Cute!
Posted on 10/04/2004 8:47:44 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
Brian Binnie (top left in image), flew the second leg of the X Prize competition in Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.This is the final successful attempt for the XPrize. The $10 million prize is given to the first privately financed team who can make two successful manned space flights in a craft able to carry three people.
The aeronautic rules also states that the pilot must come back in good health, i.e. "survive for 24 hours after landning".
Images of the Pilots, Brian top left, and today's space flight - bottom.
"We are heading to orbit sooner than you think," Burt Rutan, the creator said earlier. "We do not intend to stay in low-earth orbit for decades. The next 25 years will be a wild ride. ... One that history will note was done for the benefit of everyone."
Rutan said he expects the flight of SpaceShipOne to have an effect comparable to a set of public demonstrations that the Wright brothers carried out in Paris in 1908.
The reason, Rutan said, is because those demonstrations showed people "that's something I can do, because a couple of bicycle shop guys can do it". In the same way, he said, this low-cost flight into space will lead people to realise that "hey, this is something for us to do now, this is not just for governments ".
Vulcan, Inc and Scaled Composites the companies behind SpaceShipOne, are of 24 companies from several countries competing for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, which will go to the first privately funded group to send three people on a suborbital flight 62.5 miles (100.6 kilometers) high and repeat the feat within two weeks using the same vehicle.
The nonprofit X Prize Foundation is sponsoring the contest to promote the development of a low-cost, efficient craft for space tourism in the same way prize competitions stimulated commercial aviation in the early 20th century.
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has invested more than $20 million in Scaled Composites to create the manned program -- a fraction of what government-sponsored efforts have cost.
"Space flight is not only for governments to do," Rutan said. "Clearly, there's an enormous pent-up hunger to fly into space and not just dream about it."
The craft embodies several innovations, including a unique hybrid rocket motor, a new method of re-entering the atmosphere that requires no active controls, and the first operational space vehicle made entirely of carbon composite rather than metal.
The Eagle has landed. SpaceShipOne has won the 10 million X Prize contest, and opened a new route to Space.
The pilot, Brian Binnie, grabbed the previous Mike Melvill's torch and flew the second leg of the X Prize competition. A graduate of the U.S. Navy's test pilot school, he was at the controls when SpaceShipOne broke the sound barrier for the first time on a December test flight, which was marred when the craft hit the runway of Mojave Airport hard upon landing and veered into the brush.
...I once got a lizard strapped to a model rocket that high......
I'm a rocket engineer too. My early efforts circa 1957/58 were all failures.
When i got Esees motors I could really get things up.
Alas, the passion waned. My studies came to an end.
At first, certainly. But when the bragging rights become more commonplace the novelty and the rides will dwindle. The first few will pay the most, but as we stop paying attention --the price will drop.
I suspect that our race's tragedy has been played endless times. It may be that an intelligent race has to expand right up to its disaster point to achieve what is needed to break out of its planet and reach for the stars. It may always -- or almost always -- be a photo finish, with the outcome uncertain to the last moment. Just as it is with us. It may take endless wars and unbearable population pressure to force-feed a technology to the point where it can cope with space. In the universe, space travel may be the birth pangs of an otherwise dying race. A test. Some races pass, some fail...
RAH
Good One!!
"Just think of how many homeless people that money could have clothed and fed."
Get lost socialist!
Let the homeless get off their dead asses and feed and house themselves or lay down in the street and die!
As with many items of new technology, the wealthy get it first, and their purchases fund the production facilities needed to expand the volume and drop the price
That is true.. I think we are on a verge of having a new economy being created.
That interview was killer. He's running his own private Skunk Works out there, by crocky!
These people are incredible. I found out that many of the most memorable developments in aviation over the last 20 years were Scaled Composites products.
http://bassbinboy.junglescene.com/audio/spaceshipone_c.mp3
mp3 of today's flight communications
Oh yes, I forgot. There's a fixed amount of wealth and innovation in the world. If you make progress in one area, it means that technology in other areas has to shrink to make up for it.
Do I get that job at the Post Office now?
The first flight revealed a potentially fatal design flaw: the ship rolled under thrust. The roll increased at the edge of the atmosphere, where control surfaces become less effective. Consider what might have happened if this had been a NASA design. Congress would have convened a committee to blame NASA. Several top people would have been fired. At NASA, an engineering design group would have been formed to come up with an improved ship within two years.
But this was the private sector, not Washington. The potentially fatal roll problem was discovered on Wednesday, and they had it fixed by Monday.
"Guess the Air and Space Museum Annex over near Dulles airport will have a new occupant."
Right next to the Shuttle Enterprise. "America's Hangar" is a great place for airplane nuts. SR-71 is there too, and other prizes too numerous to mention.
Sorry, although I have read enough articles to have an opinion on the topic, I am not committed enough to it to have collected a database. My knowledge is pretty thin compared to others here such as SunkenCiv or blam. I suggest you ask them or peruse the Gods, Graves, Glyphs index here on FR. Another useful collection can be found on this thread.
Here is a tip: Highlight whatever you don't have a clue about, drag it to the Google toolbar (What, you don't have it installed? Shame on you!) and voila! All the info you don't have to bother asking others is neatly presented to you. Don't be lazy, learn how to search, it is not cool to ask or question what you should know and are just to lazy to look up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.