IT'S ON, BABY!
X-Prize update for Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne: Flight 1: Success. Big time.
[wik] Well... not "big time," quite. There was some roll that was a little scary but that the pilot was able to deal with. I'm just happy that there's a space vehicle out there that can develop a little roll and not explode, killing everyone inside and giving their constituent molecules a tour of the upper atmosphere from Butte to Bangor. That right there is a major improvement over the "best" the gubmint has done so far.
Posted by
Johno
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§ 6 Comments
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Yeah, but could they do it
Yeah, but could they do it for $25 mil? That's really the point. NASA can't even do the planning for a space project for under $25 million, let alone actually fly something.
B,
B,
OK OK, but there's not exactly a direct comparison between the Rutan Clan and NASA's shuttle.
All Rutan had to do was put his bird up and retrieve it. OK, twice. NASA has all sorts of missions and projects and things that the shuttle is supposed to do: carry cargo, manipulate it into space, support a crew for days at a time, etc etc.
Not that NASA couldn't do it better than it does, or that Rutan couldn't do it better someday.
I like your Lindbergh comparison but will need more convincing that NASA would have trouble doing what Rutan did- they've been doing it for decades!
Ted, you're right. It was.
Ted, you're right. It was.
Ted, that may have been a
Ted, that may have been a cheap shot, but consider that for twenty five million bucks, a buch of guys in the desert did what NASA has trouble doing for hundreds of billions. The state of the art in materials, design and engineering has advanced enormously in the sixty years since NASA did essentially the same thing when they sub-orbitally lobbed Alan Shepherd in the first Mercury launch. NASA is still using technology barely out of the sixties.
Like Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic, this will prove not that spaceflight is possible (duh) but that it is reasonable. How many people in this country have 25 million dollars? It shows that we do not need to spend hundreds of billions and create vast new bureaucracies to get into space.
There's a huge difference
There's a huge difference between SS1 doing a slow roll at nowhere close to escape velocity and a shuttle returning from orbit at multiple mach.
That was a cheap shot at NASA and the shuttle program.
Still not a fan of that
Still not a fan of that "SpaceShipOne" moniker...