Cool stuff here - Burt Rutan (of Voyager & other interesting aircraft)
has
rolled out a complete spaceplane system which might win the X-Prize by
the end of the year...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/902224.asp?0sl=-44
.. but my first thought at seeing the pics of the two-part vehicle was,
"Dog, if Jon produced a model that funny-looking, nobody'd buy it and
we'd all have said how 'unrealistic' it looked!"
Real life is stranger than fiction...
Brian Burger schrieb:
> Cool stuff here - Burt Rutan (of Voyager & other
If I read the article correctly - there is a fair bit of hype - it is
not a spaceplane as most people understand the word, namely that it can reach
orbit and stay there. It just can climb above the athmosphere and
drop back, like, say, the old X-15.
Greetings Karl Heinz
White Knight looks very much like Burt Rutan's Proetus. Proetus has been
documented in Jane's All the Worlds Aircraft. For those who don't want to look
it up, Proetus was designed to be a very high altitude sail plain (think U2
flight profile) to carry transceiver equipment for telecommunications, dish
TV's, etc. It would require much lower initial investment then a satellite. Of
course all of this could be nothing but misinformation done intentionally to
hide its real purpose from others in
the areo-space industry; as the first stage of a two stage orbiter.
Knowing the bureaucracy in anything at all to do with the space program, I
can't blame him at all.
ias
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I doubt that Karl missed the point; he probably is only concerned others
might.
I love space stuff as much as the next person, but this could get mighty
fiddly if we aren't careful. Perhaps we could let it drop as OT?
The_Beast
> If I read the article correctly - there is a fair bit of hype - it is
You miss the entire point. That is exactly what it does, but it is PRIVATELY
FUNDED, therefore it does so at a SMALL FRACTION OF THE COST OF A GOVERNMENT
PROGRAM to do the samething. This is a step to the future, not the future
itself. If they can put that manned spaceship into a suborbital
position twice within two weeks, they will not only win the x-prize, but
will also have done something the X-15 did not, go suborbital in a
mostly reusable vehicle (they will probably have to replace parts of the
rocket engine between flights), and enviromental control system that does not
require space suits.
If they can operate this vehicle cost effectively for suborbital experiments,
they may be able to scale it up to an orbital system. Eugene Sanger had the
right idea decades ago. A two stage fully reusable vehicle. Why operate a
rocket in the dense lower atmosphere? Use a airplane to climb out of most of
that. Then use a rocket to go to orbit.
Here's the best link for info on White Knight and SpaceShip One:
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm
Be sure to checkout the data sheets.
[quoted original message omitted]
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:
> Brian Burger schrieb:
It's a suborbital vehicle rather than a "true" orbital spaceplane, true.
It's still a significant achievement - AFAIK all the USAF/NASA X-planes
have been retired, so Rutan's is the only vehicle working this sort of
mission. Likewise the first private venture of this sort to get this far.
It's also still a crazy looking animal, with that bumblebee body & struts and
winglets everywhere! Trust Rutan to discard convention once again!
The X-Prize doesn't require actual orbital flight to win, just
suborbital to (I think) 300 SM with two people on board, and a 2nd flight
within two weeks of the first.
Am I the only person who had a Doctor Who moment when they saw the subject
line?
> Am I the only person who had a Doctor Who moment when they saw the
No ;)
Regards, Bob
> This is generally not known until the program is complete, but
That's only because Soyuz are done in Russia. If the Russian's had to pay the
cost of American labor, then the Soyuz rides would cost much, much more. This
is what is significant about Rutan's spaceplane. It is the cost of a Soyuz
ride, but is done in the U.S. with very expensive (in comparison to Russia)
labor costs, but it doesn't cost anymore.
> Accounting can be quite a creative art, so everything about this must
Considering the accounting scandals in the past two years on both sides of the
Atlantic, I would agree; however, Burt Rutan has very good reputation, and I
doubt he would blow it over fake cost estimates. Engineers tend be very
unforgiving deciet. It's one thing to be wrong, but to mislead is surest way
to ruin an engineering career for good.
> For the X-15, here's a page with a summary of its cost.
Actually... "If these figures are plugged into a spreadsheet, we note that the
price per flight has to be set to at least $2.5 million in 1964 dollars to
achieve a
decent return on investment (=$10 million+ today). "
I would argue that prices have gone up considerably more then four fold since
1964. Also, testing in Areospace was much cheaper back then (read as much less
stringent safety requirements, much less liability, etc.). The
X-15 also carried only a single person (if I remember correctly), 1/3
the people of Spaceship One.
> The X-15 was reusable and had an average of 20 flights/year (max.32).
To win the X-Prize requires a two week turn around which implies (but
does not neccessarily mean) 25 flights a year. The info on the Scaled
Composite web site implies that most of the down time is due to the rocket
engine. There is no reason why an improved engine of much lower maintence
can't be developed, possibly an areospike engine.
> Certainly an impressive achievement. But Burt Rutan is a talent in a
And we are very lucky to have an engineer like him.