Forum: Civil and General Aviation

They did it.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123259,00.html

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Cool. I've been following this, saw the announcement earlier today.

I watched the televised stuff on MSNBC. Was rather boring overall, which is a good thing. The after action press brief was the most interesting, but I missed parts of that, work interfered.

There was some kind of BANG in flight and a panel near the nozzle was dented or somehow damaged, but otherwise apparently completely uneventful flight.

Weird to watch the pilot wave thru a port only big enough for his forearm after landing...

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Salute all!

Oh man, and the pilot was as old as Gums-breath! heh heh. Chalk one up for the folks that use 'score' for their birthday candles.

Apparently, a trim malfunction resulted in a 'vector change', read uncontrolled roll, that reduced upward vector and caused a 22 mile change in ground track. Pilot turned off the system and flew it manually rest of the way. Yes, ol' manual mode standard for Rutan's designs.

Sucker barely made the altitude - maybe by 400 feet or so( Edwards tracking gizmos are pretty accurate and they were tracking the plane). But what the hell. He's wearing astronaut wings and we ain't.

I suspect a another test flight or three before the X-prize attempt. Rutan is notorious about refining his designs, and the loss of trim at supersonic speeds is significant for the design he chose. No real trim tabs per se, but rather move the whole horizontal stab like Yeager had to do so long ago. Has to do with shockwaves, hinge moment limits and other aero stuff beyond scope of this discussion.

I luv it! And lots cheaper than even first sub-orbital shot by Sheppard in '61.

out,

Still amazed by the whole project. Awesome !

I want a ride Cool

! Gums - you willing to take the controls? What an awesome accomplishment by a great group of guys! As the news kept saying, a bunch of home builders in the middle of the southern California desert designed and built a manned spaceflight system for about five percent of the cost of a single shuttle mission. And it uses cables and pushrods like the Spirit of St. Louis and the Bell X-1. Great job to the entire team at Scaled Composites!!! Very Happy

Finally just saw the videos of it. Stunning. Great work by all. I liked the M&Ms floating around in the cockpit. ( crew chief will have to account for every one of those too Very Happy

) . Must have been a fun ride down. Shocked

Salute!

TNX for kind words Parrot-breath!!

While we are at it, Gums passes his old Viper helmet around for donations.....

GET GUMS TO ORBIT!!!!!!!!

Send your cash, check or money order to ...........(address TBD)

out,

Rutan strikes again... What a cool deal!

Just saw a report on CNN which said the altitude was 328,400 feet - 400 feet more than required. They also showed a representative of the FAA presenting him with Astronaut wings. Cool

NEVER release MnM's in the cockpit!!!

Other than that, good shot!!!

Cylon

Let's see now.....Build a privately funded suborbital vehicle in just over 3 years, give it expansion potential, design it for a quick turnaround rate (once a week?) and do it for just over $20 million. No way the gub-ment could do that. Hell...they'd still be doing feasability studies after 3 years!

Rutan and company do it again! THIS is what you get when enterprising Americans put their head and wallets together to accomplish a common goal!

And just howdahell does the pilot see outta either of those things? Confused

Quote:

And just howdahell does the pilot see outta either of those things?

I'm pretty sure the small multiple round windows are due to the composite construction technique used in these craft. No corners and no large voids makes for a stronger (and lighter) hull design. Load paths and all that... its a structural engineering thing (ask me how I know...)

Not to hijack this thread, but the smaller craft exceeded M3 right? How many manned planes have done that?

- X-15
- Blackbird series (A-12, YF-12, SR-71)
- XB-70
- Space Shuttle

Have any other manned winged craft exceeded M3? The info I found on MiG-25/31 claims M2.83 tops.

There was a MiG-25 clocked in excess of M3 over the mid-east. Engines destroyed on landing, but it can do it. Belenko confirms that it is possible for a single flight.

Back to the windows, one of the other reasons for the windows being as they are is they are aligned with attitudes for various portions of the flight. During climb one set of windows should have the horizon thru them, and during descent, a different set. Basically a sight-glass artificial horizon (er, real horizon...)

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Forum: Civil and General Aviation

Privately funded space flight mission accomplished!