This is HUGE! This is truly a paradigm shift in space travel from government control to commercial entrepreneurialsm. NOW we're going to see some serious advancements in space travel.
Maybe just maybe I'll get a chance to buy my way onto a flight. I'm only 36. What will all this technology be like when I'm 56? If commercial enterprise is investing in it then I think we've all got a good chance at experiencing weightlessness, seeing the curvature of the earth, and admiring the vastness of space.
Heck, maybe even rent a hotel room on a orbital space station.
The authors first derive a definition of space power and military space power by drawing on scholarly interpretations of the notions of space and power. The authors then describe five elements of military space power. Guided by this formal concept of military space power and its elements, the authors present six basic Space Power 2010 concepts of operations (CONOPS). These six CONOPS are space strike, information blockade, space denial, omniscience/omnipresence, operational spacelift, and massively proliferated and networked microsat constellations. Tailored to address current deficiencies in US military space power, these CONOPS are exhibited in notional future scenarios and classroom briefings in order to help the reader visualize a variety of effects. Finally, the authors present technological, organizational, and doctrinal requirements, as well as contextual elements, for the Space Power 2010 vision.
Emphasis mine.
Both documents are publicly available in PDF form.
And the ballistic trajectory of SpaceShipOne effectively meant microgravity (not zero) for 3 minutes. ISS is still technically microgravity too. 'Zero gravity' would occur at LaGrange points, but otherwise, there's always at least one body influencing you slightly, so the term microgravity is more accurate.
Hey, can anyone tell me: Are the people inside SpaceshipOne experiencing null-G, or are they orbiting so low that they don't experience that?
Like curiousburb said, the people inside Spaceship 1 experience a few minutes of zero-g as it drops straight done after it gets past 100 km altitude. The carrier aircraft flies it to some altitude, then Spaceship 1 is released and it goes straight up, and glides straight down. The system may effectively have zero range.
Remember that Spaceship 1 is a Mach 3 airplane. Rutan did the absolute, and I mean absolute, minimum necessary to get to 100 km. Very ingenious. Problem is Spaceship 1 only goes as fast as Mach 3, and I would barely call it suborbital let alone orbiting.
Remember that Spaceship 1 is a Mach 3 airplane. Rutan did the absolute, and I mean absolute, minimum necessary to get to 100 km. Very ingenious. Problem is Spaceship 1 only goes as fast as Mach 3, and I would barely call it suborbital let alone orbiting.
Totally. It barely kisses the edge of the...ionosphere? We'll see how far privatized spaceflight goes in the next {arbitrary #} years, but it's going to take a lot more than a Mach 2-3 rocket plane to really impress me... more like a Mach 25 rocket plane...
Who thinks SS1 could hold up under THAT kind of stress?
I hear they've been conscripted by Virgin to deliver a four-door model...
Branson is a clever bugger, going Galactic buys a beau-coup of free press for Virgin...even if this is just a jumped up gliderplane strapped to a rubber laughing gas rocket.
I haven't honestly studied the lift/range capabilities of the other contenders for the X-Prize...anyone know which teams are/were proposing to head farther out than SpaceShipOne?
Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
The Canadian Arrow team went back to old blueprints and basically rebuilt a V2 rocket.
The V2 has enough lift in a single config to do 150k metres (as opposed to Rutan's 100k), but it's also possible to stage several V2 engines, and in interviews yesterday, the team suggested that they could strap 6 V2 bodies to a modified crew cabin (6 to 9 people) and use the same technology to go for the $50Million LEO prize by 2006.
Branson expects to be in SpaceShipTwo (Virgin Galactic) by 2007, but still ballistic under 200k.
Wow. It's amazing at how hard it is to impress some people.
Personally, I've eaten all this up. The Discover Channel special was amazing. I can't wait to the see the update on Discovery thursday night.
The point of all this was to take the X-prize challenge and prove that gettiing into space, no matter how limited, was achievable on fast turnaround. The fact that there were so many people showing up to witness the event perfectly illustrates how much hope people have that a new space race is starting.
Here's where I violate my traditional liberal side and sway toward the Republican ideal. And that is I believe only corporate America can truly make the advances needed, at a quickened pace, to get real normal people into space.
This is a very common dream.
If we wait for NASA's decades long development cycle, we'll never see rudamentary space flight in my children's lifetime, let alone my own.
If we left things to the suddenly overcautious Sean O'Keefe at NASA, Hubble would be de-orbited without humans taking a crack at extending the life of science's most inspirational photo booth.
Risk-averse in the face of a recent shuttle tragedy is understandable, and while I could agree with the contention that another tragedy might put space exploration farther behind from a Government standpoint, O'Keefe really needs to go back and read (footnote 16) the now famously posthumous plea for progress of V.I. (Gus) Grissom.
Quote:
"We're in a risky business," Grissom himself had said in an interview several weeks before the fire, "and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
Test pilots and astronauts know they're in a risky business.
If avoiding risk were the primary goal in our approach to challenging endeavours, we'd never have explored anywhere beyond safe horizons... no Lindbergh, no Wright Brothers, no Columbus or Magellan or...
Peter Diamandis of the X-Prize foundation has made similarly sharp comments to NASA in speaking to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and specifically in regard to both Hubble and the X-Prize. Archives of the arguments for and against Hubble servicing by robots and/or humans are about halfway down the page.
What the Xprize has done in some ways is to establish the principle that you don't need overengineered overcautious designs to do the job. It doesn't take a gargantuan bureaucracy. It takes innovation, inspiration, perspiration, and a willingness to take risks in order to achieve.
Space tourism is only one benefit.
Lowering the cost of lifting payload to orbit in terms of $/kg is another benefit.
Competition in this area may mean NASA can focus more energies on the content of its payloads, and subcontract mass lifting to the most efficient company.
Innovation in and of itself may be another benefit.
The first 20 years of powered human aviation saw more design and development in aeronautical engineering and experimentation than any 20 year period since. Invention flourished, because the potential rewards were high, and the challenge was stimulating. Spaceflight has become inspirational again. Ideas will bloom. (Case in point: Rutan's piggyback design is smarter use of fuel than a rocket that has to lift more of its own fuel to get the same result.)
Now I have to find some copies of the old teevee show "Salvage 1"
Kickaha and Amorph couldn't moderate themselves out of a paper bag. Abdicate responsibility and succumb to idiocy. Two years of letting a member make personal attacks against others, then stepping aside when someone won't put up with it. Not only that but go ahead and shut down my posting priviledges but not the one making the attacks. Not even the common decency to abide by their warning (afer three days of absorbing personal attacks with no mods in sight), just shut my posting down and then say it might happen later if a certian line is crossed. Bullshit flag is flying, I won't abide by lying and coddling of liars who go off-site, create accounts differing in a single letter from my handle with the express purpose to decieve and then claim here that I did it. Everyone be warned, kim kap sol is a lying, deceitful poster.
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
Wow. It's amazing at how hard it is to impress some people.
I've been in the business too long to get excited.
Quote:
Here's where I violate my traditional liberal side and sway toward the Republican ideal. And that is I believe only corporate America can truly make the advances needed, at a quickened pace, to get real normal people into space.
Corporate America isn't supposed to have any play in X-Prize, too much government funded engineering and knowhow. Spaceship 1 was really a rogue operation between an experienced aircraft designer and a billionaire benefactor. It was a great alignment of factors. None of the other contestants are even close to the $20+ million Rutan got from Allen, and none of the other contestants got the experienced and inhouse engineering and manufacturing power of Scaled.
I don't think that fits Republican nor Democrat ideals.
Quote:
This is a very common dream.
My dream is nothing short of space colonization.
Quote:
[/b]If we wait for NASA's decades long development cycle, we'll never see rudamentary space flight in my children's lifetime, let alone my own. [/B]
NASA's charter isn't to get normal people into space.
Everyone was shooting for minimum+margin for error. Foolish to shoot for more really. The $10Mil prize was really the only motivator for this round.
Paul Allen put $20+ million into it. Was he in it for the prize, the glory, or the dream of spacefaring nation?
Quote:
To all those dissing Rutan and his bird--get a clue. He designed to the task at hand, not some uber-geek definition of what they would like to see.
It's not dissing really. It's disappointment. The Rutan design looks very much like a dead end. An actual TSTO design that goes into orbit with reasonable payload is still 10 years and at least $100+ million away, if they can actually get the funding.
Quote:
My god man, not one of those flights wasn't a damned miracle the whole thing didn't fail flying or on skid-out. Oh wait, one did break in half, and most of the heat related problems were due to lack of knowledge and inefficient design for that speed realm. Something that was determined in retrospect, and judging from Rutans bird, some research he did pay attention to.
Err, are you dissing the X-15? It did make 200 or so flights and flew up to Mach 6.7. They knew what they were doing, and for the time, they did it very successfully at the edge of known technology and experience. Rutan paid attention by not flying faster than Mach 3, which would have required more extensive thermal protection systems. That was his ingenious solution.
Comments
A few sphincter moments by the sound of the roll, but 'successful' so far.
2nd flight to officially win the X-Prize is tentatively set for Monday.
CNN cunningly shows the chaseplane not the spacecraft landing. Again.
NASA TV is running some B-roll from today's flight. Check local times.
Originally posted by Eugene
IIRC, Neil Armstrong was an X-15 test pilot.
and a graduate of Purdue University
8)
And there was much rejoicing.
Originally posted by curiousuburb
And there was much rejoicing.
unenthusiastic: yay
Okay, seriously. Very cool.
Maybe just maybe I'll get a chance to buy my way onto a flight. I'm only 36. What will all this technology be like when I'm 56? If commercial enterprise is investing in it then I think we've all got a good chance at experiencing weightlessness, seeing the curvature of the earth, and admiring the vastness of space.
Heck, maybe even rent a hotel room on a orbital space station.
[/Common Man]
Originally posted by Placebo
Just wait until the terrorists get one. Then we'll all be sorry.
[/Common Man]
Maybe we should bomb the shit out of any/all astro-ship factories in other countries so that we're the only ones with the technology.
Originally posted by Northgate
Maybe we should bomb the shit out of any/all astro-ship factories in other countries so that we're the only ones with the technology
Um... not to go tin foil hat, but denial of space is policy.
Read the Air Force's Transformation Space Plan (or about it).
Or go back to the War College's paper Space Power 2010
The authors first derive a definition of space power and military space power by drawing on scholarly interpretations of the notions of space and power. The authors then describe five elements of military space power. Guided by this formal concept of military space power and its elements, the authors present six basic Space Power 2010 concepts of operations (CONOPS). These six CONOPS are space strike, information blockade, space denial, omniscience/omnipresence, operational spacelift, and massively proliferated and networked microsat constellations. Tailored to address current deficiencies in US military space power, these CONOPS are exhibited in notional future scenarios and classroom briefings in order to help the reader visualize a variety of effects. Finally, the authors present technological, organizational, and doctrinal requirements, as well as contextual elements, for the Space Power 2010 vision.
Emphasis mine.
Both documents are publicly available in PDF form.
And the ballistic trajectory of SpaceShipOne effectively meant microgravity (not zero) for 3 minutes. ISS is still technically microgravity too. 'Zero gravity' would occur at LaGrange points, but otherwise, there's always at least one body influencing you slightly, so the term microgravity is more accurate.
Originally posted by Placebo
Hey, can anyone tell me: Are the people inside SpaceshipOne experiencing null-G, or are they orbiting so low that they don't experience that?
Like curiousburb said, the people inside Spaceship 1 experience a few minutes of zero-g as it drops straight done after it gets past 100 km altitude. The carrier aircraft flies it to some altitude, then Spaceship 1 is released and it goes straight up, and glides straight down. The system may effectively have zero range.
Remember that Spaceship 1 is a Mach 3 airplane. Rutan did the absolute, and I mean absolute, minimum necessary to get to 100 km. Very ingenious. Problem is Spaceship 1 only goes as fast as Mach 3, and I would barely call it suborbital let alone orbiting.
Originally posted by THT
Remember that Spaceship 1 is a Mach 3 airplane. Rutan did the absolute, and I mean absolute, minimum necessary to get to 100 km. Very ingenious. Problem is Spaceship 1 only goes as fast as Mach 3, and I would barely call it suborbital let alone orbiting.
Totally. It barely kisses the edge of the...ionosphere? We'll see how far privatized spaceflight goes in the next {arbitrary #} years, but it's going to take a lot more than a Mach 2-3 rocket plane to really impress me... more like a Mach 25 rocket plane...
Who thinks SS1 could hold up under THAT kind of stress?
I hear they've been conscripted by Virgin to deliver a four-door model...
I haven't honestly studied the lift/range capabilities of the other contenders for the X-Prize...anyone know which teams are/were proposing to head farther out than SpaceShipOne?
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
The V2 has enough lift in a single config to do 150k metres (as opposed to Rutan's 100k), but it's also possible to stage several V2 engines, and in interviews yesterday, the team suggested that they could strap 6 V2 bodies to a modified crew cabin (6 to 9 people) and use the same technology to go for the $50Million LEO prize by 2006.
Branson expects to be in SpaceShipTwo (Virgin Galactic) by 2007, but still ballistic under 200k.
Personally, I've eaten all this up. The Discover Channel special was amazing. I can't wait to the see the update on Discovery thursday night.
The point of all this was to take the X-prize challenge and prove that gettiing into space, no matter how limited, was achievable on fast turnaround. The fact that there were so many people showing up to witness the event perfectly illustrates how much hope people have that a new space race is starting.
Here's where I violate my traditional liberal side and sway toward the Republican ideal. And that is I believe only corporate America can truly make the advances needed, at a quickened pace, to get real normal people into space.
This is a very common dream.
If we wait for NASA's decades long development cycle, we'll never see rudamentary space flight in my children's lifetime, let alone my own.
If we left things to the suddenly overcautious Sean O'Keefe at NASA, Hubble would be de-orbited without humans taking a crack at extending the life of science's most inspirational photo booth.
Risk-averse in the face of a recent shuttle tragedy is understandable, and while I could agree with the contention that another tragedy might put space exploration farther behind from a Government standpoint, O'Keefe really needs to go back and read (footnote 16) the now famously posthumous plea for progress of V.I. (Gus) Grissom.
"We're in a risky business," Grissom himself had said in an interview several weeks before the fire, "and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
Test pilots and astronauts know they're in a risky business.
If avoiding risk were the primary goal in our approach to challenging endeavours, we'd never have explored anywhere beyond safe horizons... no Lindbergh, no Wright Brothers, no Columbus or Magellan or...
Peter Diamandis of the X-Prize foundation has made similarly sharp comments to NASA in speaking to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and specifically in regard to both Hubble and the X-Prize. Archives of the arguments for and against Hubble servicing by robots and/or humans are about halfway down the page.
What the Xprize has done in some ways is to establish the principle that you don't need overengineered overcautious designs to do the job. It doesn't take a gargantuan bureaucracy. It takes innovation, inspiration, perspiration, and a willingness to take risks in order to achieve.
Space tourism is only one benefit.
Lowering the cost of lifting payload to orbit in terms of $/kg is another benefit.
Competition in this area may mean NASA can focus more energies on the content of its payloads, and subcontract mass lifting to the most efficient company.
Innovation in and of itself may be another benefit.
The first 20 years of powered human aviation saw more design and development in aeronautical engineering and experimentation than any 20 year period since. Invention flourished, because the potential rewards were high, and the challenge was stimulating. Spaceflight has become inspirational again. Ideas will bloom. (Case in point: Rutan's piggyback design is smarter use of fuel than a rocket that has to lift more of its own fuel to get the same result.)
Now I have to find some copies of the old teevee show "Salvage 1"
Now I guess they should have banned me rather than just shut off posting priviledges, because kickaha and Amorph definitely aren't going to like being called to task when they thought they had it all ignored *cough* *cough* I mean under control. Just a couple o' tools.
Don't worry, as soon as my work resetting my posts is done I'll disappear forever.
Originally posted by Northgate
Wow. It's amazing at how hard it is to impress some people.
I've been in the business too long to get excited.
Here's where I violate my traditional liberal side and sway toward the Republican ideal. And that is I believe only corporate America can truly make the advances needed, at a quickened pace, to get real normal people into space.
Corporate America isn't supposed to have any play in X-Prize, too much government funded engineering and knowhow. Spaceship 1 was really a rogue operation between an experienced aircraft designer and a billionaire benefactor. It was a great alignment of factors. None of the other contestants are even close to the $20+ million Rutan got from Allen, and none of the other contestants got the experienced and inhouse engineering and manufacturing power of Scaled.
I don't think that fits Republican nor Democrat ideals.
This is a very common dream.
My dream is nothing short of space colonization.
[/b]If we wait for NASA's decades long development cycle, we'll never see rudamentary space flight in my children's lifetime, let alone my own. [/B]
NASA's charter isn't to get normal people into space.
Originally posted by AirSluf
Everyone was shooting for minimum+margin for error. Foolish to shoot for more really. The $10Mil prize was really the only motivator for this round.
Paul Allen put $20+ million into it. Was he in it for the prize, the glory, or the dream of spacefaring nation?
To all those dissing Rutan and his bird--get a clue. He designed to the task at hand, not some uber-geek definition of what they would like to see.
It's not dissing really. It's disappointment. The Rutan design looks very much like a dead end. An actual TSTO design that goes into orbit with reasonable payload is still 10 years and at least $100+ million away, if they can actually get the funding.
My god man, not one of those flights wasn't a damned miracle the whole thing didn't fail flying or on skid-out. Oh wait, one did break in half, and most of the heat related problems were due to lack of knowledge and inefficient design for that speed realm. Something that was determined in retrospect, and judging from Rutans bird, some research he did pay attention to.
Err, are you dissing the X-15? It did make 200 or so flights and flew up to Mach 6.7. They knew what they were doing, and for the time, they did it very successfully at the edge of known technology and experience. Rutan paid attention by not flying faster than Mach 3, which would have required more extensive thermal protection systems. That was his ingenious solution.