O/T? Dont think So, Spaceship1, real hotrodders!!!!

Happened earlier this week, the first private flight into space and repeated withing a 14? day span. Burt Ruttan and crew deserve the props! They have done what only 3 COUNTRIES have done in history. This is our Kitty Hawk boys.


Did you get the part about their low-buck thrusters? Air tanks and jets to control the attitude in space!!!!!!!!

Anyway, watched the recap on Discovery tonight, I am sure they will rerun it many times.

 

And they fueled the thing with old tires and Nitrous!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Inspiring.

 

Watched most of the the thing on the discovery channel thing today.

fucking amazing.

 

I watched it too! Real Hotrodders for sure!Seat of the pants flying INTO SPACE!!Kinda-sorta reminds me of the old TV show Salvage One. Where Andy Griffith and his junkyard buddies made a contraption,made from junk cars,and flew the thing into space. Probiblly future HAMBERS will be posting pics,of Traditional homebuilt spaceships!! Rutan and the rest of those guys,especially the pilots have some mighty 'BIG UNN'S" and get my upmost PropS!!!! The ship itself had a retro Buck Rodgers look to it also,like the Bellx-1 that Chuck Yeager,and Scott Crossfield usta hotrod around in over the same dry lakebed! Now If I could only locate a "barn fresh" X-15,on E-bay.....Hummmm......

 

I would submit that the Rutan brothers are in good company with another set of brothers who lived about a hundred years ago.Just goes to show that,"cubic money does not a space program make."Backyard engineering at it's finest!

 

Did you see in the earlier show that was on last week that they couldn't afford windtunnel time to help design the tail rudder so they mounted it on a PU and drove like mad thru the desert???? LOL That's ingenuity !!!

 

Hell yeah. This is AWESOME shit. I watched the last landing live on the AOL, and it made me feel all "funny" inside...

I think it's honestly one of the most historic moments I've ever witnessed!

 

I thought the same thing! That’s what hot rodding all about. The Discovery shows were really good and inspirational.

I really liked the sign they held up after the first flight:

SpaceShip 1
Government 0

 

Was their "solid rocket fuel" ground rubber? I didn't see the whole thing. What about heat of re-entry? Did he just glide the thing in slow?

 

I want to see the first program again. I missed the concept of the feather. I know it tilts and acts like a chute I guess, but that thing is "TUPPER WARE". (to use a rat rodder term)

All his planes look like praying mantis's. His thinking is no where near the box!!

 

The pilot was on Letterman last night.

Letterman asked why they built it in the desert. The pilot said if you ever spent any time in the Mojave desert, you'd know that you'd want to find quickest way out as soon as possible.

 

It's pretty cool that young kids will have something to see like this. Maybe it will give them the feeling they can do anything if they set their mind to it much like the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo missions did for us older guys.

 

The "rubber" rocket motor is really a neat innovation that is still being developed. Lots of thrust in a very small package. The propellant looks and feels very much like rubber. But, it's sort of creepy and clammy to the touch. One of the nice things about the propellant is it's completely inert until ignition!
Spaceship1 is wonderful, successful use of off the shelf technology! I hope they have many more successful and safe flights.

 

The best quote i heard was "How did they simulate the wieght of the 2 other passengers?" "they just measured the weight of the pilots jewels.."

 

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I would submit that the Rutan brothers are in good company with another set of brothers who lived about a hundred years ago.Just goes to show that,"cubic money does not a space program make."Backyard engineering at it's finest!

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I heard they spent $25 Million on this, that's cubic money in my book...

 

Absolutely outstanding, those guys and gals are space rodders for sure. The story of the pilot and his wife building a Ruttan kit plane, flying it to meet him in person and being hired on the spot is incredible and a testament to friendship born of ingenuity. The feather helps position the craft to create lots of drag and stability for reentry. Awsome and gave me goosebumps the entire programs!!!!!! I'll be gettin that series on DVD

 

I like how on his second run up, the one where he went the highest, his guidance computer started flickering on and off. The pilots only instructions were, keep your eyes on the computer. Don't look out the window because it will mess you up. So what did the man do when the computer malfunctioned? He said screw it and went full speed ahead. Now that's balls!!!

I like how he has the same mentality as most of us do. He was probably thinking..ah it will be alright. I'm going for it.

Too cool man.

monkey

 

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I like how on his second run up, the one where he went the highest, his guidance computer started flickering on and off. The pilots only instructions were, keep your eyes on the computer. Don't look out the window because it will mess you up. So what did the man do when the computer malfunctioned? He said screw it and went full speed ahead. Now that's balls!!!

I like how he has the same mentality as most of us do. He was probably thinking..ah it will be alright. I'm going for it.

Too cool man.

monkey

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That was awesome! Computer craps out, he just keeps going by looking out the windows! I would kill to fly one of those up there!

 

Most of the team were at Oshkosh this year and had been doing Fund raisers the past couple of years.

Got to meet Dick Rutan, Burt Rutan, also Jeana Yeager several times..., including the time before their plane (Voyager) flew around the world non-stop...!!!

Great people and great designers...!

It's funny that a Baloon flew around the world faster than their airplane...!

Get it up high enough and catch a Jetstream..., "What Fun"...!!! !

 

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I would submit that the Rutan brothers are in good company with another set of brothers who lived about a hundred years ago.Just goes to show that,"cubic money does not a space program make."Backyard engineering at it's finest!

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I heard they spent $25 Million on this, that's cubic money in my book...

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Definitely cubic money in OUR book;in NASA's book?Wouldn't be enough to purchase office supplies!And THAT'S the TRUTH!

 

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I heard they spent $25 Million on this, that's cubic money in my book...

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When you consider that NASAs 2004 budget of $15,378,000,000 is over $42 million A DAY, that doesn't seem quite so bad.

http://www1.nasa.gov/pdf/56694main_Op_Plan_12032004.pdf

Kudos to those guys! Very well done. And yes, SpaceShipOne will be considered a "traditional" spacerod for future generations. I don't think they'll copy that paint scheme though.

 

Watched it last night, I vote to give them the space contract and everyone else a huge tax cut. $25 Million, that is pocket change for the "Gubmint". Budget built and it works! Love it!

 

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I like how he has the same mentality as most of us do. He was probably thinking..ah it will be alright. I'm going for it.


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My crew had a motto of "Bene Erit. Quid Potest Ire Malus?" - which translates to: "It'll be alright. What could possibly go wrong?"

 

They have a video up on their site:

videos page

 

I was impressed with their conveyance to move the spaceship around on the ground.....they used a pickup truck.
Nasa uses this HUGE tracked vehicle that must have cost [us] more than the entire Spaceship 1 project cost.

 

I bet hte guys at NASA, Lockhead, And Boeing are goin "OH SHIT NOW WHAT DO WE DO" For sure spacerodders in my book. Can't wait for prcieline.com to give competitive rates for the trip up and back.

 

Richard Branson, the Virgin guy, says he wants to be able offer trips to space by 2007. $200,000 per ticket.

 

I am a serious admirer of everything Burt Rutan has ever done, this project included, but I think some folks are being a bit hasty in thinking that this is some sort of super cheap shot across NASA's bow and/or a finger in the eye of the big space oriented industrial concerns. The sucessful flights of Spaceship One are swell stunts but they are just that---stunts. The vehicle was designed specifically and very narrowly to win the X-Prize and for nothing else. Elegant and slick as it is the vehicle as designed will not be able to be merely scaled up or somehow made more powerful or fancier to do real work in near Earth orbit. It did not generate remotely enough speed for an actual orbit and it did not have to go through the heat of re-entry that any orbital vehicle must be designed to handle. And those are not mere "details" that can be adressed in an evolution of the design. They are in fact great big fat honking shortcomings in terms of getting a load carrying reusable vehicle in service instead of a publicity platform for Virgin Air.
The jump from Spaceship One to a practical private orbital vehicle is going to be really freakin' big. We're talking orders of magnitude here because an orbital vehicle will have to do a job that is wildly harder than Spaceship One has had to do.
Burt may well be the man for the job of building that vehicle and it may cost a pile less than a Space Shuttle but I'd be willing to bet it's going to take many hundreds of millions of dollars, at a minimum, to take the next giant step even without the stultifying drag of the NASA bureaucracy holding him back. In the space biz 25 million bucks really is chump change. It might buy you the world's most expensive carnival ride but that's about it. Going orbital will likely mean stacking up at least 9 zeros in back of a number just to be a serious player.
All that said I'd be first in line for Branson's thrill ride if I had that much scratch lying around loose.

 

yeah, paul allen was worth about 34 billion last i saw, and he likes to spend his money on far out things,seems comitted to doing what is needed , in all the tv and web stuff they, agree on all things needed and know what it takes for a orbital and reentry flight, we will just have to wait and see,fun ride even if it only gets you to the edge,