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Burt Rutan On Future Of SpaceShipOne (and Two)
Neil Halelamien writes "In a recent interview with the Desert Sun, Burt Rutan talks about the future of SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo. The bad news is that SpaceShipOne will be retired straight to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, despite getting five different requests to fly suborbital payloads. The good news is that efforts are being focused on SpaceShipTwo, which will carry nine people, and fly higher and further downrange than SpaceShipOne. Virgin Galactic will purchase a fleet of five of these vehicles, which will start test flights in 2007. Virgin Galactic may end up competing with Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which is rumored to be developing a VTOL suborbital vehicle. Also interesting to watch will be Rutan's involvement with t/Space, one of the companies contracted by NASA to conduct concept studies for the Vision for Space Exploration."
This man is an inspiration to everybody. He is innovative, intelligent, and follows through with his dreams and goals. So tell me why, WHY Dub Bush gets Time's Person of the Year and Rutan does not.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
The bad news is that SpaceShipOne will be retired straight to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum...
This has to be the stupidest comment I have seen in a /. article posting in a long time. Does this person have any regard at all for the enormous historical value this space ship has?
Imagine it was *not* retired, then went down in flames in a subsequent mission. A very important part of humanity's history would be lost, forever.
Try to think beyond the next few years for once in your life. You can send up payloads in SpaceShipTwo, or SpaceShipThree, or SpaceShipNineteen. But there is only one SpaceShipOne. And I for one would like it to still be around in 80 years, so I can go to the museum with my great-grandchildren and say "Look what some people of my generation accomplished".
...SpaceShipThree.One.
I applaud his decision to send it straight to the Smithsonian. It shows he's a realist and understands the experimental nature of the project.
SpaceshipOne was a concept demonstrator. For him, its time to move on to the production version.
Here are a few random thoughts on what I would have considered doing, had I been in charge:
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)
Because you don't need wings starting around Mach 2-3. After that point, they become dead weight and add drag.
A lot of folks think that the mass penalty of carying extra fuel for landing is less than the mass penalty of carying wings (a penalty which includes extra fuel and engine mass to compensate for the increased drag).
If you are doing SSTO, you can have much less sophisticated heat shielding because the requirements of heat shielding decrease as you get less dense. At reentry, a SSTO is not very dense at all, so it's easier. Also, there's some arguments about reentering tail-first and using the engines to reduce the heat loading, which hasn't yet been tested.
Furthermore, range safety is simpler with VTOL. You have to assume that, at any point, your spacecraft could explode, raining parts down on populated land. Less gliding means less area to wory about. Airliners don't need to wory about such things, but airliners also have a good track record of not blowing up. Spacecraft don't have that record yet.
Ejection seats and escape capsules aren't very heavy, if they are included in the design early (They are now saying that, given that both the Challenger and Columbia's crew cabin survived the explosion intact, that they really could have made it removable for a minimum weight penalty. However, it's too late to do that now.)
The biggest problem is that NASA spent all of their time between the 1980s and today designing a bunch of different concepts for spacecraft, none of which have actually flown enough to be able to contribute factual data about all of this except for a few low-altitude hops made by the DC-X that made the VTOL model seem rather reasonable.
Gentoo Sucks
No, it sounds like trusting a private corporation to get me in one piece from one place to another using aircraft.
Are you afraid of airliners, too?
Gentoo Sucks
The real cause of the uncommanded roll was an issue with the wing dihedral, which is used to provide a natural corrective tendency for crosswinds. It's difficult to design a mach 3.5 spaceship that is also a 70 knot glider.
The test pilot, Mike Melvill, had ample time to abort the flight. He felt confident and in sufficient control to continue the first suborbital flight. Burt and Mike are very close friends and have been since the 1970s. Ground control suggested an abort, but Mike was comfortable with the roll rate. Yes, he's that good. He later commented that it was "kind of cool". Mike was clearly not too upset by the 20+ rolls as he corkscrewed into space, because a minute later he was playing with M&Ms in microgravity.
So don't go throwing around reckless comments about Burt almost getting a test pilot killed. It's a lie, plain and simple. The truth is, Burt Rutan has done almost 400 designs and for decades has consistently averaged flight testing a couple of truly unique aircraft, and now spacecraft, per year. None of his projects have ever resulted in an injury, much less a fatality. The few incidents have all been minor, such as the SS1 test flight where the left landing gear collapsed after a rough landing. Burt Rutan has the best safety record in the industry, while simultaneously doing the most cutting edge designs. He attributes a large part of that safety to an environment that wouldn't be possible in a large bureaucracy, whether in government or big business.
The SS1 roll problem was fixed by simply changing the flight profile and the two subsequent X-Prize flights had no trouble. The dihedral issue will be corrected in SS2, which is probably one reason that SS1 is being retired after accomplishing the X-Prize mission. That, and the fact that it is a very valuable historic spacecraft.
So for anyone keeping score, NASA has lost two shuttles with all crew (14 people total) out of a little over 100 missions, for a little less than a 2% fatality rate. SS1 has been into space three times with no injuries. Safety is a big part of the SS1 design, including the novel "carefree reentry".
There were some uninformed opinions and lame attempts at sick humor prior to the SS1 success. Why do some people need to see the dark side of everything? Why do some people need to comment about things when they are totally clueless?
Suggestion:
1) Read
2) Think
3) THEN write
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Here's the important part you're probably not getting. The recent initial foray into the privatization of space is NOT trying to carry on in the manner of NASA or any other big government or big business space program. They're starting over completely from scratch, using current technology and developing new technology to make space accessable to everyone. We are in the early crawling stages right now, but as any parent can tell you, kids grow up fast. Soon, we'll be walking, then running. There will be other goals such as altitude records, distance records in parabolic flight, etc. Soon, we'll have orbital flight. Although the SS1 can't withstand reentry at orbital velocities, a lot of the technology from SS1 is applicable to orbital flight. After that, there will be privately owned orbital resorts and microgravity manufacturing plants, and eventually private trips to the moon. Watch it happen in the next twenty years.
Private companies will make very rapid progress and will soon surpass NASA and other government sponsored space programs. The financial incentive exists, as does the technical drive to accomplish these goals. Private enterprise will recapitulate NASA's accomplishments, only much faster and for a lot less money.
Many people fail to see the analogy, but the X-Prize really was just like the Orteig Prize that encouraged the first trans-Atlantic airplane crossing in 1927. We are about to enter the era of space development that is similar to what the 1930s was to the aviation industry in all important respects.
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Seastead this.