What does this mean? It means space exploration and usage is about to take a large leap forward. I've hoped that one day anybody might be able to take a hop up there, now it's coming closer. We need to get exploring and colonizing going.

Anybody noticed that Colonel Rutan has become the Chuck Yeager of this era?

Uh, your title doesn't match the story:

Private/Commercial Rocketplane a Success.

From the press release :
"XCOR Aerospace today announced that it has successfully completed the first phase...

How does completing the first phase of a project make that project a success?

There is, believe it or not, no interest in NASA at the White House. If Rutan and others of the private sector don't do this, no one will. Russia is also not interested in space tourism at this time. Might as well forget about it. There's a war on, you know.

Where do you see anything about Space Exploration? All I see is an airplane with a rocket engine. You can put a rocket engine on a truck.

Go to the link. This thing looks like a Cessna with a rocket strapped on. I would think twice before riding this baby to the moon.

I went to the link, that's what I'm talking about. No Space Exploration here. (But I bet it could really help with the commute)

I would think twice before riding this baby to the moon.

It would take more than thinking about it. This contraption will barely get to thin air, not to mention outer space. There might be other problems if it gets above the speed of sound, a fraction of orbital velocity.

The Long-EZ is Bert Rutan's oldest commercial success as far as I know. I think it is sold in kit form.

From the linked website:

What XCOR engineers have done is modified a basic, build-it-yourself Long-EZ airplane by replacing the propeller with a rocket engine capable of 400 pounds of thrust.

A regular Long-EZ can reach a top speed of 190 knots, or just more than 200 mph. The rocket engine could easily hurl the small airplane to greater speeds, but that's not allowed to happen, said Pournelle, because the plane would break.

>How does completing the first phase of a project make that project a success?

I think they meant it as the testbed flew, and did what they wanted, and it's going to open the door for much more advanced air/space craft.

This is a very very big deal. Privately built spacecraft, and not just satellite u-hauls, but manned.

This contraption will barely get to thin air, not to mention outer space.

Dick Rutan is just testing the engine at this point it would see. It looks like he strapped it on one of his EZs. The final concept is a two-stage to orbit design, with a conventional aicraft bringing a parasite rocket plane to higher altitude and then separating it and letting it get to orbit via the rocket.

He's on the right track and wouldn't understimate him. He usually succeeds with whatever aeronautical whim he decides to indulge in.

"Routine operations must be the primary criterion for rocket engine development," said XCOR Chief Engineer Dan DeLong. "Our approach is to build safe and reliable rocket engines first, then progress to the higher performance needed for orbital launch vehicles."

The CEO said "We passed a major milestone today. This is a significant technical achievement for a variety of reasons. First, once you get two engines working in combination it is significantly easier to cluster more engines for larger vehicles. Second, we were able to keep the engine and fuel flow running smoothly during the flight."

Small steps before big steps. I follow space-related news as a hobby, and this is a very very big deal.

NASA's administrator wants us to goto Mars very badly, but Congress won't cough up the dough. If we go, it's going to be because of things like this. We need Americans on Mars, on the Moon, etc. If we don't do it, other countries/organizations will, and then things could get icky.

>Dick Rutan is just testing the engine at this point it would see....
>He's on the right track and wouldn't understimate him. He usually succeeds with whatever aeronautical whim he decides to indulge in...

Wouldn't you like to own a piece of that company?

I'm not saying what they are doing is completely insignificant. But they have LONG way to go.

He's got a long way to go.

I'm no rocket scientist but I would guess he needs about ten times that amount of thrust, for about ten times the duration, to have a practical rocket motor.

His X-1 and Me-163 replicas are both intriguing, but neither has any duration to speak of (somewhere around five minutes of powered flight for the Komet, maybe more for the X-1). That makes them expensive toys with little utility.

It's a good start, and you gotta start somewhere, but I say you can't call a private/commercial venture a success unless you actually make MONEY.
Not grants and donations, actual profits from sales--and this is where Rutan's record is spotty...

"What does this mean?"

I dunno, but I can tell you that THIS:

means there are some seriously DUMB people involved in this.

I'll put it gently: with any rocket engine using liquid fuel and oxidizer, you do not stand around within yards of the test article sucking your thumb and thinking "oh wow".

These guys are fixing to be corpses and take a nice long dirt nap.

--Boris

I can top that - this guy is building pulse-jet gokarts :
His projects
His gokart

What Rutan and company are trying to do though is get us out into space cheaply and quickly, and without the goverment being involved, and I think that if it happens, it'll change a lot of things.

What happened to the scientific marvel of a couple of months back? "IT", I haven't seen any articles since the initial burst of publicity, I realize it was not slated for formal introduction till next year but you would at least expect stories to keep the interest up if it were a real civilization changing device.

The X Prize is still up for grabs.

The image reminds me of early German amateur rocket pioneers prior to WWII. Who knows, if any of them live, one may become the next Von Braun.