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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 ,------------------------------------------------------------------. | Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: | | http://www.macwebdir.com | `------------------------------------------------------------------' |
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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. |
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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? |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. ,------------------------------------------------------------------. | Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: | | http://www.macwebdir.com | `------------------------------------------------------------------' |
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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 |
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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. |
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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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