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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The Triple Crown While answering a comment I had a sudden realization: Scaled Composites is going to take the Triple Crown of aerospace.
There are three top records in aviation. Distance. Speed. Altitude. The Scaled Composite built Voyager already holds the distance record with their around the world flight.
SpaceShipOne is a 21st Century version of the X15, which holds the other two records. I think SpaceShipOne is going to take the altitude record off of it very soon. If it can do that, it may also be capable of taking the speed record in a different flight profile if it can avoid overheating.
This is getting very interesting.
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Dale, The NY Times and the French newspapers are referring to this probe as “European”. Is it “European” like the Rugby World Cup victory? Or a genuine joint European effort? If so, who’s all involved?
Well, the ‘about’ web page for Scaled Composites says they’re in Mojave, California … I suppose California *is* about as close as you can come to being European in the US 😉
Oh, ho ho ho! Then why does Dale refer to it is British? And if it’s British, why do the NY Times and the French media refer to it as “European”?
I ask because so many of the US media don’t understand the difference between Britain and Europe, and out of concern that the French are trying to hijack another British achievement and somehow incorporate it into “Europe” – whatever that is.
Verity. Put down the eggnog and repeat after me: SpaceShipOne is not Beagle One the Mars probe.
After re-reading my article… I can’t imagine how you got there from there…
I’m sure that everyone knows by now that the British Beagle II part of the European Mars probe has not been heard from yet and they are still hoping for a signal tonight.
But I’ve not written about Beagle II. I’ve been writing about a manned aircraft/spaceship in the Mojave desert.
Very, very, different thing. Apples and vent worms.
Beagle II that is.
Eggnog tasty, is it Dale? The NY Times today referred to Beagle as European. That is all I am going to say on the subject. (The Beagle’s the one that’s not yet giving out signals, yes?) OK, that’s the one the NY Times is referring to as “European”. I will now return to my grown-up drink of whisky and soda. Eggnog’s for weenies.
To my knowledge I have never written about the Beagle II Mars probe. This article is about the Rutan suborbital space plane in California.
Oh.
When does a round the world flight become an orbit? I could imagine an SS1 derivative doing a complete orbit ratehr easily but since some of that would be distinctly out of atmosphere would it count as a flight?
Voyager was aerodynamic the whole way. An orbit is outside the atmosphere. You are in orbit if you are travelling at a velocity such that the Earth’s surface falls away from you (due to curvature) exactly as fast as you fall towards it.
As for the current spaceship/aircraft, there is still a very large factor between SpaceShipOne and orbit. It is still basically an X15 rocketplane in its lineage.
Not that I do not expect that evolution to happen very quickly in private hands. I would say the private orbital spaceship is closer to us today than the first transatlantic flight was to the Wright Brothers.
Given that high speed flight is also high skin temperature flight. I think such attempt would be very difficult, cause composites tend not to be good at high temperature. There may be materials that can keep such temperatures away from the skin that are also cost effective. But I don’t know of them.
You might be interested to know that a whole new set of FAA regulations had to be written for suborbital rockets like Spaceship One and similar vehicles.
The FAA Administrator for Space Transportation (A very savy bureaucratic infighter named Patti Grace Smith) Forced the more conventional parts of the FAA to accept this class of vehicle as a new type that should be regulated by her office.
Her rules are basically “If you want to kill yourself OK but my office is here to make sure you do not kill anyone else in the process.”
An old friend put it another way he said, “In the rocket Business Amateurs talk propulsion; Professionals talk insurance.”
Good Luck and Merry Christmas.
Yep. I believe we were the first company ever to get liability insurance on a rocket propelled aircraft, at Airventure in 2002. A million dollars of liability coverage only cost us $7000 on an annual basis, reasonable in the aviation world.
As for SS1 breaking the X-15 speed record of mach 6.7, recall that dynamic heating is proportional to velocity cubed, and the X-15 #2 came back from that flight with some fair sized holes burned in it’s inconel structure… it never flew again.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that “official” international aviation records for speed and altitude require that the aircraft take off under its own power and land with the pilot. As both SpaceShipOne and the X-15 were dropped from mother aircraft, they’re technically inelligible.
If the “Launch under own power” requirement’s dropped, then the Apollos should keep the absolute altitude record for piloted craft for the immediately forseeable future.
Dale,
Burts got competition……
http://sj1.ru/cgi-bin/iframe/pravda?343
And unless he can get backing from GD or Boeing or Lockheed, the Ruskies will win the commercial race.
No, SpaceShipOne won’t break the X-15’s Mach 6.7 (~ 4,500 MPH) record. According to the Scaled Composite website, it’s intended to hit about 2,500 MPH, which is somewhere around Mach 3.8-4. It might not even break the X-15’s 67 mile altitude record because it’s intended to meet the 100 KM (62 mile) X-Prize requirement. Of course, Rutan probably designed in some extra capability but perhaps not that much.
“…Rutan probably designed in some extra capability…”
Ah, but that’s one of the best things about Space Ship One in particular and most or all of the X-Prize competitors: they are very much incremental programs. Space Ship One has already had a couple of design and hardware modifications to improve handling. That’s far more difficult and expensive to do with expendables, and NASA is extremely cautious (too cautious, in my opinion) in doing that kind of incremental development with any of their manned systems. Maybe they did while working toward Apollo, but not any more.
So even if the current SS1 can’t beat the X-15, a series of testable modifications to SS1 might.
There MUST be aliens on Mars, and they don’t want us there. I can’t believe that these Mars probes are going so wrong.
British, European, who cares. I just want the thing to work.
My concern is I don’t see that there is all that much of an upgrade path for SS1 – its designed to win the X-Prize and maybe, if the regulatory issues can be dealt with, be sold to people interested in running a sub-orbital hop business.
It’s missing too many important things to evolve much beyond what it is now and adding them isn’t just a case of building it slightly bigger and with more capacity. I wish it was, but aerospace engineering sadly doesn’t work like that.
How about the UK Starchaser? They have a great website, and have some massive rockets in production.
Joe: There are composites that actually do well at high temperature. The Shuttle RCC, despite its current noteriety, is actually a good material provided that it’s engineered and maintained properly. (IHMO, the big problem with composites right now is not really the composition or the fabrication, but the lack of knowledge of how they wear over time coupled with deficiencies in inspection methods. Both the Shuttle accident and the airliner that went down in Queens a few months after 9/11 were caused in part by the fact that the composites devoped faults that weren’t detected by the inspection and test methods then in use.)
On the other hand, though, I have a friend who has a lot of materials experience, and he has maintained for some years now that today’s refractory-metals technology could produce an all-metal heat shield that would be reusable and very low maintenance compared to current materials. There was a proposal a few years ago to fly a test heat shield on a Shuttle flight. That probably won’t happen now. (Unless someone decides it’s worth taking a chance on an unmanned, remote-controlled Shuttle flight as the program is wrapping up in 2009/10.)