Nahh . . . too easy.
I’ve been a follower of Rutan’s for a long time (like Johnny LA, I was seriously considering building a Long-EZE once). When he announced his company was going for the prize, I immediately made him the odds-on favorite. Besides being a great designer, the man just knows how to follow through. Sometimes that’s a harder skill to find than the design talent (ask anyone who has dealt with Jim Bede).
I agree with ElvisL1ves to a point - the SpaceShipOne is not infinitely scalable. Rutan’s not going to make orbit with this platform. But it IS scalable to a degree. Specifically, this design has already been scaled up to carry six passengers to a higher suborbital flight. The whole intent of this system is to become a platform for launching relatively safe tourist flights into space.
This is an important step. If a commercial space venture can get started, it can help bootstrap funding for newer projects. At $20,000 per flight, Rutan will probably have more people sign up for a flight than they can possibly carry for years. At five passengers per hop, that’s $100,000 revenue per flight. Looking at the hardware they are using, and knowing a bit about the technology behind it, my guess is that there will be room for some substantial profit in there. Maybe there will be a fleet of SpaceshipTwos, launching almost daily.
But I’m also seeing a lot of breathless commentary about how this is the dawn of the real space age, and we’ll all be flying in space in twenty years, and there will be private moonbases and Mars missions. We need to keep this in perspective - the difference between suborbital flight and orbital flight is gigantic. Rutan’s innovations that made this flight possible include his ‘shuttlecock’ configuration for stable re-entry. That’s not going to work at orbital velocities. The heat shield required for a drop from 62 miles is nothing like that required for a re-entry from 25,000 mph. Real spaceflight requires thrusters, spacesuits, special heating and cooling systems, etc. All intricate engineering, and all largely outside of Rutan’s specialty.
But Rutan himself says that they are on a fast track for orbital flight, so he must have some serious plans under way - the man is notoriously tight-lipped about projects. And I would never sell him short. So here’s hoping that stage II is on the way.
How much do you think having moonbases and Mars missions is going to benefit everybody else?
Oh, I don’t think we’re arguing. As you point out, we have different perspectives. Remember that I spent time at Edwards. That may be colouring my perception. But everything I’ve read indicates that the X-15 program would have resulted in an orbital space plane, had resources not been diverted to the “fast and cheap” rocket-and-capsule program. Had we continued with X-15, we would not have made it to the moon in 1969. (Incidentally, the 35th anniversary is coming up.) However, I believe we would have a better orbital space program than we have now.
X-15 provided strong evidence that a winged aircraft would eventually be able to make it out of the Earth’s atmosphere. The Lifting Body project was instrumental in the design of the Space Shuttle. Basically, the Air Force was following a methodical approach to space flight: With each new X-plane, go higher and faster. (There were, however, other X-planes that were not part of that process.) Logically, the next step from the edge of space would be to achieve space. Then would come orbital flights.
But as I mentioned, the political pressure was to out-do the Russians. We couldn’t do it fast enough with the “step by step” approach the Air Force was using, so we had to use the Redstone rocket (which I believe was in the Army inventory).
Please don’t think I’m dissing your input or being a jerk or anything. I’m just going on the books I’ve read. (The Right Stuff by Thomas Wolfe, Yeager, by Gen. Chuck Yeager, plus others – biography and non-fiction – that I don’t recall at the moment. They’re all packed away still, so I apologise for not providing cites at this time.) Perhaps you’ve read different books.
I guess what I’m commenting on, as far as your first post, is this:
It might indeed be a dead end. But I see it as a starting point. I see the next achievment being the launching of a non-government craft that goes into orbit. I see “sightseeing flights” that allow more people to go to space; first suborbital, and then orbital. I think that this will re-invigorate interest in space, and will stimulate more private flights.
An X-15 or Tier One type aircraft will not get us to the moon; but I think that these ships have the potential of getting us closer. After all, isn’t the Space Shuttle a “dead end”? And yet, we’re using it for the ISS. If private enterprise (Now there’s a name for a private space ship! Or “Free Enterprise”.) can do what the Shuttle does more cheaply, then we’re more likely to take the next step.
That would be the X-20 Dyna-Soar. There was already a flying prototype in 1961. I agree - the Mercury program killed it, and this was a very bad thing. The pace of innovation in the military would have been higher for several reasons - one was that they could focus on the mission needs and not get tied down in all of the ‘universal use’ crap that turned the Shuttle into a white elephant. And second, the military is more willing to kill its test pilots. The fatality rate in the X-plane series was very high, but it never slowed the program down. The trouble with a big, visible, national space program is that failures becomes political footballs.
Incidentally, one of the most exciting parts of Bush’s new ‘space vision’ is that there will be money earmarked for prizes. Originally they were talking about 30 million or so for space-related prizes, but today a spokesman for the new Exploration Systems division of NASA said that the success of Rutan’s program showed the viability of the ‘prize’ funding method of development, and NASA might consider a prize as big as 300 million dollars for the first private orbital flight. That would attract serious attention and capital.
I’d be interested in hearing about the spacecraft that is infinitely scalable. What, have they been hiding these in Area 51 or something?
Prizes are good and dandy, but there has to be a limit to the prizes if the idea is to encourage the development of inexpensive orbital vehicles. What I mean is, look at the X-prize, 10 million; Rutan and Allen cough up 20 to make it, so the result of the prize incentive is a quite economical vehicle (relatively speaking). A low prize encourages efficient and economical proposals.
At 300 million dollars there´s nothing more to do than building a Soyuz look a like and off you go, not a real innovation, we´d be still stuck with the same technology and ideas; launch costs wouldn´t change at all, because there´s no incentive in doing things cheapely (and safe I presume).
Just out of curiousity, anyone know how far in linear km Spaceship one flies? I mean, I know it lands where it takes off, but after it finishes rocketing upward ends the vertical part of its ballistic flight, how much ground can it cover on the way down? The X-15 could fly about 450km.
Hmmm… food for thought.
I agreee, SpaceShipOne is not going to the moon - so what? The C150 I fly isn’t going across the Pacific, that doesn’t make it less of an airplane. For that matter, the Bell X-1 Yeager flew was dropped from a carrier plane THEN accelerated to Mach 1. The idea of using one aircraft to lift another has been around a long time. The X-1 and SpaceShipOne are both testbeds and proof-of-concept ideas. They are not, nor are they intended to be, the final word.
Think of all the problems Rutan had to solve to get even to the edge of space. He had to design a very sturdy pressure shell. Control mechanisms - from my most recent visit to Scaled’s site it looks like SS1 has at least two control systems: one for subsonic, and one for supersonic flight. It really does have a rocket motor - it’s niether a piston driven nor a jet propelled aircraft.
Actually, the Nazi Luftwaffe had a rocket-propelled plane in the early 1940’s - which is another thing I’ve noticed about Rutan - he doesn’t always build on the latest stuff, sometimes he goes “backwards”. Canards, for instance, were largely ignored back 1915 or so - until Rutan in the 1970’s. MOST of his designs have been canards (SS1 is a Rutan anomanly for not being a canard). Again, on the most recent visit to Scaled’s site it looks like SS1 is not fly-by-wire but rather, at least in part, good old-fashioned control cables and pushrods (of course, exact details are not given). We’re talking about a spaceship that could be piloted to a safe landing even with a computer failure - which, to my mind, makes it safer than something like the shuttle which does seem to require fly-by-wire. And so what? KISS is a great engineering principal. Seems to me that a design stable enough for a human to fly is better in some ways than one requiring a computer (special and exotic applications aside)
Really, though - achieving Mach 3 alone is a great achievement. NO civil design has ever done so before. In fact, most military and government designs don’t do as well.
The thing is, you can’t ever be sure where something will lead. MacCready’s Gossamer series of human-powered airplanes were, in a sense, “dead-ends” with no commercial application - except that some of that technology is used in unmanned vechicles like Helios.
Let’s look at this way - if Rutan’s system is safe enough for a human being to ride into space, then it’s definitely safe for a non-human payload, right?
And the technology allowing civilian Mach 3 speeds might well have applications in more conventional aviation.
The big prize might not be space, but rather the spin-offs of the design.
(Personally, though, I’m hoping for real orbits and such)
And yeah, I do think Rutan & friends have something on the design board, if not actually half-assembled in a hangar somewhere. They are notorious for not rolling anything out until they are really ready. A regular skunkworks, they are.
Oh, by the way - navigation. Can’t you use the GPS system until you get into their orbit? SS1 is using GPS for navigation - huh, works for suborbital, at least. How high will the GPS system work?
Anyhow - it’s a quibble it’s an airplane. So what? If you’re flying in atmosphere an airplane shape is much more controllable and practical than a bullet. If you want to fly in space, you need a rocket motor. So its got both. It’s like quibbling that the Mercury and Apollo re-entry capsules were just parachutes with a payload.
Ideally, (to my mind) you’d want to eventually get something that incorporates BOTH the lifting jet and the spaceship into one unit, but if the separate unit approach is more economical (and it is, since the only thing you actually lift on the rocket is what actually needs to be lifted - you leave the jet egngines and fuel down in the atomosphere) I can live with it.
I can’t find the article this comes from, but I found this quote by Rutan interesting to say the least.
Don’t forget the ten or so other teams, most of which have spent millions of dollars as well. Quite a multiplier for a 10 million investment.
As for whether 300 million is the right number for a private orbital launch, I think it’s in the ballpark as long as you set the parameters quickly. Clearly, we don’t want someone buying a surplus Russian rocket and just launching it. That accomplishes nothing. So the rules can prevent that. The rules can also be set up to make it as challenging as you want. For instance, to prevent a one-shot cannonball, the X-prize rules state that you have to use the same spacecraft to repeat the feat within two weeks.
So let’s say that the rules are set up so that the spacecraft has to do at least two complete orbits of the earth, while carrying enough payload and space for three crewmembers and 5,000 lbs of cargo. And it must repeat within one month. Think that’d be easy to do for 300 million? I don’t.
The key to the prize payout is that it has to be realistic enough that the winning entry can recoup, say, half of their investment. It’s not meant to be a way to make profit in and of itself - it’s meant to be enough that wealthy people will want to try for it. Just as the early aviation prizes paid out far less than what went into winning them.
Or look at it this way - let’s say there’s a business model for something like commercial orbital flight. But getting venture capital to develop a rocket for which there is no proven market is very hard. But now you can point to a 300 million prize, which will get you back a good chunk of your investment even if the commercial possibilities fizzle out. Suddenly the risk goes way down, and money flows in. Spend 500 million on your orbital program, win the prize, and now you’ve only got to recoup 200 million from commercial sales. If the prize pushes the risk/reward past a ‘tipping point’, suddenly you’ve got lots of people competing.
The problem with the larger prizes, however, is that it’s going to be harder to attract the kind of maverick financing going into the X-Prize. Paul Allen funded this venture simply because he’s a fan and his money is burning a hole in his pocket. It’s exactly what I’d be spending it on if I had a few billion. But once you get to the point where the development costs approach a billion dollars, even the richest individuals begin to drop out. Now you’re into large corporate money, and those bean counters want results. And not only that, they want control. Now you’ve got design by committee, micromanagement, and the desire to do things the way they always have (i.e. when building to government contract).
So I’m not sure yet how well the prize concept scales. But I can think of lots of cheaper prizes that could produce great things:
[ul]
[li]100 million for the team to fly a ship around the moon and back in the fastest time by 2010. They can even launch the craft itself on a commercial space launch. The idea is to develop exotic engine technology.[/li][li]10 million for the first team to build a robot that can burrow down below the antarctic ice sheet into lake Vostok, swim around for a week, and sent back detailed video and data telemetry (to develop technology for a Europa mission).[/li][li]1 billion dollars for the first company to return at least 100 kg of samples from Mars[/li][/ul]
Etc. Make a list of the engineering breakthroughs you need, assign prizes to them for roughly 1/2 of what you think the government would need to achieve them, and see what happens.
The best thing about prizes from the government’s standpoint is that there is zero risk. If no one achieves the goal, you pay out nothing. If they do, you get a bargain.
I’m not an authority on space travel, but these large prizes don’t seem like a very bad idea to me. The prize would just need to have some conditions attached to it, like the X-Prize does. From the X-Prize Rules we see that the winning design must be completely reusable, no more than 10% of the non-propellant weight can be replaced between flights, it must carry at least 3 passengers, and be able to be turned around and flown again in two weeks. Similar guidelines would rule out any Soyuz, or even Space Shuttle copycats.
Additionally, one would hope that the per flight cost would be less than the amount of the prize, which is already (if I’m remembering my numbers right) half the cost of a single shuttle mission, so this situation is win-win.
Rutan’s new “toy.” Notice the specs on the thing
That’s huge! Gotta wonder what he’s going to be building with that thing.
Probably not much , space exploration is still to vast for a private venture to suceed in any meaningful way , with maybe the exception of sending some sort of private probe to the moon.
Most likely the Xprize is set up so that a successful design can be handed off to lockmart or boeing , for mass production.
If anything , a successful design is gonna spur the military to expand its space superiority mission .
Declan
I’m not sure Lockheed or Boeing has either the equipment to produce composites the way Scaled does, or the personnel with the proper experience to get the job done.
Which is not to say they couldn’t get it, but you shouldn’t assume it would be any easier for the current big guys to take on this technology than for Scaled to ramp up to mass production.
Nor would the design be “handed off” to anyone - it would be sold.
Anyhow - Scaled was a divison of Raytheon for some time. I heard a rumor that Rutan bought the company back, but I’m not sure of the details. It may be due to company relationships Raytheon would get first dibs.
I think this flight was a great achievement, and I have a few questions:
-once the ship left the atmosphere, it was in effect, a guided missle. At approximately 62 miles altitude, the ship ceased ascending and began to fall back to earth. Now, at such altitude these is no aerodynamic lift, so no control…that must have been a fairly terrifying free fall! When the ship finally reached about 80,000 feet, the control surfaces would begin to work again…the construction of the wings must have been pretty robust!
That 53 year old test pilot must have had pretty steady nerves…how were they sure that those wings wouldn’t rip right off when the ship hit denser air? Any idea what the terminal velocity of this thing would be?
I think it was a very bold attempt…I hopeit leads to an orbital flight soon!
Paul Allen deserves a lot of credit…he could have hoarded his billions…at least he is doing something positive with them. But of course…he could have built 1000 housing units for the poor of Seattle, but never mind! 
-The ship has cold gas thrusters.
-They designed and tested the wings to take the abuse; there was a picture somewhere in the Scaled Composites web site showing a test, there were (I estimate, maybe more) 5 tons of sandbags pilled over one wing.
Is this going to lead to any other innovations besides going into space? Is my flight from Chicago to Oakland going to be cut down to an hour in 15 years with sub-orbital flight? How about trans-oceanic flight?
Chuck Yeager flew an NF-104 to something like 104,000 feet. This was an F-104A modified with a 6,000 pounds thrust rocket engine. One one flight Yeager found that the hydrogen peroxide thrusters had stuck in the open position, resulting in upward pitching. Unable to recover, the aircraft entered a flat spin and Yeager was forced to punch out.
kidchameleon: No, your flight from Chicago to Oakland won’t be affected. I think to be cost effective, the flights would have to be transoceanic.