SS1 flight set for June 21

In article ,
(Henry Spencer) wrote:

No. The first Sea Launch flight carried a mass dummy.

Ah, well, just add another "I Was Corrected by Henry" t-shirt to the
order . . . :-p

They would have
*liked* to carry a revenue payload, and at first they had one, Panamsat's
Galaxy 11.

I was probably remembering that when I posted this morning, along with
the independent recollection of the successful first launch.

In fact, Panamsat was so confident in Boeing that they also
put Galaxy 10 on the first Delta III... which was lost. And then a Zenit
failed (with a quarter of the whole Globalstar constellation aboard).

I do remember THAT, though.

At
which point, Panamsat and its insurers went into a Sea Launch planning
meeting carrying long pointy sticks :-) :-) :-), and after the screaming
was over, Galaxy 11 was rebooked on Ariane and Sea Launch gritted its
teeth and launched the Galaxy 11 mass dummy they'd been using for
facilities checkout.

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Columbia Loss FAQ:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

In article ,
(Derek Lyons) writes:
(Peter Stickney) wrote:
SpaceShip 1 is an impressive project. Make no mistake about that.
But it's a very limited system, for a very limited purpose. While I'd
be more than happy to bet that they'll win the X-Prize, it's not going
to advance the State of the Art. White Knight, on the other hand, may
end up with a useful post X-Prize career hauling payloads to high
altitudes, for purposes such as Atmospheric Sampling or UV Astronomy.

One of the most thoughtful and reasonable posts yet. I may steal this
next time I take on those zealots at slashdot. (I really wish more
the clued in regulars here would join in there.. Stuffie has more
common sense and intelligence than they collectively do.)

Please, feel free.
/.? you're braver than I am. Although I've already got a kid in
Jr. High. I'll take a look though (Haven't been there for years) and
see if I can help out.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Derek Lyons wrote:

ROTFL. I *love* how everytime someone points out the low performance
of the SS1 as compared to the X-15, or how it only spends a couple of
minutes in 'space' as compared to the Russian 'tourist' flights....
Someone else always parrots the 'its cheaper though! and privately
built! and carries people!" as though that changes things.


It's good at what it's intended to do; but the thing's overall impact on
spaceflight is going to be about as important as the GeeBee racer's
impact on fighter design.

Pat

In article ,
Joe Strout writes:
In article ,
(Peter Stickney) wrote:

SpaceShip 1 is an impressive project. Make no mistake about that.
But it's a very limited system, for a very limited purpose. While I'd
be more than happy to bet that they'll win the X-Prize, it's not going
to advance the State of the Art.

Nonsense -- it's already advanced the state of the art. Just a few of
the new technologies developed and demonstrated:

- first manned vehicle with a hybrid rocket motor

And what differences are there between the hybrid motor for SS1 and
other hybrids? None, that I've seen.

- first rocket plane to use innovative "shuttlecock" configuration for
stable re-entry

That is nifty, and it's a good example of Rutan's approach to things -
Burt's very good at finding simple solutions to single-point
problems.
but it's not applicable to anything but this particular point case,
where the vehicle is reentering at a low speed, and steep angle. It's
not going to work for the delicate balance of drag, heating and lift
that is a lifting reentry for an orbital vehicle.

- innovative high-visibility vacuum-rated cabin

I suggest that you take a look at the cabins used for high altitude
balloon flights in the 1930s (Auguste Piccard's Aluminum Beer Barrel,
for example, or the U.S. Army/National Geographic Explorers. It's teh
same concept) -
And high visibility it isn't. If you read Scaled COmposite's FAQ for
White Knight (Same cabin) they note that visibility is "adequate" with
enough squirming around. It's not adequate for traffic clearance,
which is provided by the FAA (Air Traffic Control) and chase aircraft.


In addition, if "art" includes not just the final vehicle but the
development and production processes as well, it's certainly advanced
the state of the art significantly by developing a reusable suborbital
three-person craft for about $25M.

The development process is a Standard Issue incremental approach. And
if they were serious about succeeding withough inordinate risk, I
would expect nothing less. There's nothing new, or partularly
innovative about the production processes - we already know how to
carve Aluminum and lay up Fiberglass. Again, that's another example
of Rutan's commitment to success - While the shapes may look odd and
exotic, the materiels and techniques are not. This avoids introducing
expensive (In time and money) and risky (in technical and human terms)
development problems that aren't in this case necessary.


White Knight, on the other hand, may
end up with a useful post X-Prize career hauling payloads to high
altitudes, for purposes such as Atmospheric Sampling or UV Astronomy.

Unlikely; White Knight's purpose is to carry SS1. Both will have useful
and productive careers as research craft, and then be retired as new,
derivative craft are produced.

No, White Knight's purpose is to carry an 8,000# payload to 50,000 -
60,000', at Mach 0.5 or so, and can stary there for an extended period
of time. It doesn't care if the payload is SpaceShipOne, an
instrumentation pod, a high resolution camera, or a SLAR system. With
what are basically two Learjet engines to push it along, it's quite
economical to run. There is, in fact a market for this sort of
capability, as environmental studies and remote sensing work are
picked up more and more by the Private Sector.

SpaceShipOne isn't going to be researching anything - We already know
how to fly at Mach 2, and have been doing so quite hapilly for 50
years. If the goal is to get instruments to that height, Sounding
Rockets are a much more economical and safer. (As in no Pilot Risk with
no Pilot) If you want a longer duration flight, you're not talking
SpaceShipOne. In order to fly higher, it's going to have to fly
faster, be larger, heavier,

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

"Kevin Willoughby" wrote in message
...
In article , says...
SpaceShip 1 is an impressive project. Make no mistake about that.
But it's a very limited system, for a very limited purpose. While I'd
be more than happy to bet that they'll win the X-Prize, it's not going
to advance the State of the Art.

hmm... If "state of the art" includes concepts like "cost
effectiveness" then SS1 does advance the SOTA.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid


By my criteria, either SpaceShip 1 construction and testing has already
demonstrated an increase in the State of the Art or it hasn't. Test flights
don't advance the State of the Art. They can demonstrate whether or
not there has been an advance.

The design and construction of SpaceShip may have used some design
concepts and perhaps materials that advanced the state of the art.

Improved State of the Art requires improving materials, methods,
design processes and any other background things that are really
different from the previously available background.

Successfully flying something demonstrates that these more advanced
concepts work.

Flight failure may indicate that there was an attempt to design something
"Beyond the State of the Art" which means that it was impossible to achieve
the desired goal. On the other hand, it might indicate a simple error.

I will note that my remark is simply a comment about what I see as
bad semantics.

Mike Walsh

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...


Derek Lyons wrote:

ROTFL. I *love* how everytime someone points out the low performance
of the SS1 as compared to the X-15, or how it only spends a couple of
minutes in 'space' as compared to the Russian 'tourist' flights....
Someone else always parrots the 'its cheaper though! and privately
built! and carries people!" as though that changes things.


It's good at what it's intended to do; but the thing's overall impact on
spaceflight is going to be about as important as the GeeBee racer's
impact on fighter design.

Pat

Interesting. I don't know about the specific impact of the
GeeBee racer, but it was my understanding that racer design
and development did have an impact on fighter design.

Mike Walsh

Pat Flannery wrote:
It's good at what it's intended to do; but the thing's overall impact on
spaceflight is going to be about as important as the GeeBee racer's
impact on fighter design.

A Spitfire sure looks a hell of a lot more like a Gee Bee
than an SE5A, on the inside as well as the outside.

Herb Schaltegger wrote:

... my point was that a crew of three living, breathing,
excreting and metabolizing human beings is not functionally equivalent
to a crew of one such plus a bunch of lead shot bags.

For a fifteen-minute suborbital flight, I don't think the difference in
function is relevant. For the X-prize requirements, the difference is
*explicitly* not relevant.

Read it already and again, it seems to me that in my experience with
reading and interpreting "requirements" the part I posted corresponds to
a Tier 1 or Level 1 requirement, while the part you quoted corresponds
to a Tier 2 or 3 requirement; had the X-Prize been trying to come up
with workable designs for an ordinary revenue customer, someone surely
would have written up a RID (Review Item Discrepancy) and asked why the
Tier 2 requirement was written to weasel out of the Tier 1.

The informal description of the X-prize you posted is not "requirements"
at all. It's an after-the-fact *summary* of the requirements, written for
people who don't care to slog through the relatively long official rules.

Your having read the summary first doesn't mean you should consider the
rules to be derived from the summary.

(Peter Stickney) wrote:

SpaceShipOne isn't going to be researching anything - We already know
how to fly at Mach 2, and have been doing so quite hapilly for 50
years. If the goal is to get instruments to that height, Sounding
Rockets are a much more economical and safer. (As in no Pilot Risk with
no Pilot)

Conversely, something like SS1 can be thought of as a sounding rocket with
people on board. There are some things that can be a lot easier if
they're tended by a person. (A pilot usually *decreases* risk if you want
someone there anyway.)

In article ,
Peter Stickney wrote:
...If the goal is to get instruments to that height, Sounding
Rockets are a much more economical and safer...

You might try pricing sounding rockets sometime -- they are not cheap. As
for "safer", that's a word with many definitions. Sounding rockets are a
good deal less safe for both the payload and the innocent bystanders --
that's why cargo aircraft have pilots, to keep the cargo and the people
on the ground safe.

(As in no Pilot Risk with no Pilot)

And this matters... why, exactly? Again, why is this so different from
a cargo aircraft?
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |