Lary Ellis (Top)

SpaceShipOne will try to climb 62 miles up Monday morning, leaving Earth's atmosphere for a few minutes to become the first privately funded, non-governmental manned spacecraft.

It is designed by Burt Rutan and pictures of it and it's wild looking mother ship can be seen here; http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/photos.htm

jthorpe

Wow, that is very cool. I have a couple of questions about this since I haven't read the whole story yet.

1. How is it going to handle the heat? I don't see any kind of heat reflective material on the plane.

2. Is NASA going to provide ground control for them, or will they do it themselves?

ok a third question...

3. How much will the government participate in this, and how did they get permission to close the airspace needed to make the launch?

Lary Ellis (Top)

From what I read on it, they are doing their own telemetry/ground control with a van that has duplicate flight instruments.

The military is quite interested in the outcome of these tests, I think that would explain why they are helping by letting them launch and recover near the Edwards test range. The idea of being able to reach space on a private sector budget, would have to be VERY appealing.

I don't think they are going high enough or fast enough to reach escape velocity, just going to hit the outer edges of the atmosphere, similar to the old X planes. That would explain the lack of heat shielding.

Also it folds the control surfaces on the rear of the plane @ 90 degrees, to create drag and help slow the plane on reentry. It is described as being similar to the feathers on a shuttlecock, helping to slow and create stability during the reentry phase.

Fascinating stuff here, and knowing Burt Rutan's past ability to shed conventional flight parameters, and do the seemingly impossible, I would put my money on him achieving this goal

cp

Do you mean Burt Rutan? I've heard of Burt and Dick, but I never heard of a Bill Rutan. Burt is an amazing man, with so many innovative aircraft to his credit. Vari-eze, Voyager, that Beech Starship, and many others. A true pioneering genius.

Just to clarify, this won't even reach orbital speed, which is itself much less than escape velocity.

Lary Ellis (Top)

Must have been a glitch with your browser...............

PumpDaddy

They won't "really" be in outer space, just a "low earth orbit", so the real heat of re-entry won't be there, you can bet ya sweet rear end that Nasa and Norrad will be tracking, and these test are supposed to be without Gov help. The question I got is CAN I GO, God I'd love too.
Another question is will customs & immigration hassle them as they did me a few weeks ago, going and coming from Brazil . People here don't know how sweet we have it, except for the drug dog in Atlanta humping my bag that had my vibration equipment it ( That'll be another story), the 2 Gov guys at the jetway where laughing so hard, they where crying, and Jack, do you people not EVER let these dogs have any "fun", they asked me if I had a dog, I said Yes, the guy said "you may want to check her for being in heat", I told him "you may wanna check you dog for being GAY, because my dog is a male Rot, but I did have a female cat". He slapped me on the back and said have a good flight home, the WHOLE time laughing his butt off.
It's funny now, but it wasn't then.
I don't know if ya'll have heard, but there was 3 B'ham policemen gunned down on Friday, all 3 where dead at the scene, 1 other got away unhurt, this all went on about 2 miles from our shop. First reports are that they got shot with an SKS and thier vest had no chance of protection. All 3 where very well known in the hood, well respected and trusted, it's a crying fricking shame