SpaceShipOne makes history as sponsor watches breaking the sound barrier
MOJAVE - As the man who is financing its test program watched, Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne made history on the anniversary of the first manned flight.
Pilot Brian Binnie was at the controls of the space vehicle when its rocket engine was fired for the first time December 17, almost exactly 100 years after the Wright Brothers first powered flight on Kill Devil Hill in North Carolina.
Watching along with a small crowd of spectators and Mojave Airport personnel was Paul Allen of Seattle, who joined forces with Scaled founder and SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan in 2001 to finance Scaled's effort to win the X-Prize and to expand research into space exploration.
'Awe-inspiring'
"Being able to watch today's successful test flight in person was really an overwhelming and awe-inspiring experience. I'm so proud to be able to support the work of Burt Rutan and his pioneering team at Scaled Composites," said Allen, whose investments include Charter Communications, which provides cable television services in Southeast Kern communities.
"Today's milestone and the SpaceShipOne project would never have been possible without Paul's tremendous support," Rutan said.
Rutan also noted that the historic flight was accomplished by a small company rather than the government and huge aerospace businesses.
"Our flight demonstrated that supersonic flight is now the domain of a small company doing privately-funded research, without government help," Rutan noted. "The flight also represents an important milestone in our efforts to demonstrate that truly low-cost space access is feasible."
Space for the rest of us
Rutan has been preaching the need for space innovation by small, independent entrepreneurs rather than its dominance by governments and huge conglomerates for years.
"In 1947, fifty-six years ago, history's first supersonic flight was flown by Chuck Yeager in the Bell X-1 rocket under a U.S. Government research program," Rutan noted. "Since then, many supersonic aircraft have been developed for research, military and, in the case of the recently retired Concorde, commercial applications. All these efforts were developed by large aerospace prime companies, using extensive government resources."
Rutan said that achieving last Wednesday's milestone of private supersonic flight was not an easy task.
"It involved the development of a new propulsion system, the first rocket motor developed for manned space flights in several decades. The new hybrid motor was developed in-house at Scaled with first firings in November 2002. The motor uses an ablative nozzle supplied by AAE and operating components supplied by SpaceDev. FunTech teamed with Scaled to develop a new Inertial Navigation flight director," he said.
Flight details
Rutan said Scaled's White Knight turbojet launch aircraft, flown by test pilot Peter Siebold, carried SpaceShipOne to 48,000 feet altitude near California City.
At 8:15 a.m., SpaceShipOne was released from White Knight and pilot Brian Binnie flew the ship to a stable, 0.55 mach gliding flight condition, started a pull-up, and fired its hybrid rocket motor. Nine seconds later, SpaceShipOne broke the sound barrier and continued its steep powered ascent. The climb was very aggressive, accelerating forward at more than 3-g while pulling upward at more than 2.5-g.
At motor shutdown, 15 seconds after ignition, SpaceShipOne was climbing at a 60-degree angle and flying near 1.2 Mach (930 mph). Binnie continued the maneuver to a vertical climb, achieving zero speed at an altitude of 68,000 feet. He then configured the ship in its high-drag "feathered" shape to simulate the condition it will experience when it enters the atmosphere after a space flight.
At apogee, SpaceShipOne was in near-weightless conditions, emulating the characteristics it will later encounter during the planned space flights in which it will be at zero-g for more than three minutes. After descending in feathered flight for about a minute, Binnie reconfigured the ship to its conventional glider shape and flew a 12-minute glide to landing at Mojave Airport. The landing was not without incident as the left landing gear retracted at touchdown causing the ship to veer to the left and leave the runway with its left wing down. Damage from the landing incident was minor and will easily be repaired. There were no injuries. Binnie is a veteran pilot who flew the Rotary Rocket Roton during flight tests at Mojave Airport several years ago.
More SpaceShipOne and Scaled Composites News
More California City News Events
California City Economic Development Corporation Homepage
Check out California City the best known secret in the High Desert!!!!!!!!