SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier

Scaled Composite Press Release ^ | December 17th, 2003

[Brett66]

What's going on with these X-Prize vehicles is not a big deal in terms of bleeding-edge technical development. It's a big deal in terms of private enterprise wresting access to space away from NASA. That is a big deal, IMHO. In 20 years we'll routinely be going to and from space and it will be because of what men like Rutan,Carmack,Elon Musk, etc. are doing now. This is the beginning of the age of routine and affordable space travel.

[RightWhale]

Any communication from Winnebago as yet?

The Winnebago Space Weekender, maybe coming soon. Granted the fishing won't be all that good 60 miles up.

[snopercod]

I wonder how she'd handle in a snap roll...

[RightWhale]

The little ship had some surprising characteristics on its first test flights. These have been fixed and the nose-up stall and flat spin should not happen during normal flight. It apparently flies like a badminton bird.

[CyberAnt]

Whoa! Facinating!!

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Interesting!

[Tree of Liberty]

What's the ticker symbol?

[RightWhale]

I wouldn't be real excited about it, but it is SPDV. I own it because I think I should, being interested in outer space development, not because I think it will do well any time soon.

[Tree of Liberty]

Thanks. I'm fully invested right now, but I'll keep an eye on it if for nothing more than the PR's.

[RightWhale]

Things are happening at SPDV. It's not easy to keep such a business going at this time, but they are industriously keeping at it.

[daviddennis]

The space shuttle was supposed to reduce the cost of space flight.

If my memory serves, it actually raised it to the point where a shuttle flight cost more and did less than our moon missions.

Reducing the cost of space flight is not a matter of dollars and cents. It's a matter of opening possibilities. As long as it costs a hundred million-odd a mission, it's going to be too expensive for anything but communications and spy satellites to make it out there.

And if you liberate it from the iron grip of government, you could see innovations comparable to those made during the golden years of the Internet.

I don't know about you, but I think that's a big deal. A VERY big deal.

D

[Lokibob]

A number of replies mention "Orbit" and orbit is not the goal of this aircraft nor of the x-prize.

The $10,000,000 will be paid to the first team that achieves 100 KM (62 miles), has 3 passengers, and repeats the feat within 2 weeks.

The goal of the x-prize is to encourage travel in near space, and to demonstrate reliability. Once these goals are achieved, it is expected that capitalism will take over bringing the price even further down.

If the government were running this program, the costs would far exceed the $10,000,000 prize pot.

[RightWhale]

I understand Rutan has already invested over $30 million. Of course he would do this even if there were no prize. If he is successful, many doors will open to him.

[LauraJean]

Right you are. A couple years ago I went to a space confrence in Milwaukee. Most of the people talking were brillant but they had not a clue on what to use space flight for. The one speaker I remember the most clearly was a guy that owned a brickmaking company in Illinois. He talked about how his company was given a little bit of moon dust to make bricks. I can't remember everything he said but I do remember the excitment he had about the experiments. You could see how proud he was about his contribution.

[DouglasKC]

THis is really cool. I only have one gripe: What kind of name is "SpaceShipOne"??? It sounds like it was named by a 9 year old. It sounds dated and old fashioned. They could have called it something cool like "The Mach Fusion Machine".

[RightWhale]

Imported things have an appeal all their own. They have to be the right things: Chinese-made anything isn't so hot at the moment; French wine is really no better than New York wine. If it's hard to get, and everybody knows moon dust is near impossible to get, it has a special appeal, everybody feels it. It's like we have an excitement of knowing that these things are coming, but we can't do anything about it right now, we'd all be dead of hypertension if we stayed excited about this. But when the ships start flying to the moon again, you'll see a tremendous level of interest. Probably the project engineers will among the least excited.

[hoagy62]

What I'M waiting for is someone to build an SSTO (Single-Stage-To-Orbit) craft. One that won't need a mothership to lift it to altitude. From the runway (or pad) to space, no boosters, everything stays together. Comes back in one piece, can be reused within 24 hours or less.

SS1 is cool, no doubt, but it ain't SSTO.

[bonesmccoy]

Just to add a few comments to yours on costs of shuttle launches.

There are so many ways to account for things that it is very difficult to describe the costs per mission and effectively compare Apollo to Shuttle.

For one thing, the technical differences in the mission profiles has a dramatic impact on costs. Saturn 5 was a huge vehicle and used different fuels than STS.

For another thing, the processing at KSC is dramatically different. The main issue is that the STS does not require assembly lines to manufacture the booster with each mission. The only elements manufactured for each flight are the ET's components.

So, no, I would not agree with your memory. STS is less costly than the Apollo program on a per astronaut or per flight basis.

[BurbankKarl]

Anyone got a stick of Beechum's?

[RightWhale]

That would be quite a thing, SSTO, but I don't plan to wait. As soon as I can afford a set of disposable boosters, I'm outta here.