Mart and get a space scooter full of whoever is hanging around to work on it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Planes have a non-trivial chance of killing you?
:)
Reality check.
According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, your chances of dying or being seriously injured in an airplane are about 1:4.3 MILLION.
Your chances of dying or being seriously injured in a car, by comparison, work out to about 1:125.
I would say that right now, space flight has a higher than 1:125 chance of serious injury and/or death, but not substantially, and not as the technology matures. I think it will evolve to being quite safe, personally.
Risk is probability * exposure.
The risk for an incident involving a car is much higher than that involving an airplane because most people's exposure to cars is far higher than airplanes. I interact with cars as a driver, passenger, or pedestrian every day. I might fly, as a passenger in an airplane, once or twice a year.
Okay, way to go Scaled team!
But I must object to "embarrassingly smaller budget than NASA's." NASA had to do their first manned suborbital flight with 1950s hardware borrowed from the artillery boys, and without 40 years of prior experience to draw on.
The X Prize contestants are, in Newton's words, standing on the shoulders of giants. They're doing great things, and I applaud them, but there's no need to tear down other pioneers to build these guys up. The present work is quite impressive enough as it is.
Dream a little
I can (and do) dream a lot, and I'm looking forward to a day when parabolic descent lasts for more than a few brief seconds, but the parent poster extrapolated from today's events into "Suddenly that old commercial advertisement for a Hilton Hotel in space doesn't sound so wacky anymore" and I disagree.
I think it still sounds as absurd as it did when it first aired, perhaps more so now, because I now have a more educated appreciation for just what it takes to get into space, let alone orbit.
Today is a watershed event in human history.
Today does not herald in the age of zero-G convention centers.
--
Free gmail invites
This statement would only make sense if you think the government should own your life. If, on the other hand, you believe individuals own their own lives, you'd be glad the government stayed out of the way.
Some other contenders:
* American Astronautics
* Acceleration Engineering
* American Advent
* ARCA
* Armadillo Aerospace
* Bristol Spaceplanes
* Canadian Arrow
* Da Vinci
* Discraft Corporation
* Fundamental Technology Systems
* High Altitude Research Corp.
* Interorbital Systems
* ILAT
* Lone Star Space Access
* Micro Space
* Pablo de León & Associates
* PanAero, Inc.
* Pioneer Rocketplane
* Mojave Aerospace Ventures, LLC.
* Space Transport Corporation
* Starchaser Industries LTD
* Suborbital Corporation
* TGV Rockets, Inc.
* Vanguard Spacecraft
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
[sigh] Everything private parties have so far done in space, the government did first. Look, I'm as enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to buy a ticket to the Moon for my 50th birthday as the next geek, but to say that the government is "keeping us from doing it right" when, in fact, the Rutan team built on decades of NASA experience is just absurd. As with most major enterprises, a combination of public and private efforts will get us much farther than either could on its own.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
My robotic vaccumm cleaner arrived today.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The factor that makes all the difference between accidents from flying verses driving is based on training, currency, and type rating. You only need one generic license to drive any passenger vehicles and in most states there are never any requirements other than paying a fee to get it renewed. Also the requirements to show driving profficiency are so pathetically low and the odds of ever lossing your license even more so when compaired to that of a pilot's license.
Essentially if they held drivers to the same standards as they did pilots right off the bat at least 25% of the population would never be allowed to drive, ever. 75% of the remaining population would not be allow to drive anything but a 50hp compact car at speeds less than 40MPH during the day and only on nice clear weather free days. Also nearly anyone involved in an accident where they were at fault or illegal activity would loose their license until a governing board could review the discretion and then most likely if they were found to be negligent loose it for several years if not permanently.
For some odd reason I see the number of auto accidents being greatly reduced if that were the case.
Yes, but the problem with those statistics is that they obscure the truth. If:
1) You are over 25;
2) OR you are not male;
3) AND you travel mostly on divided highways as opposed to secondary roads;
4) AND you travel in the daytime or early evening, rather than late at night when drunk people are driving;
5) AND you yourself are not drinking or smoking or pill popping or talking on the phone or otherwise not paying attention;
6) AND you're actually wearing your seat belt;
7) AND the car you're driving has good brakes (preferably anti-lock brakes);
8) AND it has good tires;
9) AND it's not some junker with bad shocks and loose steering;
10) AND you're driving in decent conditions, not when it's snowing or icing up
THEN what is the probability of dying in a car crash? It's basically the chance of being hit by or running into a random nut. Which is very very low.
If on the other hand you are under 25, driving too fast with your friends, out late at night and drunk/driving with drunks, cruising secondary roads, not wearing your seat belt, driving an old junker with crappy brakes and shitty tires, then I guess you'd be safer strapped to an airline seat.
Which is why statistics suck. Throw all the above variables into a multiple regression, then show me airplanes are "safer," and I'll believe. It won't happen, because the airlines would never fund such a study. Drunk teenagers keep the road death statistics high, and the airlines in business.
It's still a matter of national pride and the nationality of the designers doesn't really matter apart from that. If a Canadian team had one there would be the same type of response.
This is being blown way out of proportion.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
[sigh] Everything private parties have so far done in space, the government did first. Look, I'm as enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to buy a ticket to the Moon for my 50th birthday as the next geek, but to say that the government is "keeping us from doing it right" when, in fact, the Rutan team built on decades of NASA experience is just absurd. As with most major enterprises, a combination of public and private efforts will get us much farther than either could on its own.
Walk before you crawl, padawan.
The difference is, this is a bottom-up approach to space travel, with much larger socio-economic implications. What's the incentive for the government to go to space? Exploration, a little research, mostly the "because it's there" argument. That doesn't generate much initiative. What's the incentive for a private company to ferry tourists to sub-orbit? $200,000. Each. As more people make the trip, the companies will get better at their craft, building more efficient, higher-performace vehicles. Pretty soon, people will be going to orbit for the same price they went to sub-orbit, and the price will be going down all the time. Cargo capacities will increase, and the cost-per-pound to high Earth orbit will decrease dramatically. At that point, it's economically viable for a large corporation to purchase vehicles that would allow them to grow near-perfect crystals in microgravity, for instance, to be used in optics or timepieces or jewelry. Hotels WILL be built in space. Industries will be born that we can't even imagine right now. Think about what the internet/home computing did as far as creating industries. No one in the 1960s would have even dreamed of the industries we have now. And most of it was due to a small company mass-producing a computer that fit on a table. Everything this private company did had already been done, by the government, and many other small companies followed suit. There were no computing advantages to making a computer fit on a table, since it was slower than the best room-sized computers of the day. There were only economic advantages.
The bottom line is that this is a window to getting thousands of people into space, and many more thousands working on ways to do it cheaply, efficiently, and safely. Once those pieces are in place, we will finally see the *real* space age. For a parallel, please research the rise of the desktop computer, the history of the automobile, and the entire airline industry.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
So we're cheering the international community for having such a competition, but we should also cheer the (almost) all-American project team that WON said international competition.
It's a rather silly thing to get worked up about, IMHO. Bottom line, yes, anyone can compete, but yes, an American team *did* win it.
It's like rants about what "could have" happened if the quarterback had thrown for 2 more touchdowns, or if Lee had flanked instead of going up the middle at Chancellorsville, or whatever. Does it really matter what "coulda/shoulda" happened? No. Does the fact that an American financier, designer, and builder won the prize? Sort of. Does it mean noone else could have done it? Of course NOT.
There's nothing wrong, inaccurate, about doing it first; but there's no claim that only Americans can do it, or "could have" done it first. There is *something* to be said about doing it first, and I like to think that's all the original poster was driving at. First in Flight, and all that (and please, PLEASE don't turn that into the conspiracy theory of the day as to who REALLY flew first).
After all, this is about privatized, commercial access to space. We should all know that first in buys you something, doing it better and/or cheaper and/or cooler can ALSO mean something, when it comes to commerce. Apple didn't invent the portable music player, Betamax came before VHS (right?). Paraphrasing Churchill, this isn't the beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
So you are saying that the X-prize that generated SS1 was foolish? But it has worked!
Business will need to be convinced that they can make a profit for their investment.
Apparently you missed the announcement. Funnily enough, a few days ago, Branson just announced that he had agree to pay for the R&D of the passenger version of SpaceShipOne, Virgin Galactic.
Looks like the X-prize has worked. That's exactly the situation that it was intended to create. The whole point is to improve the confidence factor for businesses to invest in space tourism. If suborbital is even halfway successful, orbital should be right behind it.
In some ways it is cheaper than suborbital- you get orders of magnitude more zero-gravity time per dollar.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"You mean the prize purse that was (initially) put up by the City of St. Louis, Missouri, USA?
Sometimes I think America's achievements are in the same category as the old saw about marriage...what's yours is yours and what's ours is yours.
Whatever, man. Obviously nothing good has ever, ever come out of the US, so your bias is totally justifiable.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
...it's the rest of the world that is too modest. To be fair, the Americans are front-and-centre on this project so kudos to them as long as they remember they got there with a little help from others.
The US sometimes isn't the leader in Aerospace but give them credit when it's due. Russians and Canadians bet them in the sattelite race--the Canadians also beat the Americans to Mach 2 flight speed. And the REALLY big, complicated projects are the result of collaberation between all three of those nations among many others. However one thing the US consistently tops the world in is national pride and the associated amitious goals they have set. Only Amercans had the balls to reach for the moon and actually REACH it. When they win they win BIG.
Thank God rocket scientists don't get into pissing matches like the ones here or nothing would get done.
I'm all for the future you describe. But of the three major technologies you describe that changed our lives in the 20th c. -- the computer, the automobile, and the airliner -- two (the first and last) became as prominent as they did largely because of significant government investment. The internet, of course, was a government project; the home PC built directly on computer-miniaturization techniques developed, not coincidentally, for NASA; and the Wright brothers' first customer was the US Army, and military demands drove aircraft development for the next half-century.
...
I will say it again, since apparently it didn't register the first time: we need both. Private enterprise provides innovation, competition, and efficiency. Government provides money -- money which industry could supply, but won't until profits are closely in sight -- infrastructure, and long-term planning. Neither is inherently superior to the other, and both work better in an environment of cooperation than in one of mutual ignorance.
Anti-government ideologues never seem to realize how much they sound like Marxists
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Much as I hate to nitpick (and at the risk of obscuring your point), Binnie seems to be American from birth. You're thinking of Mike Melvill, who piloted the last couple of flights.
That's not genius. That's the happy byproduct of not going into orbit. SpaceShipOne is in no way capable surviving reentry from orbital velocities. Not even close.
If you look at an orbital craft's launch profile, you see 90% of the energy goes into horizontal motion, not vertical. All that energy gets dumped on the return trip. The most tricky part of any orbital craft is dumping that reentry heat, and the X-prize simply didn't require that kind of sophistication. The shuttle would have been orders of magnitude cheaper and safer except for that pesky little detail.