Burn Rubber
Space.com is reporting that Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites have successfully completed a full on test burn of a prototype hybrid rocket motor. (Another company has also tested a hybrid motor. Reportedly, Scaled Composites will decide which rocket to go with soon.)
Rutan has already conducted a series of tests of the White Knight mother ship that will carry the smaller SpaceShipOne to high altitude, where it will begin its independent flight into space. SpaceShipOne is designed to land like a glider, and it has undergone several gliding test flights.
The hybrid motors burn Nitrous Oxide (whippets) and hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) - otherwise known as rubber. While these are not the most energetic of all propellants (Liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen, used for the Shuttle main engines, are the most powerful) they have the advantage of being stable, easily stored and non reactive; and safer than almost all other potential rocket fuels.
It looks like Rutan is the most likely winner of the X-Prize, moving along at a rapid pace. I think it would be a rather amazing thing if they launch on Dec 17th, the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brother's first flight. It could happen.
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Wow... this is awesome.
Wow... this is awesome.
I'm particularly impressed by the Burn Some Rubber and Do Some Whippets aspect of the design, as are you. That's EXACTLY the kind of thinking that will win the X-Prize and make cheap, repeatable, safe, mundane, boring space flight a thing of the present.