we can rebuild him...we have the technology...
Posted on 12/17/2003 1:44:59 PM PST by Frank_Discussion
SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier
Today, a significant milestone was achieved by Scaled Composites: The first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small company's private, non-government effort.
In 1947, fifty-six years ago, history's first supersonic flight was flown by Chuck Yeager in the Bell X-1 rocket under a U.S. Government research program. Since then, many supersonic aircraft have been developed for research, military and, in the case of the recently retired Concorde, commercial applications. All these efforts were developed by large aerospace prime companies, using extensive government resources.
Our flight this morning by SpaceShipOne demonstrated that supersonic flight is now the domain of a small company doing privately-funded research, without government help. The flight also represents an important milestone in our efforts to demonstrate that truly low-cost space access is feasible.
Our White Knight turbojet launch aircraft, flown by Test Pilot Peter Siebold, carried research rocket plane SpaceShipOne to 48,000 feet altitude, near the desert town of California City. At 8:15 a.m. PDT, Cory Bird, the White Knight Flight Engineer, pulled a handle to release SpaceShipOne. SpaceShipOne Test Pilot, Brian Binnie then flew the ship to a stable, 0.55 mach gliding flight condition, started a pull-up, and fired its hybrid rocket motor. Nine seconds later, SpaceShipOne broke the sound barrier and continued its steep powered ascent. The climb was very aggressive, accelerating forward at more than 3-g while pulling upward at more than 2.5-g. At motor shutdown, 15 seconds after ignition, SpaceShipOne was climbing at a 60-degree angle and flying near 1.2 Mach (930 mph). Brian then continued the maneuver to a vertical climb, achieving zero speed at an altitude of 68,000 feet. He then configured the ship in its high-drag "feathered" shape to simulate the condition it will experience when it enters the atmosphere after a space flight. At apogee, SpaceShipOne was in near-weightless conditions, emulating the characteristics it will later encounter during the planned space flights in which it will be at zero-g for more than three minutes. After descending in feathered flight for about a minute, Brian reconfigured the ship to its conventional glider shape and flew a 12-minute glide to landing at Scaled's home airport of Mojave. The landing was not without incident as the left landing gear retracted at touchdown causing the ship to veer to the left and leave the runway with its left wing down. Damage from the landing incident was minor and will easily be repaired. There were no injuries.
The milestone of private supersonic flight was not an easy task. It involved the development of a new propulsion system, the first rocket motor developed for manned space flights in several decades. The new hybrid motor was developed in-house at Scaled with first firings in November 2002. The motor uses an ablative nozzle supplied by AAE and operating components supplied by SpaceDev. FunTech teamed with Scaled to develop a new Inertial Navigation flight director. The first flight of the White Knight launch aircraft was in August 2002 and SpaceShipOne began its glide tests in August 2003.
Scaled does not pre-announce the specific flight test plans for its manned space program, however completed accomplishments are updated as they happen at our website: http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm. The website also provides downloadable photos and technical descriptions of the rocket motor system and motor test hardware.
Scaled Composites, LLC, is an aerospace research company located on the Mojave Airport: 1624 Flight Line, Mojave California 93501 Voice (661) 824-4541 Fax (661) 824-4174 Email: info@scaled.com
we can rebuild him...we have the technology...
The know-how for such things exists, but the manufacturing technology is esoteric, exotic, and very proprietary. There are people in the US that know how to manufacture carbon nanotubes by the pound and meters in length, but a foundry would be very expensive, even for proof of concept.
To give you an idea of how exotic, we are talking about precipitating arbitrarily long carbon nanotubes from extremely unusual solvent chemistries (to give an idea, imagine if we had to use platinum group metals as the base solvent for industrial chemistry) that we have no experience with and operating at uncomfortable parameters. I'm a bright fellow with a background in chemical engineering, and a ChemE could gain fame and fortune figuring out an industrial process for manufacturing carbon nanotubes. Knowing how to do it technically is one thing, making such exotic processes work as a practical industrial process is quite something else. There are actually a few known processes that would work (I know many of these folks personally), but I'll tip my hat to the first person that figures out a viable industrial process for any of them.
Note that how carbon nanotubes are manufactured now is not a usable industrial process and gives poor results anyway. There are a few very bright people who have been involved in the field for a long time that have figured out the processes required to manufacture carbon nanotubes like we manufacture copper wire (figuratively), but actually implementing the industrial process is spectacularly difficult and quite unusual.
The tragic loss of Columbia has refocused the nation's attention on the direction of our space program. Indisputable as technological wonders, continued flights of the shuttle and the building of the International Space Station are losing luster as "exploration." Begun as a bold answer to a technical challenge from an adversary, America's space program ignited our national spirit, drove innovative technology and sparked excellence in math and science in our schools. But decades later and in the absence of such competition, some think our space program has lost its edge.
We should return to the moon. With such a goal, we will inspire our youth with a challenging task, develop resources of enormous commercial value and be more secure with routine access to any location in Earth-moon space. A lunar return will teach us about our planetary origins and open up new and exciting scientific possibilities. A return to the moon is not a repeat of the Apollo experience. When we went to the moon 30 years ago, it was to demonstrate that we could do it. When we return there, it will be to use the valuable and unique resources of the moon to open the space frontier.
Although close, the moon is another world - an alien landscape that's familiar, yet a frontier where we already know there is "gold." This treasure, approximately 10 billion tons of water-ice found in the dark regions of the lunar poles, was discovered during the 1994 Defense Department Clementine mission and later verified by NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft. It resides in the shadows, beneath peaks bathed in permanent sunlight. This bonanza has the potential to change the calculus of space flight.
We now know that living (not merely journeying) and thriving (not merely surviving) off-planet is possible. How? With water from the moon, which can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen can be breathed and together the two elements make the most powerful chemical rocket fuel known (the space shuttle main engines burn liquid hydrogen and oxygen).
The development and use of lunar resources have important national, economic and security implications. Space communications satellites (comsats) occupy high Earth orbit, circling the equator at 23,000 miles. Because the shuttle cannot reach this high altitude, the only recourse is to abandon broken satellites and launch new ones, taking several years and millions of dollars. The ability to routinely move machines and people throughout Earth-moon space to service and maintain these assets is increasingly necessary.
With the opportunity to use fuel mined from the moon, we can send people to high orbits to service satellites. Having the capacity to refuel rockets in orbit greatly extends our reach and operational limits, up to and including the moon.
Earth's natural satellite offers a tempting scientific target with a fascinating and important history to decipher. Asteroid and comet impacts have drastically effected life here, including the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Because Earth is geologically active, most of this terrestrial impact record has been erased. But the moon orbits the sun along with the Earth, and this story lies preserved and recorded in the ancient lunar surface. What other cosmic catastrophes have affected and interrupted the history of life? Could we discover a pattern to these giant collisions? Those questions and others can be answered on the moon.
The moon has a quiet, stable surface with a 14-day "night time," making it a natural place for astronomical observation. We can build telescopes capable of seeing thousands of times more clearly than the Hubble Space Telescope. The far side of the moon, never seen from Earth, is the only known place in the universe permanently shielded from the constant stream of electromagnetic noise of our industrial society. There, with a radio telescope, we can look into the universe and see completely new regions of the spectrum. Based on past experience, such a development could revolutionize our current knowledge.
We should make the moon a way station on the road into space. We must look to and utilize the materials and energy available in space to make our activities there routine, safe and affordable. We can explore with people and robots, conduct experiments and learn to use the indigenous resources of an alien world to support human and plant life. The moon is not a detour away from our space destiny, but rather a destination from where we will learn how to become space-ready and thereby maximize the success and survival of mankind.
The moon is a natural laboratory, where we can prepare for space journeys farther afield. It is a goal reachable with modest resources, yet challenging enough for the next generation of planetary explorers. It is a goal worthy of the spirit embodied in Columbia's brave crew, who gave their lives in the relentless human desire to understand the unknown. It is the right goal in space and the right space goal for America. [End]
Paul D. Spudis is a planetary scientist. He was a member of the Science Team of the 1994 Clementine mission to the moon. He also is the author of "The Once And Future Moon."
RightWhale does.
IYAS9YAS may soon. Gotta get the house sold.
Nothing personal, but I hate you. ;^)
Nah...I take it back.
I worked with a helicopter fire fighting company on business a couple of weeks ago. I get chills being around aircraft. I probably would have had frostbite if I'd been in your shoes.
Y'know the funny thing, I was in the Army (now Guard), I jumped out of airplanes, rode around in helicopters and never had any desire to fly anything. I've always been more interested in ground war with little interest in much of anything that flies--'specially balloons, hate 'em--of course now I'm in an aerospace intensive field... Wierd.
My general reaction to stuff like SpaceShipOne is: "Gee, that's neat. What happens when you can't transition that tail into glide position?"
I never even owned airplane models when I was a kid--just tanks...
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