SS1's X-PRIZE + 5 years

[Dr Mordrid]

Today, Oct 4th, is the 5th anniversary of SpaceShipOne winning the $10 million Ansari X-PRIZE - the first privately funded spacecraft to reach space twice within a span of 2 weeks. No other team even did it once. Now she has an honored place in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum next to the Spirit of St. Louis and the Bell X-1.

She has since spawned a whole generation of suborbital spacecraft that will not only provide joy-rides but be used by governments and companies for low cost microgravity and atmospheric research, especially into the region between 40 and 120 kilometers now known as the "ignorosphere" - too high for balloons and aircraft to study, but too low for orbital spacecraft. (see the Suborbital Research thread)

Hats off to Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites for a job well done, which continues with SpaceShipTwo. And if you ever have the chance watch the Peabody Award winning documentary "Black Sky" about their effort. Cool....

PS: no one could ever accuse Rutan and Scaled of building ordinary-looking air and space craft. Rutan has 4 aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum: SpaceShipOne, Voyager (first non-stop, un-refueled flight around the world), the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer (first solo around the world un-refueled), and the VariEze (pioneered composite construction and was the first to use the NASA developed winglets - the upturned bit on the tip of a wing).

[Evildead666]

Wow, its been 5 years already ?

SS2 still has to do its first spaceflight yet, no ?
Its done testing etc, but not actually done a spaceflight yet ?

Looks great tho

[Dr Mordrid]

That fuel tank explosion before an engine test slowed the program by 2 years, but they've got that set now and things are moving along. Scaled contracted the engine out to SpaceDev who has more experience with hybrid rocket engines.

WhiteKnightTwo has been flying almost a year now and does so brilliantly by all accounts. She has a max ceiling of 60,000+ feet and a carry capacity >30% greater than SS2 weighs fully loaded, so they'll make more bux doing launches of a light orbital launch vehicle for small satellites similar to Orbital's Pegasus. Captive carry tests of SS2 start in a few weeks with drop tests and powered flights to follow over the next year.

The first WK2 is named "Eve" after Sir Richard Branson's mother. The first SS2 is named "Enterprise". The second SS2 is rumored to be named "Voyager".

Just for the record: the wing on WK2 uses a single wing spar 141 feet long, making it the largest single carbon composite structure on any aircraft. The aeronautical community is falling all over themselves to license Scaled's technology, which will make for more advanced aircraft than even WK2.

Some people are now making comparisons between Hugo Junkers, who developed all-metal planes, and Rutan, who invented the composite plane, saying they're the 1-2 punch of aeronautical innovation for the last 100 years. Hard to disagree.