SpaceShipOne launces tomorrow.....

[Dr Mordrid]

Rutan and his Scaled Composites crew are going for a 62 mile/100km high suborbital flight tomorrow morning at 6:30 am PDT/9:30 am EDT.

His team did a 40 mile high flight last month.

This historic flight is to be broadcast live on CNN, so set your VCR's kiddies

More info:

http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/062104.htm

Dr. Mordrid

[Jammrock]

DOC!!!! I haven't seen you on here in ages! Where you been?

[on topic]

Very very cool! Maybe before I die they'll have gotten this space thing down enough for me to take a tip into orbit.

Jammrock

[K6-III]

I'm flying out to Mojave to watch the launch live!

I should be leaving within the hour...

[Dr Mordrid]

Go to the Digital Video forum and check my "I'm back" post for the particulars of my absense if it's of interest. Personally I want a refund on the last 6 months of my life

Dr. Mordrid

[Marshmallowman]

Welcome back Doc,

They are only sending up a a pilot, so its not an "x prize" run , but its still pretty good anyway

[SpiralDragon]

WB Doc.. ..

this should be fun to watch... hope my cable dosent conk out on me again..

[VJ]

Is there a website where the launch can be followed for free ?
(live video stream, radio-transmission, regular pictures, anything?)


Jörg

[Rob(QG)]

Looks like the BBC will be doing a live stream of it.
Due to start at 13:30 GMT/14:30 BST - ie in about 30 minutes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/live/now1.ram

[VJ]

Cool!
Thanks!


Jörg

[Dilitante1]

so far so good 8P

[VJ]

If I understood correctly, they are climbing for almost 25 minutes (started my stopwatch ) at 1000 ft/min. They have to climb to over 40.000 feet, before launching SpaceShip One... so approx halfway there...


Jörg

[MultimediaMan]

They did IT!

[VJ]

Rats, you beat me to it! (I'm talking about the post )
WOOHOO!

Congrats Rutan! Congrats Scaled Composites!
(probably a slim chance he'll read it, but what the hey )



Jörg

[Greebe]

Melville stated he'd hit 330,000 feet which is golden.

Sadly the BBC sent a wibbly cameraman and crap camera equipment. What a waste of footage

[Rob(QG)]

Originally posted by Greebe
Sadly the BBC sent a wibbly cameraman and crap camera equipment. What a waste of footage

Yeah - the footage, by the time I got it running, was atrocious. Alternated between patches of sky, occasional white blob, lens flare, and just still shots of the runway.
Sound levels were screwed, too, with the radio chatter being extremely loud (and mostly unintelligible) compared to the commentary.

I missed the launch cos I didn't realise my slightly older version of realplayer wouldn't handle the stream.
Also missed the landing as I was called out the office.

Downloaded Media Player 9 to see if MSN's coverage was better - damn thing wouldn't show the picture and stuck loading the ads beforehand.

Still and all - it was still an impressive achievement, and good luck to them with the X-Prize attempt.