posted 06-19-2004 06:55 PM         

The first privately-funded, manned voyage into space is set for Monday, June 21st on board a two-stage vehicle called SpaceShipOne. Developed by aircraft designer Burt Rutan and financed by investor Paul G. Allen, SpaceShipOne will attempt to rocket outside of Earth's atmosphere and into the history books.

Hopefully this will usher in a real Space Age, as opposed to our current practice of having our best and brightest people risk (and lose) their lives in exchange for going in circles around the Earth to conduct experiments of questionable relevancy at a cost of half-a-billion dollars per mission.

posted 06-21-2004 02:06 PM         

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Steve D.
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posted 06-25-2004 12:31 AM         

TRANSLATION: Those *$&%#@! at Scaled Composites just put a guy into space for 1/25th of what it costs us. We're doomed!

posted 06-25-2004 02:32 AM         

Take that sucker to the moon and back, THEN call me

Test pilot Mike Melvill landed at Mojave Airport, about 80 miles north of Los Angeles, California, after taking the rocket plane SpaceShipOne to an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (62.5 miles) -- the internationally recognized boundary of space.

Melvill told reporters he had "a hell of a view from 62 miles."

"The colors were pretty staggering from up there," he said.

"Looking from the Earth up there, you know, it's almost a religious experience. It's an awesome thing to see. You can see the curvature of the Earth. I could see all the way out, way out past the islands off the coast of Los Angeles."

SpaceShipOne lifted off early Monday morning in the Mojave Desert, carried by the jet White Knight.

As the pair approached 50,000 feet, SpaceShipOne decoupled from the jet. After a brief glide, Melvill ignited the spacecraft's engines and ascended into space at Mach 3, three times the speed of sound.

Melvill said once he reached weightlessness, he opened a bag of M&M's in the cockpit, and the candies floated for three minutes while the ship soared high above California.

Problems cut flight short
The spacecraft returned safely, but control problems revealed after the flight forced Melville to cut it short and use a backup system to keep SpaceShipOne under control.

He said trim surfaces on SpaceShipOne -- movable surfaces on the craft's wings -- jammed during supersonic flight. The craft rolled 90 degrees twice during its vertical ascent and veered more than 20 miles off course in a few seconds.

"Right at top, I tried to trim the nose up, that's when I had the anomaly and had to switch to backup," he said. The craft peaked at 328,491 feet (100.12 kilometers), just 408 feet (124 meters) above the international boundary of space, according to Scaled Composites.

The trim surfaces were reconfigured for landing and then remained unused as Melvill guided SpaceShipOne back to a comfortable landing.

"It was a pretty smooth ride after that," he said. "I headed back to Mojave as fast as I could without reasonably hurting anything."

A loud bang Melvill heard during the flight appeared to be a nonessential part of the composite airframe buckling near the rocket nozzle. The slight indention in SpaceShipOne's exterior did not affect the craft's performance.

Melvill, 63, picked up the nation's first pair of commercial astronaut's wings from the Federal Aviation Administration.

"We have opened the frontier of human space flight," said Pattie Grace Smith of the FAA. "It's a major step ushering in a new era of low-cost space flight ... in reach of ordinary citizens."

The flight marks the pinnacle so far of Burt Rutan's vision of affordable, safe, private space travel.

Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, built SpaceShipOne with financial backing from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., for a little more than $20 million. Rutan said the flight, which went from a concept in 1995 to reality less than a decade later, was the realization of a long dream.

"I'm so proud of that, it brings tears to my eyes," he said.

The rocket plane made its farthest and fastest flight to date.

Rutan said he would not speculate about the problems until technical data had been reviewed, something he expected in the next few days.

"The anomaly we had today was the most serious safety system problem we've had in the entire program," he said. "The fact that our backup system worked and we made a beautiful landing ... makes me feel very good."

Melvill, who has tested Rutan's planes extensively, reaffirmed Rutan's engineering skills and commitment to safety.

"That's why we are so good at what we do," Melvill said. "We cover all the bases."

A prelude to future flights
Those on hand for the launch included officials from NASA, the FAA, the X Prize Foundation and the Guinness Book of Records.

Peter Diamandis, co-founder of the X Prize, the $10 million award intended to spur civilian spaceflight, said Rutan's vision would open the door for those with the same dream.

"This is a warm-up for the Ansari X Prize, but it's a historic moment for all Americans," he said. "[I've heard], 'If God wanted us to fly into space, he would have given us more money'. Hopefully, the technology demonstrated here today will lead to designs that are cheaper and easier."

Scaled Composites is one of 24 companies from several countries competing for the X Prize, which will go to the first privately funded group to send three people on a suborbital flight 62.5 miles high and repeat the feat within two weeks using the same vehicle.

Rutan said SpaceShipOne would compete for the X Prize once the causes behind the anomalies had been resolved.

"We will be looking at all our data," he said. "We'll make a decision next few days."

After that, preparations for an official X Prize flight are finalized will take 60 days.

"This was not a perfect flight," Rutan said. "Then again a lot of these things you can do with a 60-day window and easily fix them."

The nonprofit X Prize Foundation is sponsoring the contest to promote the development of a low-cost, efficient craft for space tourism in the same way prize competitions stimulated commercial aviation in the early 20th century.

The prize is fully funded through January 1, 2005, according to the foundation's Web site.

Spectators witness history

SpaceShipOne flew more than 62 miles up, past the edge of space.
The remote Mojave Airport, a licensed spaceport and the world's only civilian test flight center, also played host to an assortment of vehicles that converged on the site from around the country.

Buses, RVs, electric scooters, small ultralights and a variety of other vehicles were parked in the sandy soil across from the runway.

Many of the spectators said there was a feeling of history in the air. Some said that after waiting decades, they were finally witnessing the first steps toward spaceflight for them.

Josh Collins, 25, said he had flown from Maryland to see the attempt.

"Some people thought I was crazy, other people are jealous," he said.

posted 06-25-2004 06:00 AM         

I wonder how many frequent flier miles a trip like that is good for???

posted 06-25-2004 10:12 PM         

They were tracked by radar and there were on-board instruments and cameras sending back telemetry. Here's a photo from the flight.

Why was there not a problem re-entering the earth's atmosphere as there is with other space craft?

The space shuttle achieves an orbital velocity of around 17,500 mph. SpaceShipOne achieved employed a sub-orbital trajectory, requiring a speed of only 2,150 mph. It didn't have to "aerobrake" nearly as hard as a space shuttle. In addition, the shuttle doesn't glide all that well. It re-enters the atmosphere at a fairly acute angle and so hits the air "harder" than SpaceShipOne did.

Why was there not more media coverage if this is such an important event?

Good question. There are multiple answers. For one thing, we are at war and that takes up a lot of the headlines. For another, there is not that much to the story. The first privately funded trip into space was accomplished at about 1/25th of what it would have cost NASA. This is tremendously important, but there just isn't a lot more to be said or reported at this point. Third, the media seems to have a strange definition of "news." For example, one of the Olsen twins is being treated for anorexia and this is an international story?!

What about the problems during the flight?
The problems were potentially disasterous, but the actual effects were minor. There was a control malfunction that sent the ship 22 miles south of its intended re-entry point. It would have been unprecendented for something like this to have gone off flawlessly. Rutan and company will study what happened and make corrections.

This does usher in a new space age, but currently it will only be good for tourism...

Tim Worstall writing on the Tech Central Station website:

quote:

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[I]nventors are hopelessly bad at working out what their new invention will actually be used for. Edison thought the phonograph would be a dictation machine and resisted the recording of music for years. The telephone was marketed at first as a method of remote listening to live concerts, not a method to speak to others. Thomas Watson thought the world might need five computers maximum...

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