SpaceShip One - good luck!

"Alan Erskine" wrote in message ...
Interesting to note that the first 'Humanaut" is 62 and obviously not a
top-of-the-line physical specimen - good advertising for the rest of us who
hope one day to be able to go into space.

What happen to Senator John Glenn? The 77 years old 'senior citizen'
who was a former astronaut? Or maybe he isn't a human, so his flight
isn't valid?

Personally, until very high altitude flights, sub-orbital flights, and
orbital fligths becomes more like a Concorde flight (special flight
for famous person, but the average person can ride it provide they got
the cash), there's no way that the average person can go into orbit.

And even then, Concorde flights are backed by the governments.

"Alan Erskine" wrote in message
...

According to spaceflight now, the figure was 328,491 feet - at 3.280839895
feet per metre (25.4mm per inch, 12 inches per foot), that works out to be
100124.05680040049622720160198491 feet according to Windows calculator
which
is more than sufficiently accurate. However, I'm sure that Guiness Book
will be more than acceptable.

328491 ft * 0.3048 m/ft = 100124.0568 metres exactly, or 100124 m to six
significant digits (as in the original ft measurement). The 0.3048 is exact.

rgds
Neil

328491 ft * 0.3048 m/ft = 100124.0568 metres exactly, or 100124 m to six
significant digits (as in the original ft measurement). The 0.3048 is exact.

Just so. And my original questions was whether those six figures are all
significant.

Jan

In article ,
(Derek Lyons) wrote:

"T3" wrote:


"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Alan Erskine" wrote:

"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message

Dick Rutan is reporting on CNN that SS1's engine shut down prematurely,
but has confirmed that peak altitude was over 100 km.

That's good news - it means it's capable of even higher altitudes.

No, it means that when loaded to full capacity (which this flight
wasn't) the craft will be able to reach it's target altitude.


China lake reported 112km, they did good............(I heard Edwards said
110)


The official tally is 100.124 km. Not so good.

D.

Especially considering they apparently were NOT ballasted with the mass
of two additional passengers. They need to troubleshoot those glitches
(e.g., engine burn was not as long as expected, there were roll control
problems on ascent, and that not-so-comforting fairing buckling that
occured sometime during the flight).

All in all, a cool thing to do but there are definitely issues Scaled's
team is going to be burning the midnight oil trying to solve.

--
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 ,
Jan Vorbruggen wrote:

The official tally is 100.124 km. Not so good.
Still over a hundred; that's all that matters.

Yeah, but is such measurement really good to one part in a thousand? Most
people don't even know the feet-km conversion factor to that accuracy,
and the original report was in feet...all you need to do is get the look
angle to the target even slightly wrong (by 10-3 radian, or about 4 arc-
minutes, if I did the calculation correctly), and you're off by those 100 m.

Jan

Do you really think that the USAF radars at Edwards AFB can't get the
altitude of a single target correct? The base where every major U.S.
military aircraft (and many civilian ones) has been tested for decades?
Please, Jan. There are many things to discuss about the merits of the
flight, the X-Prize itself, and Scaled's approach to it, but the
altitude probably isn't one of them.

As an aside, I'd wager as well, that the SS1 avionics include a
differential GPS receiver - that ought to get them a second altitude
measurement good to within several meters as a cross-check.

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

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in
message
...

Especially considering they apparently were NOT ballasted with the mass
of two additional passengers. They need to troubleshoot those glitches
(e.g., engine burn was not as long as expected, there were roll control
problems on ascent, and that not-so-comforting fairing buckling that
occured sometime during the flight).

All in all, a cool thing to do but there are definitely issues Scaled's
team is going to be burning the midnight oil trying to solve.

Fair go Herb, it was the first flight into such territory. Incremental
development And it looks like Paul Allen is serious, and we all know how
much money he has. Until Microsoft does a Worldcom, of course

In article
,
"Neil Gerace" wrote:

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in
message
...

Especially considering they apparently were NOT ballasted with the mass
of two additional passengers. They need to troubleshoot those glitches
(e.g., engine burn was not as long as expected, there were roll control
problems on ascent, and that not-so-comforting fairing buckling that
occured sometime during the flight).

All in all, a cool thing to do but there are definitely issues Scaled's
team is going to be burning the midnight oil trying to solve.

Fair go Herb, it was the first flight into such territory. Incremental
development And it looks like Paul Allen is serious, and we all know how
much money he has. Until Microsoft does a Worldcom, of course

Did you see the quote from Rutan yesterday morning? I don't have the
article handy but he said something like, "We will be going orbital
sooner than anyone thinks." And if that's not enough of a kicker, his
next sentence was something like "We don't intend to spend decades in
LEO." Hmmmm . . . .

It kind of makes me wonder ho much money Allen has committed behind the
scenes for possible work beyond competing for the X-Prize - a hundred
million is entirely possible and if Billy G can donate billions to the
U.N. and to AIDS research, I'm fairly certain Paul A. could pony up a
billion over, say, ten years. I'd really like to see what Rutan has on
his viewgraph charts for SS2, SS3, etc.

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

Do you really think that the USAF radars at Edwards AFB can't get the
altitude of a single target correct?

Correct? Who said anything about "correct"? There is no such thing as a
"correct" measurement. Every measurement has at least one error associated
with it. And I'm sure it's not a mission requirement of the EAFB radars to
measure heights to some arbitrary precision. There's a reason those flight
levels are 1000 ft apart, you know.

Jan

In article , Herb Schaltegger writes:
Did you see the quote from Rutan yesterday morning? I don't have the
article handy but he said something like, "We will be going orbital
sooner than anyone thinks." And if that's not enough of a kicker, his
next sentence was something like "We don't intend to spend decades in
LEO." Hmmmm . . . .

It kind of makes me wonder ho much money Allen has committed behind the
scenes for possible work beyond competing for the X-Prize - a hundred
million is entirely possible and if Billy G can donate billions to the
U.N. and to AIDS research, I'm fairly certain Paul A. could pony up a
billion over, say, ten years. I'd really like to see what Rutan has on
his viewgraph charts for SS2, SS3, etc.

Could be that he'll get to Mars before NASA...

It took mankind 66 years to go from the first powered flight to landing on
the moon. What progress have we made in the past 35 years?

Last fall I heard Gene Cernan, the 'last man on the moon' give a talk to
high school kids. The comment that stood out in my mind was that the space
race in the 60s was as if we'd transplanted a decade from the late 21st
century into the middle of the 20th century. Sadly, we're now back where we
would have been had we not done so.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD"
To reply, remove the TRABoD!
Kaplow Klips & Baffle: http://nira-rocketry.org/LeadingEdge/Phantom4000.pdf
www.encompasserve.org/~kaplow_r/ www.nira-rocketry.org www.nar.org

Save Model Rocketry from the HSA! http://www.space-rockets.com/congress.html

"Bob Kaplow" wrote in message
...

It took mankind 66 years to go from the first powered flight to landing on
the moon. What progress have we made in the past 35 years?

Yesbut.... Don't forget what von Braun said about Apollo 8 and the 'risk' of
going to the Moon on only the second flight of the Saturn V (and the first
manned flight of that lv) which went something like: "If it worked once,
there's no reason to think it won't work the second time." In other words,
the Moon really isn't that big a deal to get to compared to LEO.


--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge