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White Knight Testing X-37
mknewman writes "The innovative carrier plane used to air-launch SpaceShipOne has a new mission. At its inland spaceport in Mojave, Calif., the White Knight mothership has been involved in fit and high-speed taxi checks with a new passenger: the X-37, an unpiloted, reusable space plane. "
The cynical people (like me) know that the best way to kill an agency is to starve it to death slowly. The Mars mission is a classic example of this process. First you cut back on all smaller missions to consolidate spending under one gigantic program. Then you allow the costs for the gigantic mission to ballon until their is no public support for it any longer. At that point you can kill the agency without political damage.
Fortunately there are newer, less expensive methods for delivering payloads into LEO and with this vehicle it will be possible to perform much of what NASA proposed doing with the ISS with a fraction of the cost.
Universities would be a good customer for this type of launch/service space company because the payloads launched by NASA come with significant strings attached to them and they do not get to control the vehicle once launched.
How much do you think a partnership between a university and a private company could save by doing their own space probes?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Are you trolling?
Burt Rutan may be a superhero, but he needs to eat, just like everybody else. He is not a charity. It doesn't seem like White Knight or its pilots were doing much anyway. I can't imagine that renting out a plane to NASA is a huge distraction.
Rutan's current project, Virgin Galactic, has nothing to do with orbital flight. It is merely a souped-up version of Spaceship One. Rutan has himself said that scaling up to an orbital spacecraft would be many orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive, and it doesn't seem to be a priority for him right now.
And in what sense is this selling out? If taking Richard Branson's and Paul Allen's money was not selling out, then how does it follow that he is tainting his principles by helping NASA out with a test platform for reusable space technology?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
As explained in Milton Thompson's "Flight Without Wings", the Steve Austin crash was an actual crash at Edwards of one of the lifting bodies. But in real life, the pilot actually walked away from that one -- apparently they needed extra weight in the nose to balance the craft for flight, so they used that weight to beef up the safety cage for the pilot.
Why do they need the White Knight? Don't they usually drop these types of test craft from bombers (like the B-52)? Surely the US air force can get thier hands on one.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Nasa has been doing this kind of crap ever since they finished the Space Shuttles.
They start down a promising path of cheaper, more efficient access to orbit, just ditch the research.
Personally, I think it's the middle managers that are screwing everything up. Administrations and directors come and go, but the morons in the middle are always around.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's simple.
He's developed SS1. He has test pilots on his payroll that he probably has contractual obligations to pay whether they're doing something or not.
Both SS1 and its pilots are currently not doing anything, and operating them right now doesn't take ANY resources away from other projects. By renting out SS1, he's converting a possible money sink into a moneymaker, money he can use to further the development projects he wants to pursue.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Cost of the X37 -- $173 million.
Maximum speed of spaceship one - mach 3.5
Maximum speed of X37 - mach 25
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I agree that LEO is best left to the private concerns. However I disagree about your view of what setting a Mars mission does to NASA.
NASA should be about advancing our capabilities many fold. This does not mean doing the same damn thing we have been doing for nearly 50 years which is playing around in orbit of our own planet.
NASA should be about goals outside the capabilites (read monetary concerns) of privates/corporations. This means setting up on the moon and eventually getting to Mars.
Scenario. Use NASA to setup a PERMANENT facility on the Moon. Then by the design and policy have that open to private interests. The big expense is setting up a launching point that others can use. NASA (read:government) could charge a nominal fee for usage and set some ground rules. However this makes it open to ANYONE.
NASA isn't hobbled by looking to Mars, NASA has been hobbled for the last 20 years simply because they WERE NOT looking beyond the Earth. (let alone public imagination - I am pretty sure orbital excursions are and have been ho-hum for sometime)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Rutan has done a lot of DoD work for years. He started by making composite models of various low observable aircraft for radar cross-section testing, hence the name "Scaled Composites".
He has made an ultra-low cost ground attack fighter and an experimental flying scale model of a tactical transport airplane.
White Knights sister ship, Proteous, has been dropping various smart bombs as a "UAV Surrogate" for DoD testing for the last year.
Hmm. So it sounds like they'd either have to speed up the preparation of the plane they'd planned to use, or to delay the program, either of which could be a lot more costly than if they had the aircraft ready to go.
I wonder too if Scaled isn't charging something closer to marginal cost rather than average costs (e.g. not accounting for sunk costs in the fee). I can think of several strategic reasons to do so, not the least of which this is a one time opportunity to demonstrate that this kind of thing could be handled by a private contractor. It's clearly a potential service they could offer which would commericalize some of the technology they used for the X-prize.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Aviation Week says that the new NASA administrator likes the idea of putting a manned capsule on top of a single space shuttle solid booster. The booster is already man-rated and (by rocket standards) in mass production, so the idea does make some sense.
Man, i feel sorry for our species. We spend 3 trillion dollars on killing humanity. and only 53 million a year to save it.
It seems like we want our species to end on this godforsaken rock.