1st privately funded spacecraft to launch today

Today (hopefully) will become a historic day in aviation history:

SpaceShipOne

Godspeed SpaceShipOne!!!
Make us all prowd!

Live linkstarting at 3pm local (I assume the 6am Monday time means NA Pacific DLS).

THEY DID IT!!!

Quick bit of flag-waving:

It's unbelievable to imagine that there are only three nations that have put men in space, and now an American private citizen has flown in space thanks to some incredible visionaries, lots of hard work, and tons of smarts. As much as I disagree with many things that have been going on in/with the US right now, it's events like this that reaffirm my belief in the USA!

Hooray! That 10 million prize won't even offset the 20 mil thrown in by Microsoft exec, but I am sure that the prestige is much more worth it. Now this will be a kick in NASA's pants to think of alternate ways of getting things up into space instead of the expensive shuttle.

I don't speculate that a craft twice as large as the SpaceShipOne would go twice as high, but I wonder if they built is slightly larger would it be able to continue an orbit. I also wonder how practical will this be to deliver a payload of some size. I guess the upcoming years will tell.

I really like the eco-friendly fuel bit too.

Congrats Yanks!

so these guys now won that 10 million price offered for the first private space flight (wasn't the name X-prize, or something)? But anyway great technical achievement!

@DW, that this happens in the USA has a lot to do with the availability of (private) funding. In that respect Europe is much more conservative than the USA and there is simple less funding for projects like this (or for that matter, technical start-ups in general).

@VDB

It has to be repeated within a couple weeks, I think, to win the prize.

This thing goes at Mach 3, right? Orbital speed is ~Mach 24, so it would need to go eight times faster to get into orbit.

This wasn't an X-Prize attempt, this just made it past the 100km barrier of space (a roughly agreed to threshold). They have to do two flights in two weeks with 3 passengers onboard. The X-Prize is still up for grabs but I think these guy have the other contestants quaking in their boots.


Well suborbital and orbital spaceflight are very different. SpaceShipOne went mach 3 while getting into orbit requires going about mach 25.

E = -GMm/r + mvv/2

where E is the total energy, G is Newton's gravitational constant (6.67 x 10E-11 Nmm/(kg kg), M is the mass of the earth (6 x 10E+24 kg), m is the mass of the spaceship, r is the distance of the spaceship from the center of the earth, and v is the speed of the spaceship. The first term is the gravitational potential energy and the second is the kinetic energy of the spaceship.

When E=0, the spaceship has reached escape velocity thus can get into orbit.

R is the radius of the earth (6.5x10E+6 m), thus the escape velocity is 11,000 m/s or about 25,000 mi/hr.

NASA isn't too interested into just scratching space and falling back; in order to get the benefits out of being in space you've got to orbit (extended microgravity). Going fast requires more thrust, more thrust means more fuel, more fuel means more weight, more weight means more thrust. It is an ugly circle.

This is a huge feat, but it it is still a HUGE step from orbital spaceflight.

I found a cool article on Scramjets, which could do it.

The space flight is indeed a remarkable event. We may be witnessing the beginning of a new era, and it's very exciting.

BTW, @DW, I completely agree, that the US has done some very shameful and disturbing things of late. This definitely bothers me as an American. But, today's feat has got to be a huge positive boost for the nation, which I like.

Also, nice touch with the equation and subsequent explanation. Very slick! For a moment, I almost thought I was back in physics class. ;-)

I assume they modelled it based on the original Buck Rogers version to save cash?

As it happens it looks better in this shot:

and not so cool in this one as it hitches a lift to the shops on the back of his mate's modern day rally-chopper:

JE, HA! I actually think the mogthership is pretty badass looking; like a big white flying praying mantis.

The whole idea scares me witless - I don't think I would have a go if they offered me a free trip, but then I am a spineless Limey!

(I get seasick crossing the British Channel - seriously!)

Hmmmmmm...new thread coming now.

This article is about hydraulic powered rollercoaster.

For years roller coasters have relied on chains to pull the cars to the top of a lift hill and build a reservoir of potential energy. But new propulsion systems have made it possible to launch coaster trains horizontally into the ride's elements rather than dragging them up a hill.

There was some news about hydraulics on top of hydraulics that multiplied the force each time they added another a few years back. One hydraulic pushed another moveable hydraulic along that pushed another moveable hydraulic... you get the idea. This article is not the one I was thinking of. The topic was applied to roller coasters but I wonder if they built a really large one and put it on top of Mt. Ranier or Everest that they could 'shoot' something up high enough to achieve orbit or at least help it along enough for a good boost.

Talking out of my a*s now so I will stop.

humming "proud to be an american" to himself

I'd go in a second (albeit probably with a barf bag)!

DW will know - but I am sure I have seen talk about making spacecraft pick up speed horizontally before chucking them up a ramp?

Same principle as the Harrier Jump Jet off the decks of a ship?

(or me on my Motocross bike except I don't every actually get off the ground)

Yeah, there are ideas for a SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) vehicle that takes off like an airplane but it's tough. The shape of the craft needs to change based on the altitude; low altitude and speed means long straight wings, high altitude and speed meand short, swept wings. Propulsion is also a big problem. Jet engines (relatively) have a pretty low altitude limit.

I think as scramjet technology comes along we'll see hybrid craft that switches from jet to scramjet to rocket on ascent that will have orbital capability.

I feel a little sad whenever things like this happen as I believe we should be working on getting things fixed up here on earth before we worry about spreading our hate, greed, and violent ideals around the universe. How about someone offering a 10 million dollar prize for the person who ends starvation, or brings about true equality, or teaches the human race that we CAN live in harmony with the planet without rushing headfirst into a one-way, unsustainable, destructive "progress" oriented future? Now THAT would be something to celebrate.

@ Kza

I think it was Greg Bear who answered the question of "why spend money on spaceflight when there is so much left to fix on the Earth?" His answer was that if we waited to leave the house until every last single chore was done we'd never be able to step outside the door. Makes sense to me.

After all, it was a $25,000 prize that spurned people to attempt trans-atlantic flight, and as a result we now have the logistic freedom that was unheard of only two generations ago. This $10,000,000 is much the same thing. We can only imagine the benefits for all manking once private industry really gets their teeth into space.

I guess Microsoft probably has enough cash to start a consumer line of rocket ships. MS Rocket 1.0, coming soon to a launch site near you...

A bit scary, I think.

Brings back the original meaning of crash, doesn't it? It wouldn't be the big blue screen of death, it would be the big blue planet of death zooming really fast towards you.

I did note recently that Bill Gates donated $100M of his own cash to fund Malaria research folks.

Contrary to popular opinion that I only like mud-slinging at everything from the USA I personally reckon the the dominance of Microsoft in the PC market has been a wonderful thing - and I am not kidding.

Look at how much we can do with programmes and what technically complicated tasks we can all achieve every day (This forum, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Excel etc). And think how easy it is for us all to switch jobs and industries...you turn up at work on Monday morning and your new boss says "run through these figures on the spreadsheet" and you get straight to work.

In Japan last time I heard they had around 9 competing operating system platforms. What a drama! Frankly I am not interested in the operating system - I just want to get the job done on a stable platform.

Microsoft's dominance and profitability has allowed them to invest to the current day platforms which are pretty damn stable like XP. Microsoft did not engineer problems into their earlier systems - its just damned hard to get this stuff right.

So there!

DW - back on track again.

I was thinking more of a design that was visually closer to the standard "space rocket" design, but was aided in the very early stages of acceleration by a ground powered device. Perhaps like those jets that get catapaulted off the ships more than the Harrier take-off ramp in fact.

So the rocket gets a 10, 20, 30% or whatever head start, but doesn't have to use so much of its precious fuel on that very first stage. Am I correct in thinking that the force required to shift a stationary object (e.g. car, space rocket) is considerably higher in that first few seconds?

Maybe if we pushed the rocket up the top of a jolly steep hill - and then let it run down the slope on tracks?

Actually $168Million its says here and most other reports:

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art...rticlekey=24416

@Kza - Dude, the planet will be all used up soon, we've got to colonise somewhere else quick!

The problem with using a racetrack approach is that you'd need a really long one in order to get to Mach 24 (or even a decent fraction of it) at an acceptable G force.

Mind you, if all you want to do is launch a lump of metal into space, and you have a spare nuke, it might be possible.

More insane experiments with nukes here

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Plumbob.html
even better

I'm from the other side of the Atlantic but it's a bit YES to that

about getting to space easily, how about the space elevator technology. It's still some yeaars away, but that technology is picking up steam relatively fast.

Damn Im always late!!!
Anway WELL DONE TO SPACE SHIP ONE. It just made the world a little smaller!!
Its things like these that make me wish I was an american!
Let the dream live on.

max

has this question been answered: why had it not happened sooner? has NASA had a monolopoly on any and all knowledge necessary for space flight or were certain records only recently declassified? obviously DW (maybe davek too) y'all are not allowed to divulge any classified knowledge you've amassed during periods of employment so i can't image you trudging out to start your own private space travel agency.
i know other countries have the knowledge as well, but as already mentioned, the u.s. is a magnet for private funding. the u.s.a way.

i always get hooked on those attemped fastest cars in the world shows and i actually read chuck yaeger's autobiography!

Its all just a bunch of rich white men beating their chests and making up for having small penises. I mean look at the shapes of these space-rockets. Can it get anymore phallic? It reminds me a lot of a car stereo "contest" where whoever spends the most money wins, except scaled up. Instead of getting their cred parking in the main street they get it at the country club.

Space travel benefits everyone you say? Well velco and plastic toothpaste tubes sure are handy but what the world really needs is peace and food and a general sense of loving one another rather than dividing and competing. Actually technology already produces enough food to feed everyone, its just that people would rather see their produce destroyed to keep prices up than be given away to the starving. That and political reasons prevent food from reaching those who need it the most.

The real frontiers we as a species need to be pushing against are social, political and perhaps spiritual. Not patting ourselves on the back over mere technological gadgetry.

I'm no expert, but I believe the word is "aerodynamic"...

Kza, I get your point, but perhpas if we actually go and find some green dudes to kill, the human race will stop killing each other?
Could build LOADS of spaceships (although the focus should initially be on making laser guns and lightsabres, or the green dudes will screw us over big time) with all the money being wasted in Iraq.

@ elfenstar

Nothing NASA does that isn't Department of Defence related is 100% public domain. You as an American citizen can go to NASA and request every e-mail that I ever sent while I was working there under the Freedom of Information Act!

A major NASA goal is government subsidy of technology that ultimately makes it into the private sector. Every year NASA holds conferences demonstrating new technology and gives it away to American private industry to go profit with. Some estimates say for every $1 the American tax payer pays into NASA, $7 are generated through private industry technology transfer.

But back to your question about why this hasn't happened sooner. True enough, NASA did pretty much the exact same thing as SpaceShipOne but did it 45 years ago with the X-15 program. Until very recently with the advent of new technologies, building a manned craft capable of reaching space was cost and resource prohibitive. Breakthrough technologies like composite construction have made it possible to build an adequately strong craft while keeping it light (composites are way easier to work with than Aluminum as well). Still, the cost is prohibitive. SpaceShipOne cost something around $40M and it has minimal direct profit capability. It took Paul Allen with money to blow to fund this thing. I think Rutan & Scaled Compsoites will continue on this trend and make something that is profitable, but it will be a while before they get in the black.

@ VDB

That space elevator idea is crazy! Still, NASA is talking about it. A year of two ago they had a symposium at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama to discuss the idea. Basically it involves anchoring an asteroid at geostationary orbit (24,000miles up) and building a cable between it and a fixed point on Earth. At that point things can be lifted and lowered. the problem with the idea is strength; there aren't materials strong enough to overcome their own weight at such huge distances. Breakthroughs in Carbon-Nanotube structures are being touted as a possibile material but that's still a long ways away.

@ JE

There have been some poposals about running a craft down a rail to get it up to speed before letting it take off under it's own power but as SparkaHck said the problem is getting everything moving fast enough to make it worthwhile. The fastest car ever (British) just barely broke the speed of sound. Airplanes at low altitude must use a high amount of thrust to break the sound barrier due to thick air near sea level. What SpaceShipOne and the X-15 did is get to a higher altitude with a mothership first, then use your own thrust to get the rest of the way. It is a sound idea, but mothership lift capability is the size-defining factor e.g. lanuching something big like a space station module or a space telescope that way won't work as there aren't any airplanes big enough to carry such heavy loads.

I guess a good example is the Space Shuttle again; the orbiting part of the shuttle (called, well the 'Orbiter!') is carried from place to place by 747 BUT that's without fuel. That huge orange tank under the shuttle is needed for the shuttle main engines and there is no way a 747 can carry that much weight. Even still, at the cruising altitude of a 747, you're still not high enough to use only the shuttle main engines.

For big payloads, Shuttles and expendable unmanned rockets are still the way to go. I'm convinced the next big leap for heavy payloads will come from hybring jet/scramjet/rocket technology.


Well Foce = mass x acceleration in the purely Newtonian sence but in the practical sence the thick atmosphere is what gets you at low altitude. Not only is it tough to push though, it causes huge aerodynamic effects which mean stronger designs, thus more weight, thus more thrust required, etc. (the shuttle main engines on launch go from full throttle to low throttle, back up to full to lessen the forces on it. Once at a decent altitude where the air is thinner they crank it up again - called a "Throttle Bucket"). You're absolutely on the right track though; if you can give it more speed at launch, less fuel will be required or you can get higher on the same amount.

Crazy but true: There is a reason the US launches from Florida, the Russians from Kazahkstan, and the French unmanned rockets from French Guiana; it is near(er) the equator. The closer to the equator you are, the higher your initial velocity due to the Earth's rotation. That extra oomph makes a BIG difference.

@ DW I was indeed talking about Carbon-Nanotube, and yes that's far from commercial technology. Although I always understood they wanted to anchor it using a satellite instead of an asteroid, which might be a little more feasible

IMHO as long as getting things into space is based on the use of rockets, it will always be expensive. So don't expect a real space bearing civilization anytime soon ( that is excluding in computer games / Hollywood movies )

Actually velcro was not invented by NASA; NASA just likes it a lot and spawned mainstream usage of it. There are obvious spin-off from spaceflight like communication satellites, etc. as well as tons of other daily things that help people like MRIs, dialysis machines, etc. Plus, right as we speak, research is going on aboard ISS in material science, medicine, etc., etc., etc. The list goes on. Surely enough, serendipitous discoveries will be made along with the ones we are trying to make. Predicting what we'll get from spaceflight in the future is impossible; I liken it to what Columbus expected to discover when he headed west, vs. where we are 500 years later. Same goes with the Wright Brothers. They had no idea that within 60 years of making a wood and fabric contraption fly only a few feet that a man would be walking on the moon. We have no idea what great things are going to come about from this!


As a freemarketeer I figured you'd like the competition. After all, competition does breed new and unigue things, and the potential to benefit humankind often comes from such things - especially in private industry.

I'm damn proud to have contributed and to be contributing to human in space (there are two up there right now) because it really is the future of humankind. I can think of no better response to events like this:
[img]http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20040621/capt.sge.ggl24.210604085546.photo00.default-384x305.jpg[/img]
than this:
[img]http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20040621/capt.sge.gkj80.210604155003.photo00.default-388x251.jpg[/img]

@DW

I've heard that what NASA would really like to do was to build a few more Saturn rockets as they were cheaper than the shuttle with larger payloads. The hitch is that the Saturn's used some Soviet tech, and in keeping with a prior agreement the plans were destroyed after the Saturns went out of use. So nobody knows how to build them now.

This sounds just a little too unbelieveable to be true, but was just wondering what your expert opinion is ???

As to alternative methods of space launch. Believe it or not there are plans to use lasers to propel things into space. I've also heard a plan to build a huge rail gun in a mountain and shooting things into space. Rail guns use really strong elctromagnets to propel things to very high speeds. Rail guns are also touted as a possible space age weapon - basically a satellite with a rail gun would spy targets and shoot very high velocity projectiles at ground based targets - the projectile would also gain speed due to gravity and annihilate the target - particularly if they use uranium tipped targets - but that just pure mean.

@Johhny English

Bill Gates has promised to give his whole fortune away and has set up a foundation to do so run by his dad.

So Saturn V's were built at the height of the cold war, when the US and USSR were fairly close to war, but despite this the US built rockets based on Soviet technology and made and agreement with the Russians to only build a limited number? Then the Cold War ended and they are still bound by the agreement.

I dunno, but it sounds somewhat implausible to me.

@SparkaChk

Dude - just telling it as I heard it - I think it was in a tv documentary but I can't remember. I agree it sounss implausible, but whereever I heard it had enough credibility to ask DW.

Actually, I found a link about the Saturn V's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

A popular, untrue urban legend, started in 1996, states that NASA has lost or destoryed the blueprints or other plans for the Saturn V. In fact, the plans still exist on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center, though it seems unlikely that future engineers will find that the plans will come in handy after the subsequent 40-plus years of advances in rocket science.

I read somewhere that the Saturn V cost $40B to develop - I wonder how much it would cost to take the old design and hack it a bit to use modern engines and so on.

@ meckle

Forgive me as I ramble a bit:

Saturn V's were great for luanching heaving things to orbit fairly cheaply. The Space Shuttle was touted as being cheaper but as it turns out, right now, it is cheaper to throw it all away Saturn V style than to refurbish between flights. Still, the Shuttle has way, way more capability than the Saturn V ever had so you have to take that into consideration.

The safety factor between the Shuttles and Saturn V's has often been debated. There have been well over 100 Shuttle missions in the last ~20 years with two catastrophic failures (defined as LOCAV - Loss Of Crew And vehicle and yes, NASA uses this acronym). There were never any catastrophic Apollo/Saturn V failures but then again there weren't nearly as many Saturn V missions.

I don't recall how many Soyuz missions there have been but there are a few catastrophic failures that we know about (and maybe some we don't). The Russians have been refining the Soyuz since the 60's which is a far cry from NASA's philosophy which has been to make several technology jumps in that same time. There are benefits to both for sure, but my $0.02 is that a 40 year old design can only be polished so much.

Ideally, Shuttles would be employed only for missions that require the finess of a Shuttle e.g. spacewalks for repairs or assembly, retrieval, etc., Saturn V-like rockets could be used for heavly lift payloads like telescopes, and Soyuz like craft would be used for 2-3 crew member exchange to orbiting platforms. With the ISS, that is sorta what has been done; Shuttle when needed, Soyuz as a crew "lifeboat" and transfer vehicle, and heavy lift Russian Proton rockets for the really big stuff.

True though, NASA couldn't build a Saturn V today in the same time they built them in the 60's & 70'S. Back then when getting to the moon was goal #1, NASA had the expression "waste anything but time" and got lots, and lots of money. 9% of the US federal budget went to the space program every year for almost a decade. That's a lot of F-ing money. Today, it is a fraction of 1%.

As with all expensive US government programs, it is the guys in Washington who decide where the money goes. Having worked in government spaceflight, I've seen some waste first-hand for sure. It is still the best way to do it, but with private industry in space looming I think that will change in the next few decades. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but profit margin is the father.

To be totally clear we do need to make some distinctions between private and public spaceflight; there will always be room for public funding for things like space telescopes, Mars rovers, Saturn probes, IO landers, etc. as that has no monetary benefit. It is purely the pursuit of knowledge and most companies aren't in that business!

Private industry will have the chance to make commercial payload deployment cheaper, tourism viable, transportation practical, etc.

Pity the Russians lost interest/(aka ran out of money) in the Buran and Energia. It was a brilliant and efficient program, that would have realy helped with ISS.
Like so many other brilliant russian programs I guess. Any body remember the
TU-144?

Ah, the Tu-144 aka the "Concordski!" Lots of Russian ideas were pretty obvious rip-offs of western designs:

Tu-144
[img]http://www.gizmohighway.com/images/main_photos/tu144.gif[/img]

US Space Shuttle and Buran:
[img]http://members.aol.com/anglicanfather/shuttle/shuttles.jpg[/img]

To be fair, they did often make improvements they just hit the scene about a decade late. The Buran was a great craft; shame it is now sits in a public park. The Tu-144 was actually pretty bad and in my book of "Worst 100 Airplanes." A very public crash at the Paris Air Show in 73 doomed it forever.

Not entirely,
the Buran /energia were 100% reusable while the shuttle aint.
And as for the Condordski, yes I aggree it was a bit of a rip off but not a perfect one .The wing design was not as advanced as concord's, seeing russias computer simulation power at the time was rather limited compared to the Anglo-french consortiums.
However still a pretty impressive piece of hardware.

@ maddul, agreed - I was in the process of editing my post.

Story about how the B-29 was copied after WWII.

Hey DW,

Yeah I had read that story too. they also copied a shitload of other stuff like the A-bomb, H-bomb and so on. I even read somewhere that most of the (few)computers used in russia during the 70´s and 80´s were just also practically clones of popular IBM and Apple models. Nontheless I still wonder how the heck they managed to succeed in such incredibile projects such as the MIR with so little resources.
BTW, some TU-144s are being used by NASA for research on the next-gen Hypersonic transport vector. Lets hope its not another Boeing SST or Venture Star.
cheers

max