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rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"



 
 
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  #1  
Old July 21st 04, 03:31 AM
Joe Strout
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

Jeffrey Bell wrote an opinion piece for SpaceDaily called "StuntShipOne:
The GeeBee Of Outer Space":
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04v.html

Since that forum provides no space for comments, I'll post them here.
Let's start with the facts he's got just plain incorrect:

"It's not a spaceship or even a precursor to one." Um, yes, it is.
It's not even a *potential* space ship; it has actually been to space
already, and its pilot given astronaut wings by the FAA. The 100 km
boundary of space is recognized not only by the FAA but by pretty much
the entire spacefaring world. It is a ship that can and has travel in
space, thus clearly a spaceship.

Jeffrey and Derek can go ahead and attempt to redefine "space" to mean
"orbit" to attempt to support otherwise untenable points, but this
newspeak will be correctly ignored by the rest of the world.

"Everything about the project -- the rat-shack high desert Right Stuff
ambiance of Mohave [sic], the air-launch format, the cute round
portholes, even the 63-year-old test pilot -- is carefully calculated to
push the 'spend money' buttons in the brains of the aging Baby Boomers
who are the only sane people who still have a romantic passion for space
travel." Hoo boy, where to start on this one?

Mojave wasn't chosen for the atmosphere; it's the standard testing
grounds for experimental aircraft and currently the only place one could
get a license for such a launch. I'd be interested to hear what
alternatives Jeffrey would suggest.

The air-launch format wasn't stunt either; that's what makes it all
possible. The craft itself is a small glider built around a rocket
motor, and this is important to achieving the delta-V it needs to reach
space. Obviously other designs are possible, but this is a darn good
solution to the engineering problem posed.

The portholes, too, look like more of an engineering choice than a style
choice to me. They're much safer than larger windows would be, and
while I don't see anything particularly cute about them, they make sense.

As for the test pilot, Mike Melvill is one of the most experienced
pilots in Scaled's employ, and that is important for a craft as
experimental as this one. He proved his worth in the last flight, where
things went wrong and he had to react very quickly (and correctly!) to
compensate. On what basis are Melvill's qualifications being doubted?

Finally, the last bit -- that only aging Baby Boomers can sanely have a
passion for space travel -- is just sad. I'm only 30, and my passion
for it is strong, and I am not insane. Perhaps the author of this piece
suffers from some fatalism or depression that keeps him from feeling the
same passion, but it is not right to cast aspersions at those who do.
It is clear that humanity's future is in space; how can a sane person of
any age *not* feel passionate about that, once it becomes clear that
progress is being made?

"It's not even a viable vehicle for the 'suborbital tourism' market. SS1
is narrowly designed around the X-Prize competition and lacks many
features customers would demand." So? Nobody is claiming that SS1 will
be used directly for space tourism. Rather, SS1 is ushering the era of
space tourism, which will occur in other craft to follow. But that
doesn't mean that the first craft is not important.

I've been carring my X-Prize credit card for 5 or 6 years now. Back
then, people who saw the picture said "What's that?" and when I
explained, they had never heard of the X-Prize and were extremely
skeptical that it could be done at all. Most of them tried to hide a
smirk. Nobody's smirking anymore; a private citizen has flown into
space on a privately-funded space plane, and it is obvious that others
could do it too. Those of us who closely follow space developments have
known this for years, but now *everybody* knows it, because it has been
demonstrated. At the risk of sounding cliche, that demonstration has
caused a paradigm shift. Space is no longer reserved for major world
governments. This is hugely important.

"The problem with all aircraft-launch concepts is that as the launched
vehicle scales up, the carrier airplane scales up even faster and soon
the combination is too big and too heavy for any runway at Mohave
Airport." Here he seems to be attempting to cast doubt on Rutan's
ability to design the next-generation craft, a design which he has
publicly stated will be handed to Paul Allen by the end of the year.
This is much like casting doubt on Mike Melvill's piloting ability. If
Rutan wants to design a suborbital craft capable of carrying six
passengers and achieving a longer zero-G time, I'm quite confident he
can do it, regardless of whether Jeffrey can imagine solutions to the
problems involved.

"It's not clear that a real demand for suborbital tourism exists." Yes,
it is. Space Adventures has already taken deposits from over 100 people
for commercial space flights of a nature similar to SS1's. Those are
the people who have plunked down cold hard cash (ranging from $5K to the
full projected price of $102K) for a ride that's not even available yet.
They project a demand for thousands of flights per year at that ($102K)
price, well beyond the capacity of the next few years. [1]

"With fewer seats and more padding, they would be equivalent to NASA's
famous 'Vomit Comet' and could be flown in zero-gee parabolas. Put some
space images on the windows and you have most of the suborbital tourism
experience for a longer time at a much lower cost. If the suborbital
tourism market really exists, why isn't somebody doing this?" Because,
Jeffrey, people (besides you and Derek) can tell the difference between
being in space and flying through the air, and looking at a picture is
not even close to looking at a real view out a window. This is either a
bit of deliberate hyperbole, or the author is seriously out of touch
with reality.

(He then goes on to display ignorance of the parabolic flight tours
which already exist [2], but since these are rather missing the point, I
won't bother to debunk that further.)

"Burt Rutan is not the right guy to design profit-making tourist
spacecraft." Maybe. But again, that's not the point. He's not the
only one in the private space business, he's just the trailblazer. If
he and Paul Allen never build another spaceship, they'll still have
gotten the ball rolling, and folks like XCOR will be more than happy to
fill the void.

" Of all the players currently in the running, Elon Musk is the only one
who seems to have both the right technical concept and a sufficiently
deep pocket to perfect that concept without outside investors. The
problem with Musk's Falcon boosters is that they aren't sexy
spaceplanes." No, the problem with the Falcon (in the context of the
current discussion) is that (1) it doesn't carry passengers, and (2)
even if it did, it would cost too much for most people to get excited
about. Now, maybe it could be man-rated and a tourist module developed
with a business plan that could bring the cost down. That would be
something to be excited about. But none of that is evident. I love
SpaceX, I hope the Falcon is a big success, but I don't see it serving
the space tourism market in the near future.

Suborbital space tourism, cheap, safe, and routine, is the next step,
and it's very exciting that SS1 has finally opened that door.


[1] http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/21/tech...space_tourism/
[2] http://www.spaceadventures.com/steps/zerog

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  #2  
Old July 21st 04, 06:18 AM
Derek Lyons
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

Joe Strout wrote:

Jeffrey and Derek can go ahead and attempt to redefine "space" to mean
"orbit" to attempt to support otherwise untenable points, but this
newspeak will be correctly ignored by the rest of the world.


Actually Joe, you have completely backwards. Accepting high flying
stunt aircraft as 'spacecraft' is a completely new thing. Until very
recently (I.E. since the unveiling of SS1), the term 'spacecraft' was
plainly and widely understood to mean an orbital craft. (The X-15 was
occasionally given the nod to be included by virtue of it's great
performance.)

Only since the X-prize was fully funded and SS-1 unveiled has the
newspeak version that attempts to include high flying stunt aircraft
in the same category as Mercury, etc.. been pushed by people with a
political ideology to push. And they don't care about the facts, or
the potential usefulness of such a craft, only about dogma.

These same people are the first to cry havoc however when NASA or one
of the dinosaurs attempts to do the same thing.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
  #3  
Old July 21st 04, 06:33 AM
Rand Simberg
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

Derek Lyons wrote:

Joe Strout wrote:


Jeffrey and Derek can go ahead and attempt to redefine "space" to mean
"orbit" to attempt to support otherwise untenable points, but this
newspeak will be correctly ignored by the rest of the world.



Actually Joe, you have completely backwards. Accepting high flying
stunt aircraft as 'spacecraft' is a completely new thing. Until very
recently (I.E. since the unveiling of SS1), the term 'spacecraft' was
plainly and widely understood to mean an orbital craft. (The X-15 was
occasionally given the nod to be included by virtue of it's great
performance.)


So Alan Shephard didn't go into space? He wasn't an astronaut?
  #4  
Old July 21st 04, 07:52 AM
Dave O'Neill
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"


"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
ink.net...
Derek Lyons wrote:

Joe Strout wrote:


Jeffrey and Derek can go ahead and attempt to redefine "space" to mean
"orbit" to attempt to support otherwise untenable points, but this
newspeak will be correctly ignored by the rest of the world.



Actually Joe, you have completely backwards. Accepting high flying
stunt aircraft as 'spacecraft' is a completely new thing. Until very
recently (I.E. since the unveiling of SS1), the term 'spacecraft' was
plainly and widely understood to mean an orbital craft. (The X-15 was
occasionally given the nod to be included by virtue of it's great
performance.)


So Alan Shephard didn't go into space? He wasn't an astronaut?


Perhaps we need to agree some way of differentiating when people are
distinguishing, rightly, between vehicles capable of reaching orbit and
those that are not?

Dave

  #5  
Old July 21st 04, 02:33 PM
Rand Simberg
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

Dave O'Neill wrote:

So Alan Shephard didn't go into space? He wasn't an astronaut?



Perhaps we need to agree some way of differentiating when people are
distinguishing, rightly, between vehicles capable of reaching orbit and
those that are not?


We already have a way of making such a distinction. One is called an
orbital vehicle, and the other is called a suborbital vehicle. Both of
them are space vehicles.

I continue to be amused at skeptics continued attempts to move the bar
when they've been proven wrong. It's a lot like the AI debate in that
regard, in which every time a new achievement occurs, some claim that it
isn't "true" AI and come up with a new definition.

I predict that if and when Burt, or someone else, goes into orbit, they
will claim that it's not *really* space--"true" spaceflight requires the
ability to escape. After a private expedition to Mars, they'll cavil
that it didn't have the ability to do interstellar travel.
  #6  
Old July 21st 04, 02:41 PM
Joe Strout
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

In article ,
(Derek Lyons) wrote:

Joe Strout wrote:

Jeffrey and Derek can go ahead and attempt to redefine "space" to mean
"orbit" to attempt to support otherwise untenable points, but this
newspeak will be correctly ignored by the rest of the world.


Actually Joe, you have completely backwards. Accepting high flying
stunt aircraft as 'spacecraft' is a completely new thing. Until very
recently (I.E. since the unveiling of SS1), the term 'spacecraft' was
plainly and widely understood to mean an orbital craft.


Funny then how virtually any book on the history of spaceflight lists
the first American in space as Alan Shepherd, abord Freedom 7, which
incidentally is always referred to as a "spacecraft." The first book I
grabbed off my shelf: "By May 1961, the first of the seven [Mercury
astronauts] had actually flown in space" (_Entering_Space_ by J. P.
Allen, p. 27). Perhaps someone has used a time machine to go back and
modify everything written about space travel in the last 50 years after
the SS1 flight?

Derek, no matter how often you repeat this nonsense, it remains quite
obviously nonsense. You only embarass yourself by adhering to something
so clearly untrue.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
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http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'
  #7  
Old July 21st 04, 02:43 PM
Joe Strout
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

In article ,
"Dave O'Neill" dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com wrote:

So Alan Shephard didn't go into space? He wasn't an astronaut?


Perhaps we need to agree some way of differentiating when people are
distinguishing, rightly, between vehicles capable of reaching orbit and
those that are not?


We already have such a way. "Spacecraft" is a vehicle capable of
reaching and operating in space. "Orbital craft" is a capable of
reaching and operating in orbit. Nothing tricky about that.

The only confusion is caused by the insistence Derek (and Jeffrey Bell)
on misusing "spacecraft" to mean "orbital craft," and then crying foul
when everyone else uses it correctly.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
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| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'
  #8  
Old July 21st 04, 06:33 PM
Jim Davis
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

Rand Simberg wrote:

Actually Joe, you have completely backwards. Accepting high
flying stunt aircraft as 'spacecraft' is a completely new
thing. Until very recently (I.E. since the unveiling of
SS1), the term 'spacecraft' was plainly and widely understood
to mean an orbital craft. (The X-15 was occasionally given
the nod to be included by virtue of it's great performance.)


So Alan Shephard didn't go into space? He wasn't an
astronaut?


The point Derek is trying to make is that there is no necessary
connection between being in space and being in a spaceship. You can
drive your car over a cliff - you are in the air but that doesn't
mean you're flying or that your car is an aircraft. You can drive
your car off a pier - you are underwater but that doesn't mean that
your car is a submarine.

I personally have no problem with calling SS1 a "spaceship". What I
*do* have a problem with is the tendency for some to draw sweeping
apples to oranges comparisons between SS1 and Soyuz and Shuttle
because they're all "spaceships".

Jim Davis

  #9  
Old July 21st 04, 06:38 PM
Rand Simberg
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"

Jim Davis wrote:

The point Derek is trying to make is that there is no necessary
connection between being in space and being in a spaceship. You can
drive your car over a cliff - you are in the air but that doesn't
mean you're flying or that your car is an aircraft. You can drive
your car off a pier - you are underwater but that doesn't mean that
your car is a submarine.


Totally inapplicable comparisons, since SpaceShipOne was designed to go
into space, not just an airplane that happened to get flung there.

I personally have no problem with calling SS1 a "spaceship". What I
*do* have a problem with is the tendency for some to draw sweeping
apples to oranges comparisons between SS1 and Soyuz and Shuttle
because they're all "spaceships".


So? "Some" have all kinds of mistaken notions. That's no reason to
denigrate or minimize the accomplishment. If that's the reason, it's an
overreaction. SpaceShipOne is appropriately named.
  #10  
Old July 21st 04, 08:20 PM
Dave O'Neill
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Default rebuttal to Jeffrey Bell on "StuntShipOne"


"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
ink.net...
Dave O'Neill wrote:

So Alan Shephard didn't go into space? He wasn't an astronaut?



Perhaps we need to agree some way of differentiating when people are
distinguishing, rightly, between vehicles capable of reaching orbit and
those that are not?


We already have a way of making such a distinction. One is called an
orbital vehicle, and the other is called a suborbital vehicle. Both of
them are space vehicles.


I have to admit that while this makes for some interesting sophical debate,
I had no problem understanding what they meant by the context.

I continue to be amused at skeptics continued attempts to move the bar
when they've been proven wrong. It's a lot like the AI debate in that
regard, in which every time a new achievement occurs, some claim that it
isn't "true" AI and come up with a new definition.

I predict that if and when Burt, or someone else, goes into orbit, they
will claim that it's not *really* space--"true" spaceflight requires the
ability to escape. After a private expedition to Mars, they'll cavil
that it didn't have the ability to do interstellar travel.


Now I think you're being silly.

Dave

 




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