SpaceShipOne passes 62 mile space boundary

[TX-EcoDragon]

The New Space Race

Private rocket ship breaks space barrier
SpaceShipOne soars 62 miles to cross space boundary

NBC News
The world's first private astronaut, Mike Melvill, celebrates after landing safely in SpaceShipOne Monay.  

 
• Safe landing
June 21: SpaceShipOne glides back to Earth after its historic flight. NBC's George Lewis reports.
MSNBC
 
 
 
By Alan Boyle
Science editor
MSNBC
Updated: 12:06 p.m. ET June 21, 2004MOJAVE, Calif. - The SpaceShipOne rocket plane soared high above the Earth on Monday, becoming the first privately developed craft to go into space.

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SpaceShipOne took off from the Mojave Airport, nestled beneath its White Knight carrier plane, at about 6:45 a.m. PT, sailing up into the clear desert sky. About an hour later, at an altitude of almost 50,000 feet, the White Knight released its companion craft, and SpaceShipOne test pilot Mike Melvill lit up his rocket engine for a 70-second straight-up blast.

About 15 minutes later, officials announced that Melvill and SpaceShipOne had done it, reaching an altitude of at least 62 miles (100 kilometers), the internationally recognized boundary of outer space. At around 8:15 a.m. PT, SpaceShipOne glided safely back to Earth, landing back at the Mojave Airport.

An estimated 11,000 spectators looked on.

 

"This is bigger than Kitty Hawk," said Tim Reeves. The 60-year-old arrived at 7:30 p.m. the night before from Los Angeles. "At Kitty Hawk they didn't have visions of 747s dancing in their heads. Here, everybody knows what this portends for private space flight."

Another spectator had a simpler perspective. Vinnie Gamte, the 5-year-old son of one of the engineers on SpaceShipOne, said he came out to see "my daddy's rocket ship."

At the peak of the flight, Melvill was able to glimpse the blackness of space above the curvature of the earth. The team at Mojave-based Scaled Composites, which built the White Knight / SpaceShipOne combination, said his trajectory should have given him about three minutes of weightlessness. Then SpaceShipOne’s wings folded into a high-drag configuration -– turning the craft into a self-stabilizing shuttlecock.

In the final stage of the 25-minute descent, SpaceShipOne straightened its wings again and glided to its landing.

A jubilant Melvill stood on the tarmac after landing and exclaimed over the view from space. He said he was just sad that Burt Rutan, the famed aviation designer who came up with SpaceShipOne, and Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder who paid for it, could not see it. FREE VIDEO

 
• Historic liftoff
June 21: NBC's George Lewis reports as SpaceShipOne and its carrier plane take off from Mojave.
MSNBC
 
 
 

He said he had one scary moment when he heard a loud bang during the flight. Pointing toward a buckled section at the rear of SpaceShipOne, he suggested it may have been the source of noise.

Asked what he would do next, Melvill laughed. "I think I’ll back off a little and ride my bike," the world's first non-governmental astronaut said.

The project is the result of years of work by famed aviation designer Rutan and his Scaled Composites team, funded by Allen. Allen -- the world’s fifth-richest individual on Forbes magazine’s annual list with net worth of $21 billion -- says he has spent "in excess of $20 million" on SpaceShipOne.

Rutan said Monday he and the others watching from mission control at Mojave were in tears at several points throughout the flight. He expressed pride that SpaceShipOne was still basically the same design as the one he put on paper five years ago.

Monday’s test flight represented a step toward winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which would be awarded to the first team to send a spaceship carrying a pilot and the weight of two passengers to an altitude of 100 kilometers twice within two weeks.

 


This flight won’t qualify for the prize, because SpaceShipOne carried only Melvill. But Rutan could mount a formal X Prize later this summer.

Then what? Rutan said Sunday that the technology behind SpaceShipOne could be scaled up for use on bigger spacecraft capable of bringing several tourists to the edge of space.

“I believe within 10 to 15 years there will be affordable suborbital flights like the one you see today,” he said.

He said the technology was jointly owned by Mojave Aerospace, a corporation that was set up with Allen. Rutan said he had a share in the corporation by virtue of his intellectual property, but “the majority value is the funding that Paul brought to it.”

Allen said that once the X Prize is won, “that opens up a whole host of opportunities to do other things.”

“We’ll be evaluating whether to have partnerships,” Allen said, “because obviously as you scale up the envelope, the costs go up correspondingly, too, so it becomes a much larger-scale effort.”

Rutan then added: “One of our lessons learned from doing this program is that it is a very good idea to not reveal to the media what we’re doing until we have to, because if I had to do this even occasionally, we’d be a year behind.”

 © 2004 MSNBC Interactive


see article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5261571/?GT1=3584


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TX-EcoDragon

[TX-FlightRisk]

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service www.newscientist.com    'Anomalies' in first private spaceflight revealed    12:27 22 June 04   NewScientist.com news service   The flight of the first private astronaut was not as perfect as it first appeared – a number of glitches occurred during the flight, some potentially catastrophic.The revelations were made by Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, which on Monday became the world's first privately funded craft to enter space. Until the team fully understands exactly what went wrong during the flight, he said, they will not go ahead with the pair of flights needed to claim the $10 million Ansari X-Prize.Luckily, the glitches did not prevent a successful flight. But pilot Mike Melvill said that a partial failure of the system controlling the spacecraft's orientation could have been disastrous if it had occurred just slightly earlier in the flight,.The problem struck at the end of the rocket engine's firing time of about 70 seconds, just as Melvill reached space. "As I came out of the atmosphere I no longer had any attitude control," Melvill told New Scientist and other reporters. "If that had happened earlier, I would never have made it and you all would be looking sad right now."Big bang Although that was the most serious anomaly, it was not the only frightening moment for the 63-year-old test pilot. There was also a loud bang behind him while the rocket engine was firing. The team believes this was caused by aerodynamic stresses crumpling a composite material fairing around the engine nozzle. However, Dick Rutan, Burt's brother and a famed test pilot himself, said that fairing could have fallen off completely without endangering the craft.Melvill's first frightening moment on the historic flight came at the very instant he flipped the switch to turn on the hybrid rocket motor. The craft suddenly lurched over 90° to the right, and as soon as he brought it back to level it then rolled 90° to the right. "I was ready to hit the switch" to turn off the motor and abort the flight, he said, but the craft remained steady and he was able to continue and achieve the 100 kilometre altitude that officially makes him an astronaut. This difficulty appears unrelated to the later failure of attitude control, Melvill said. Despite Melvill's 25 years of piloting experimental craft, he found even the normal operation of the rocketship alarming, as it travelled faster and higher than any previous privately-built craft. Speeding bullet SpaceShipOne was travelling "faster than an M-16 rifle bullet", Rutan said, about around 2400 km/h (1500 mph) or mach 3.2. As it reentered the atmosphere, falling like a badminton shuttlecock almost straight down, the rushing air sounded like a hurricane, said Melvill."Coming down is frightening, because of that roaring sound," he said. "You can really hear how that vehicle is being pounded."Until the exact causes of the anomalies are understood, there will be no X-Prize attempt, Rutan said: "There's no way we would fly again without knowing the cause and being sure we had fixed it."But despite the problems, the mood among the team remained extremely buoyant about their success. Melvill recounted how, as he became weightless, he opened a bag of M&M chocolates to watch them float around the cabin. But it was the sublime view that affected him the most. "The sky was jet black, with light blue along the horizon - it was really an awesome sight," he said. "You really do get the feeling that you've touched the face of God."   David L Chandler, Mojave S~TX-FlightRisk Green 3

[TX-Rahman]

There's video from the inflight camera on the spaceship also...I watched it before they announced the loss of control problems and thought..."Wow, it appears to be out of control"..  I thought it was weird that it was pitching like it was but that explains it...  Man....can you imagine it he would not have been able to regain control?  Wow...  Glad he made it back in one piece!!  The view from the video was spectacular though!!!  I would love to fly on it one day...Regards,TX-Rahman"WHITE 6"