SpaceShip One

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viper101

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I remember reading that Rutan planned on flying SS1 every Tuesday for 5 months.<br /><br />Does anyone know why SS1 has only made the three trips (The Junes test run, and the two x-prize flights in Sept/Oct) so far?<br /><br />I would have thought they would want to keep going.
 
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viper101

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That was the best guess I could come up with - that the flight control problems we saw on Melville's last flight might have caused a little concern - so it must be spending some more time on the drawing board I guess.
 
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spacester

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Well, that may very well be true, but I think Burt has earned enough respect that we can afford to pass along the official story. After all, it is possible he is not lying to us . . . <img src="/images/icons/laugh.gif" /><br /><br />IIRC, the reason is that<br />1) It accomplished its mission<br />2) It is going to the Smithsonian <br /><br />Perhaps a more complete answer could be provided . . . <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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mrmorris

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I read an article recently that indicated Paul Allen wanted it to go straight to the Smithsonian, and that Rutan wanted a few more flights. IIRC -- the upshot was that they would make additional flights if there was specific testing that Rutan needed to perform.
 
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rogers_buck

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Maybe bigger fish came along to fry. If he is going to capitalize on his success it would be now. Hauling a few passengers in SS1 might have been the original plan, but something bigger and grander would preempt if the money was available for development.
 
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thermionic

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I attended a lecture by Mr. Rutan the other week where he stated that he'd like to fly SS1 a few more times to generate data for refining the SS2 design. But Paul Allen (and probably also the Virgin guy) wants it to go right to the Smithsonian with no chance that it gets smashed up. Mr. Rutan did say that he's looking for 'low-risk' flights that Mr. Allen might allow. I got the impression that Allen pretty much owns SS1.<br /><br />I think the plan to fly every Tuesday for 5 months was casual, and suggested flippantly. If I remember right, he said something more like that he wanted to or that he could, rather than he was going to.
 
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no_way

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The flight cost of SS1 wasnt marginal. IIRC the SpaceDev hybrid motor cost on the order of several tens of thousands or was it close to hundred ?<br />I'd want to have a damn good reason to burn this money.
 
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ascan1984

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I am currently watching as i write this the discovery channel documentary for spaceship one. I have never seen this before and all i can say is wow. This is amazing. What was i thinking before about being against it. Why did they not continue with the X15 program. This is the way to go.
 
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wvbraun

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Against what? Against Rutans approach to spaceflight or private sector activities in general?
 
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wvbraun

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"Why did they not continue with the X15 program."<br /><br />Getting to the moon was a higher prioritiy at the time.
 
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duress

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Why don't they give Burt 10-20 Billion to come up with a Shuttle replacement. He'd do a better job.
 
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arobie

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The honest answer:<br /><br />Because Burt is an airplane builder who just recently turned to spaceflight and only has three suborbital flights under his belt. Two of which had control problems.<br /><br />In other words, he has very little experience in this arena. <br /><br />Anyways his goal is not to become a spaceship builder for Nasa. He is more interested in opening up private industry.
 
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jcdenton

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Good points Arobie. I'd also think that NASA is no longer in to the idea of an all-purpose spacecraft.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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rocketwatcher2001

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<font color="yellow">Why did they not continue with the X15 program.</font><br /><br />It eventually became the Space Shuttle, an awesome space freighter. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
 
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tuckerfan

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<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Because Burt is an airplane builder who just recently turned to spaceflight and only has three suborbital flights under his belt. Two of which had control problems. <br /><br />In other words, he has very little experience in this arena. <br /><br />Anyways his goal is not to become a spaceship builder for Nasa. He is more interested in opening up private industry.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Actually, that's not completely correct. Rutan worked on DCX ( http://scaled.com/projects/dcx.html ), the Pegasus system ( http://scaled.com/projects/pegasus.html ), and is helping NASA design the lunar return missions ( http://www.transformspace.com/News.htm ). He may not be the prime contractor for any of this, but he's certainly one of the more important contractors.
 
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arobie

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I had not known about his work on DCX and Pegasus. Very Interesting and thank you.<br /><br />I had known about his involvement with t/space, but that is only conceptual, only planning out possible plans for returning to the Moon.
 
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wvbraun

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SpaceShipOne designer talks about flight’s future<br /><br /><br /><i>Question: Where do you see SpaceShipOne, the craft itself, heading?<br /><br />Answer: We looked at a lot of things to do with it. We have a lot of requests — actually, five different requests to fly payloads on it. Of course, everyone in the world wants to fly on it because it’s the only operable, private manned spacecraft. <b>However, Paul [Allen] feels that it needs to be preserved for the Air and Space Museum. They have offered to put it in the Milestones of Flight Gallery in the mall in Washington D.C. So, I don’t think we’re still debating it; it probably will not be flown again.</b> I think we’ll move on and our future space flying will be done with SpaceShipTwo instead of SpaceshipOne.<br /><br />Question: So there is already another spaceship of similar design, yet probably with most of the kinks worked out, being developed?<br /><br />Answer: We’re developing a much bigger spaceship named SpaceShipTwo, one that could carry nine people and allow them to float around the cabin when they are weightless. It would also fly higher, and further down range. So this is going to be a craft that could do sustainable business for a long time, flying thousands of people.</i>
 
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bobvanx

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<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>It would also fly higher, and further down range.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>This certainly translates as "And we're including a fly-by-wire, computer controlled trajectory navigation unit."<br /><br />I'm not denegrading the heroic efforts of Mike, Brian, and ...Peter?(dang, who was that third pilot? He developed the simulator and the flight controls...) but one thing the telemetry shows pretty clearly is that small initial errors yield greatly divergent recovery trajectories.<br /><br />SS2 will certainly be robust enough to fly around any situation they find themselves in, but a craft with a greater down range capability is going to require very significant, delicate inputs at the front end. If you're flying a thousand miles in a few minutes, and you enter your ballistic trajectory a couple degrees off, you'll be clearing traffic from a non-spaceport rated landing field (a hundred miles from your planned destination) in the best case (and picking up debris in the worst case).
 
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ronatu

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<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Burt Rutan said the cost of a SpaceShipOne flight was $79,000 <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br /><br />Are you sure? Maybe 790,000?
 
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