Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites has announced his company will be flying tomorrow for a test flight in preparation in going for the X-prize of 10 million dollars.
Is this history in the making? I can’t really find much news on this at all. How important will this be in expanding space exploration to the private sector?
-XT
Well, hats off to Burt and Co. for doing what they are doing, and I realize that this ship was designed as part of a detailed challenge, but I am a bit dissappointed that there is still so much focus on getting humans into space. Not much for us up there, I’m afraid, given our present level of technology and the costs involved. Still, I suppose this concept could be easily adapted as a superlow-cost way of getting payload into space, minus the meatsacks.
Still, it looks cool as all heck. I’ll be watching. (CNN is carrying the launch live at 06:30 PDT, assuming weather cooperates.)
It’s history in the making, but how important it will be in history depends upon what we do next. Rutan’s got the plans for a shuttle replacement drawn up, and he’s even got the gear to build it. His goal is to launch SpaceShipOne every Tuesday for six months to prove that it can be done (this is after he’s snagged the X-Prize), then he’s going to pitch a spaceline to Paul Allen. If Allen won’t go for it (and I’m betting that he will), there’s a couple other backers Rutan could probably snag. If Rutan’s backers only want to continue with the SS1 concept, then it’s not going to be that momentous an event in history.
However, if they pony up the dough for Rutan’s shuttle replacement (which is supposed to be able to put things in orbit for less than a tenth of what the shuttle costs), then it’ll be on par with Kitty Hawk.
The goal is too limited for me to be impressed. This is on a par with the Alan Shepard flight. An orbital flight would have impressed me. I’ll never believe that a non-governmental entity will ever have the resources to develop a viable space program.
This is an important first step.
The principle barrier to private spaceflight was the Cold War.
Fears that a private launch could start WW3 put a chill on things.
But private manned spaceflight happens today! 
I have mixed feelings about this. I’m glad the prize is going to be won, but it’s a shame that this is the entry that’s going to do it. The X Prize is a great basic idea, with the potential to create a new type of technology and a new industry - tourism-based, sure, but that’s an industry. The winner of the prize might be able to build on that first, tentative, snoop into space and create something that could be expanded into a business that would actually sell - a machine that could orbit the earth, with great visibility, giving passengers hours instead of seconds, something more than a few people would be willing to pay thousands for. I do think that was the creators’ intention, to sponsor a new industry the way that the Orteig Prize sponsored transatlantic passenger aviation.
But Rutan’s approach is a dead end. He hasn’t created a new, inexpensive, growable, developable kind of spacecraft. He’s found a way to mount a rocket in an airplane and get it momentarily to 320,000 feet or so. That’s it. That’s what he does, of course - he’s the most innovative, visionary designer of *airplanes * today. He’s going to just barely meet the explicit (and too loosely-drawn) rules of the prize with a dead-end approach, take the cash, and shut out the entries that could have been the new foundation that it should have fostered.
I used to work at Edwards Air Force Base. I’ve flown into Mojave several times. I’ve been in Rutan’s shop (Rutan Aircraft Factory, when I was thinking of building a Long-EZ), and I met Rutan when he was flying a kite with his SO in Lancaster. So I guess you could say I’m a little interested in this flight. 
The thing is that such flights as these may lower the cost of travelling into space. Think of early aviation. Many of the goals were simply to leave the ground. Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic not only for the challenge, but for a monetary award. Who knew, in 1927, that we would have intercontinental-range aircraft carrying hundreds of people to distant lands in just a few hours? Who knew that airfares would become so cheap?
Whether people should go into space is another debate; but there will always be people who want to leave the atmosphere. Even though robots can do missions more safely, more cheaply, and usually better, people will still fly in space. It’s in our nature.
Is Burt Rutan’s design a dead end? Maybe. But if it works, there will be people who want to take the ride. The more people who want to ride the rocket, the more spacecraft will be built. Some will be like Rutan’s. Then someone will say, “I can do better than that!” (It might even be Rutan who says it.) So there will be a better way of getting people up there.
A hundred years ago, aircraft were very few and they were expensive. Motorcars were reserved for the rich. Today most people are able to buy a seat on an airplane (indeed you can begin to learn to fly yourself for only $49) and cars are common. Too common in many places! If the Tier One project is analogous to the Wright’s Flyer, who knows where space travel will be in a hundred years? And remember that the project is called Tier One. The greatest journey begins with the first step.
This may be true. But Alan Shepard’s first flight was suborbital. Eight years later men were walking on the Moon. The X-15 reached the edge of space. (IIRC, X-15 pilots wore astronaut wings.) But in the 1950s we had to get someone into space right now! to compete with the Soviets. The X-15 was promising, but the political situation at the time required the “quick and dirty” approach. Had Yuri Gagarin not gone into space, we may have continued with the X-15 approach instead of the “Man In Space Soonest” one. We mayn’t have made it to the moon, but we would have had Shuttle-type operations and space stations a lot earlier.
So given that SpaceShipOne is similar to the X-15 in that it is launched from a mothership, rockets into space, and returns to Earth like an airplane; and given that the X-15 project had the potential of sending people into space in a more elegant way than by puitting a person in a pod on top of an ICBM, I think the Tier One project may not be the dead-end it appears (to some) to be.
There already are people who want to take the ride. Always have been. This is about creating a means to fill the demand, not creating the demand itself, although it will certainly grow.
I’m not sure where you’re headed there. Project Mercury was part of a planned, phased technology-development effort with the goal of getting to the moon (once the Spam-in-a-can approach was discarded and controls were added), and as such it compares well with many of the other X-Prize entries.
But, unless Rutan is being more than usually secretive, his rocket plane is “Tier One” only in name. It compares to the X-15 very well, much more closely than it does to Mercury. That, too, wasn’t a technological stepping stone into space, it was an attempt to make the fastest and highest-flying airplane. It could have been the first US “spacecraft” very easily; higher-thrust engines were being developed, but the approach still had been learned out pretty well.
What did you expect from a goal-driven contest? Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize the same way, by obtaining a modified commercial aircraft and loading it up with lots of fuel. All X-prize teams have the same goal, of doing just enough to get the prize. Some are less expandable than Rutan’s - like the idea of using a balloon as a first stage.
The concept of an air-launched rocket isn’t necessarily a dead end. It’s been proposed countless times, and used successfuly by the Pegasus launcher. You are right that there’s a huge difference between a 100km altitude suborbital flight and an orbital flight, but it can be a step in that direction.
My point is that X-15 was not only developed to go higher and faster, it was a stepping stone to space. Had the program continued, the X-15 or similar aircraft would have left the atmosphere. The project was sidetracked by the competing Mercury project.
I don’t believe Mercury was planned as a stepping stone to the moon. I believe that came afterward. Remember that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were deadly adversaries in 1960/61. If the Russians could put a man in space, they would put a nuclear warhead in space. As then-Vice President Johnson said, they could drop nuclear weapons on us like a kid throwing rocks off of a freeway overpass. So rather than continue with the X-15 program as a means to get to space, it was decided to do the “human canonball” routine. Basically, Mercury was meant to show that we could be as much of a threat to the Soviets as they were to us. Of course the logical step from achieving orbit would be to land on the Moon. And Kennedy and Johnson didn’t want to “go to sleep under a Communist Moon.” The Mercury program was a quicker way to get an American in orbit. It also showed that the U.S. could replace the man with a weapon. X-15 had to wind down due to political expediency.
We’re off. Liftoff is successful.
I can’t say much more than Johnny LA, except to repeat, as much as I respect and honor the scientists at NASA, structurally, NASA is a way to keep the number of people who were employed when the Saturn V lifted off, employed. There were better ways than the Shuttle, even when it was designed. There were better ways when it was launched. There are better ways now. And the X-33 wasn’t one of them.
I may be biased, but I’ve been reading Jerry Pournelle’s website for way too long. I don’t always agree with him, but on this, I can’t see where he has his facts wrong.
I don’t like arguing with you, but we do have different perspectives - slightly.
Yes, that, but not much more. Same for Rutan’s airplane.
Not originally, but it was easily turned into one when the need to do so was declared. It did represent a different approach, one based on creating a craft that would be at home in space. The rocket-engined, single-stage airplane just could not have been. It’s still an airplane, out of its natural element once it loses wing lift, not a precursor to further penetration into the cosmos. As you say:
And, like any other experimental program, because all the high-Mn aero data it could provide had been gathered, and resources (including people, both engineers and pilots) were needed to staff up the moon program. That can be called “expediency” if you like, but it could also be called sound management.
Today seems to me like watching the X-15 set a new altitude record, not watching a first step to the moon. I hope you turn out to be right, though. And I hope there’s a sequel to the X Prize targeted toward developing new approaches with a better long-term future.
If America weren’t so intent on showing off the lenght of their ICBM wang to the USSR, then the method Rutan is using to get out of the atmosphere would be alot more advanced than it is now.
What we need now are a series of additional X-prizes that keep pushing the limit and the envelop. An X-Prize for the first successful team to, say, orbit the earth 3 times and turn around in a week and do it again. One for the first successful orbiting of the Moon. A duration X-Prize of xx days in space, again with a turn around time specified to do it again. And the ultimate X-Prize…an orbit around Mars.
The Government in conjunction with industry could perhaps pony up the money for the various prizes. It would be a cheap way for NASA to see what technology sparks. Usually I’m not in favor of the Government paying for such things, but think about it…its a win win situation. If no one is able to collect the prize in a specified time then you aren’t out anything. If somone wins, then think of the potential…and it will be cheap at the price of the prize compared to if NASA did it. Have the prizes go up gradually…say 50 million for the orbiting of the earth 3 times, 75 million for the duration prize and 100 million for the orbit around the moon. Cheap compared to what NASA spends, but attractive enough to get people interested in doing it. Make the Mars prize something like 500 million and you can practically guarenteed SOMEONE will go for it…and yet, at 500 million it would be incredibly cheap.
I’m actually pretty excited about this. I had my bets on Rutan to win and it looks like he’s going too, if nothing goes wrong. I also think that his idea is not a dead end. I think NASA should have stayed with the X-15 and the proposed follow ons instead of going off on a tangent the way they did…we’d be miles ahead of where we are today if they had of taken the slow and steady approach instead of the quick and dirty.
-XT
It’s a launch vehicle, its job is to get to the end of the atmosphere. Spaceship One and the Space Shuttle are indeed “out of [their] natural element” once they reach space, but that’s like saying an airliner is out of its natural element once it touches down on the runway.
I’m guessing Spaceship One is indeed less expandable than Mercury, lacking thrusters and avionics that allow navigation in space. But the concept of an air-launched reusable spacecraft is not necessarily a dead end. The only difference with the Shuttle is that the booster happens to be manned and reusable.
xtisme, your proposed list of X-Prize follow-ons is a fine one, and I wish they’d set it up accordingly. If they had, perhaps we’d have seen development programs targeted toward the Moon and Mars, not simply toward poking one’s nose out of the water for a moment.
If Rutan can follow this up with a rocketplane that can orbit, that’ll be great - I just don’t see how he gets there from here, any more than there was a way to get to the moon based on the X-15, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
But this is a day to congratulate Burt Rutan, Mike Melvill, and the Scaled Composites team for a historic achievement. They’ve made and flown an airplane that can do what no airplane before ever could, and that’s pretty damned significant.
I would love to see something like it happen. I think we could get a lot more bang for the buck by having such prizes…and we’d be a hell of a lot further along if we did. Hopefully the government will look at this and take notice…and NASA will be smart enough to see the potential. They could get out of the space business and become more research oriented.
Well, envision it this way. You have an X-15 type ship that is launched from another craft. This ship has a rocket motor as well as the aerodynamics that allows it to fly in atmosphere, and reaction jets for use outside of the atmosphere. This is a first stage experiment. Next comes a larger ship that allows a larger payload…and allows it to fully orbit the earth, even staying up for extended time…say a week. Sort of like a stripped down shuttle but without all the bloat, and again launched from another craft. Next you have a SSTO design, where the craft can take off like a plane, boost to orbit, stay for an extended period, and then come back down.
Getting to the moon? Well, THIS craft wouldn’t be going to the moon (nor would the X-15 line), but they could move up the parts and gear for a craft that could…to be assembled in stages in orbit. They could move up, again in stages, parts for something like an ISS…or today, they could USE the ISS as a jump off point and assembly point for a craft that could be used to go to the moon or Mars. The whole trick is getting out of the gravity well cheaply and efficiently. Once you can do that and move up a payload that is worth the trip, you do the rest in stages, then move up the crew and voila…Bobs your uncle.
BTW, for anyone who hasn’t seen yet, the test flight was a success!!
Was just talking to a friend of mine via IM chat who lives in India and she brought up an interesting point about all this that I thought I’d stick in the thread.
Everyone is going to know Burt Rutan’s name now…he’s made history today. He’s going to be pretty famous, as well as the other people involved in the project…especially the pilot. If the Government DID offer additional X-Prizes, how long do you think before some of the real heavy hitters out there would want to fund projects to go for them. Not for the money necessarily…but for the fame of it. I’m thinking of guys like Bill Gates who have tons of cash laying about. Imagine if there was an X-Prize to circle the Moon or Mars. There could be a Microsoft One space craft…imagine the publicity (powered by Windows 2010!) both for the company AND for Gates. And he’s not the only one that could or would do such a thing just to get his/her name in the history books.
-XT
There is a Mars Prize, folks. There’s also a number of other space prizes out there as well (see the Mars Prize links for some of them). NASA is going to be handing out prizes as well.
Rutan built WhiteKnight to serve primarily as a trainer for the SpaceShipOne pilots, it seems logical to me, given Rutan’s method of designing things, that SS1 is, in fact, little more than a trainer for his shuttle replacement. Nor is SS1 his first venture into spaceship design. Scaled worked on the DCX (managed to shave some 300 lbs. off the design as well) and designed the Roton rocket. It took less than 4 years for SS1 to go from the drawing board to flight, for a cost of just over $20 million. Not bad at all, especially since I’d be willing to bet that Rutan’s figured out how to put that puppy into orbit (I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t do that on SS1’s last flight).
Paul Allen’s got money to burn, and he knows plenty of other people with lots and lots of cash. It’s all up to them now. If they’re smart, they’ve got their checkbooks open as I type this.
I think this is very significant, and Rutan’s design is, to me, the most practical, versitile, simple, and effective of any of the X-Prize candidates. The simple truth is, this approach (air-platform-launched rocket plane) is tried-and-true, and could very well be the approach of choice for smaller countries wishing to get into space. It’s relatively cheap, practical, it can scale (imagine what a 747-sized White Knight could tote up there), and the rocket-plane itself can be made much more sophisticated if need be.
As noted above, the X-15 accomplished a lot, being essentially a very early prototype for the Space Shuttle. It scored the first hypersonic flights, the first breaches of space (67 miles), the first winged craft to go over Mach 6, first microgravity tests, and so on.
So what’s wrong with the fact Rutan emulated the X-15 to some extent? Besides, there’s still plenty of uniqueness. For one thing, no need for pressure suits; the cabin is pressurized. Its engine is relatively clean, cheap, and easy to build. It goes Mach 3! No private aircraft designer has ever gone that fast.
I see no reason why a bigger, faster, and more sophisticaed vsn. of Spaceship one couldn’t be built right now. What if it could make a sub-orbital flight across the US? Lots of people would pony up for that. And maybe a small piggyback rocket could launch things into orbit. I can’t see why not. A mostly-reusable space platform that could carry both commercial payloads as well as tourists at the same time could be a money-maker, I bet.
I think this is cool beans. If Scaled Composites can generate the venture capital and attract a bunch more crack engineers (and I bet the prestige of being the X-Prize winner would be quite a magnet), two things I don’t see as at all impossible, these guys could have an honest-to-goodness space enterprise in a decade or two. Yeah, they’re a long way from flying to the Moon or Mars, but so what? It’s still wonderful to see people accomplishing something like this without the shackles of Federal beaurocracy, and the more folks like this can accomplish, the better, IMO.