Private manned space plane unveiled

911SC Pilot · 04-18-2003, 03:04 PM

Fully-built spacecraft, launch system developed in secrecy

MOJAVE, Calif., April 18 — Aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveiled Friday a fully-built launch system that, if flights outside the atmosphere prove successful, would be the first private manned space program. Both the spacecraft, called SpaceShipOne, and its launch platform, a futuristic jet known as the White Knight, were developed and built in secret and have already begun tests at lower altitudes.

SOME OF THE BIGGEST names in space, including astronaut Buzz Aldrin, space tourist Dennis Tito and military officials, were on hand for Friday’s demonstration at the Mojave Airport, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

In its first public flight, the White Knight lifted steeply off the windswept tarmac, framed in the distance by dozens of mothballed commercial airliners. The jet easily handled steep climbs and turns in the blue desert sky before soaring up to about 9,000 feet and slowly spiraling down to a soft, extremely short landing more befitting a glider than what Rutan described as “our own B-52,” a reference to the bomber used to carry NASA’s X-15 demonstration vehicle to its launch altitude.

SpaceShipOne, the actual spacecraft, was not flown Friday, but its systems were demonstrated. While the release mechanism between the spacecraft and the White Knight has been tested on the ground, only the White Knight has been flight tested, beginning in August 2002.

However, one key element of Rutan’s plan was to build a launch plane that had the same aerodynamics and electronics as the spacecraft. His team of four test pilots cross-train on both and said flying the two crafts was very similar. More importantly, both the spacecraft and the launch plane have similar glide configurations, and Rutan’s team said the White Knight’s leisurely spiral of a landing maneuver was the exact same way SpaceShipOne would land.

COMPLETELY BUILT SYSTEM
Friday’s demonstration could be of profound significance to the goal of manned space flight, and for two reasons: It is a completely built system with all components in place to begin testing for space flights; and it was built entirely out from private funds.
Initial development tests on the program began in 1999 and when Rutan decided he could move ahead, he got funding and began full development, in secret, in April 2001. His goal, he said, was to put together a space program that focused on building the actual vehicles rather than concepts.

“There is nothing you will see today that is a mockup,” he told a crowd gathered in the hanger of his company, Scaled Composites. “I didn’t want to start the program until we knew that could happen.”

Rutan said his interest was in pushing forward the largely stagnant effort to build new manned platforms, and to give a kick in the pants to the space industry.

“I don’t care about the benefit,” Rutan said. “If I’m able to do it with this little company here … there’ll be a lot of other people who will say, ‘Yeah, I can do it too.’”

He did not immediately discuss the cost of the program or the source of the funding.

HOW IT WORKS
SpaceShipOne is launched in a process similar to the one used by NASA and Air Force test vehicles in the 1940s and 1950s: The spacecraft is carried by White Knight up to 50,000 feet and then it launches like an aircraft into a steep climb. It has manual stick-and-rudder controls for subsonic flight, as well as electric controls for supersonic flight and cold-gas thrusters for space flight. The thrusters are operational and were demonstrated Friday.

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