Category Space Ship One

Gliding to Mojave

With the wings returned to the normal flight configuration, SpaceShipOne became a glider. The hard part was certainly over, and the pilot had time to take a breath and take in the view again. But his work was not completely over. Figure 3.17 shows SpaceShipOne gliding over the high desert of Mojave.

If SpaceShipOne was off course during the boost phase, it could be far away from where it needed to land. However, the spacecraft had a glide ratio of seven to one. So, SpaceShipOne had glide range of about 60 miles (97 kilometers) after it defeathered. “It’s got an awful lot of capability to deal with poor trajectory,” Doug Shane said.

The pilot also had to resolve a technical glitch with the global positioning system (GPS) receiver. It would drop out or lose its way during spaceflights. “The GPS receiver was never previously tested in that high and in that fast of a flight regime,” Pete Siebold said. “And so it had software difficulties of its own. The GPS receiver was some­thing you buy from a company off the shelf. It just didn’t perform the way it was supposed to.”

In one of the spaceflights, the GPS receiver reset by itself, but for the other two, the pilot had to reset it.

“So, we had to do a power cycle. The avionics go away while it is booting back up, and then it does a realignment of the inertial navi­gation system once it powers up again. But we could live with that fault. We had workarounds,” Siebold said.

The spaceship glided down for 10—15 minutes and was much lighter now that the oxidizer and fuel were burned off. SpaceShipOne was not able to land safely with a full load of oxygen and fuel. The extra weight changed the balance, and it was just too heavy for the landing gear to take. So, for an abort, it would have to dump all the nitrous oxide, but it still had to manage with the remaining mass of rubber.

Although SpaceShipOne did a good job gliding down and getting close to the airport, it did not have all the controls or responsiveness of a typical glider, so its maneuvering when it came to landing was limited. Early in the program, a few landing attempts were almost too short or too long for the runway.

Pete Siebold and Brian Binnie modified the landing technique, allowing SpaceShipOne to easily compensate for coming in too high or too low. “We would fly at 8,500 feet [2,590 meters] above sea level above our touchdown point,” Siebold said. “And we had a 360-degree turn to make back to that point again, and then we would be lined up for the final touchdown on the runway. The original technique allowed you to vary the radius of that turn. If you were too low, you could decrease the radius, and your circumference was your flight path. And if you were too low, you could make up for being low on energy by flying that tight radius. Or you could widen it out.

“We also had one last-ditch effort to make any adjustments, and that was to put the landing gear down. When the landing gear was up,

Подпись: лGliding to MojaveҐ

Fig. 3.18. Landing proved to be a bigger challenge than anyone had anticipated. There was only one shot at it. SpaceShipOne had to come in at the right altitude and speed or it risked overshooting or undershooting the runway. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, video capture provided courtesy of Discovery Channel and Vulcan Productions, Inc.

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Gliding to MojaveFig. 3.19. Once SpaceShipOne touched down, steering was very limited. The nose skid and the rear landing gear’s brakes brought the craft to a quick stop, but since it was unpowered, it needed some help to get off the runway. This photograph shows Sir Richard Branson, Paul Allen, and Burt Rutan (left to right) sitting on the tailgate with SpaceShipOne under tow. Dan Linehan

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it was a seven-to-one glide ratio. With the landing gear down, it was a four-to-one glide ratio. The problem was that once you put it down, you couldn’t put it back up. So, you had to be sure that you had sufficient elevation to make the runway.”

SpaceShipOne would spiral in for a landing while reaching key alti­tude points that were provided by the TONU. An energy predictor similar to what was used during boost showed the pilot where SpaceShipOne would be at the key altitudes based on the current turn and descent rates. The pilot would then adjust his speed and turn so that SpaceShipOne would end up at the place it needed to be.

“After we developed that and utilized it, we landed to within 500 feet [150 meters] of a given touchdown point on every subsequent flight. That was real rewarding,” Siebold said.

SpaceShipOne approached the runway at an airspeed of 140 knots indicated airspeed. But in order to put its gear down, it had to perform a special maneuver. “There were other peculiarities with the gear sys­tem,” Siebold explained. “You couldn’t put it out at your normal approach speed. So, the speed at which you flew the pattern was too fast to put the gear out and too fast to land. So, what you had to do was in your turn from base to final, you actually had to pull the nose up, slow the airplane down, put the gear out, dump the nose, with gear extension at 125 knots, and then speed back up to 140 knots.” Figure 3.18 shows SpaceShipOne gliding down to the runway at Mojave Airport.

The pilot had one last challenge to face. As it turned out, it was one that Charles Lindbergh faced seventy-seven years previously in

Gliding to Mojave

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Fig. 3.21. The North American X-15 was the only other manned, winged suborbital vehicle. SpaceShipOne shared some similarities with it, but trajectory was not one of them. The high-altitude and high-speed mission trajectories of the X-15 are shown in comparison to the SpaceShipOne trajectory. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, provided courtesy of Scaled Composites

Gliding to Mojave
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Fig. 3.20. The X-15 had enough fuel to power its rocket engine for about 2 minutes, so it required a B-52 to lift it to launch altitude. The X-15 flew from 1959 to 1968, posting a top speed of Mach 6.70, or 4,520 miles per hour (7,270 kilometers per hour), and a maximum altitude of 354,200 feet

(108,000 meters) on separate flights. NASA-Dryden Flight Research Center

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Table 3.2 SpaceShipOne’s and X-15 Suborbital Mission Comparison

Подпись: SpaceShipOne Altitude and view 1 3 6 2:07:26 3 White Knight carrier aircraft 47,000 feet (14,330 meters) Hybrid Nitrous oxide and rubber 84 seconds Nearly vertical Mach 3.25 (on reentry) 367,500 feet (112,000 meters) 3.5 minutes "Carefree" (60-degree angle of attack) 80 psf (160 KEAS) 140 KIAS** 105-110 KIAS Runway 0 0

Program goals

Number of vehicles in program Crew capacity

Number of rocket-powered flights

Combined time of rocket-powered flights (hours:minutes:seconds)

Number of flights above 100 kilometers (62.1 miles/328,000 feet)

1 st stage

Separation altitude Engine type Oxidizer and fuel Maximum engine burn time Trajectory for boost and reentry Maximum airspeed Maximum altitude Weightless time Reentry method Reentry max q Approach airspeed Touchdown airspeed Landing surface

Number of vehicles lost during flight testing Number of fatalities during flight testing

X-15

High speed and altitude 3 1

199*

30:13:49*

2

NASA B-52 carrier aircraft

45.0 feet (13,720 meters)

Liquid

Liquid oxygen and anhydrous ammonia 141 seconds (high-speed mission)

Approximately 40 degrees (high-altitude mission) Mach 6.70

354,200 feet (108,000 meters)

3.5 minutes

Pilot controlled pull-up

1.0 psf (550 KEAS)

270 KEAS

180 KEAS Lake bed 1 1

*ln two of these flights, the rocket-engines were not ignited. One was a planned glide flight while the rocket-engines failed to ignite for the other. **Knots indicated airspeed

Gliding to Mojave

 

the Spirit of St. Louis, which had no front windshield. “The visibility out of SpaceShipOne is pretty restricted, and you got these really small windows, and there is no window in front,” Melvill said. “So, when you are lined up with the runway, you can’t see the runway. With a normal airplane, you can look out the front and see the runway.

“This one, the windows were on the sides, and as long as you were turning toward the runway, you could see it through the side win­dow. But as soon as you lined up with the centerline, you couldn’t see it anymore. The whole airport disappeared. So, that was a little bit
disconcerting I think for all of us. That’s why we had a chase plane sit­ting right on the wing calling out how high we were above the ground and basically keeping us straight as well.”

At 100 to 110 knots equivalent airspeed, the main landing gear at the rear hit first, and then the nose skid followed. There was no real way to steer once it touched down. The wooden tip of the nose skid brought it to a smooth, but slightly smoky, stop in front of an ecstatic crowd. Figure 3.19 shows SpaceShipOne being towed from the runway accompanied by Paul Allen, Burt Rutan, and Sir Richard Branson.

Paul Allen

Up to this point, design and development had been relegated to computer analysis and foam models. Burt Rutan hadn’t been ready to approach anyone for funding until he felt ready that he could deliver what he’d promised. Figure 1.12 shows Rutan and aerodynamicist Jim Tighe during early computer analysis.

For the design of SpaceShipOne and White Knight, Scaled Composites would rely heavily on computer analysis because the vehicles would not go through wind-tunnel testing. Figure 1.13 shows an evaluation of SpaceShipOne as the tail booms bend downward.

Around this time, Rutan and philanthropist Paul Allen, who cofounded Microsoft in 1975 with his high school friend Bill Gates, had begun exploring the possibility of using high-altitude airplanes circling over Fos Angeles as a way to provide broadband wireless to the city. “My first couple of meetings with Paul were not about space at all,” recalled Rutan. “There was an interest that he had in something else I was doing. It was related to Proteus for telecommu­nications.” They eventually got around to talking about space, and Rutan’s idea for a very low-cost suborbital spacecraft. Allen turned out to be a bit of a space enthusiast and became quite interested. But Rutan was still not comfortable with his design, which was still based upon a capsule and parachutes at the time.

Once fiber optics took off, using an airborne telecommunications platform was no longer feasible, but Rutan hadn’t stopped thinking about the spaceship. “I figured out the ‘carefree’ reentry, and I thought I could have something that could land as a glider, be more operable, and a lot safer. I didn’t know that ‘carefree’ reentry would work. I just had a good feeling about it.”

In the spring of 2000, Rutan felt he was ready for funding. “I actually asked for a meeting with Paul. And I said, ‘Fisten, I think

Paul Allen

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Fig. 1.5. The first engineer that Burt Rutan hired at Scaled Composites,

Doug Shane, was responsible for the flight testing of SpaceShipOne and White Knight. During the flight tests, Shane’s was the cool, calm voice on the Mission Control side of the radio. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by David M. Moore

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Fig 1.6. Before the design of SpaceShipOne was conceived, Burt Rutan developed a concept for a single-seat rocket to be launched into space off of Proteus, a high-altitude research aircraft.

Fig. 1.7. As Proteus reached launch altitude, it would perform a zoom maneuver by pointing up at a steep angle to assist the trajectory of the rocket on its suborbital flight. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, provided courtesy of Scaled Composites

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I could do this now.’ And he put out his hand and shook it and said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Like many kids growing up in the late 1950s and 1960s, Allen remembered the television cart being wheeled into his classroom to watch Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launches. Science and technology had fascinated him whether he was building model rockets or reading science fiction. “I always had in the back of my mind, would I ever have the opportunity to do something in a space-related initiative?” Allen recalled. “And so when the SpaceShipOne opportunity came up, I was very excited to pursue it.”

Paul Allen’s company, Vulcan, Inc., and Scaled Composites began a partnership called Mojave Aerospace Ventures. Although Allen and Rutan were aware at the time of the creation of the X Prize by Peter

Diamandis, their initial goal, however, was getting to space and not necessarily winning the X Prize.

“None of these meetings were about the X Prize,” Rutan said. “People think we did the program for the X Prize. But keep in mind, the X Prize wasn’t even funded until halfway through our program. And, in fact, I had an opinion that Peter Diamandis would never get the funds for it. So, we had written him off.”

By the time the partnership was finalized a few months into 2001 and Allen provided the funding to Rutan, winning the X Prize had also become a goal of Mojave Aerospace Ventures. “There were two ways for me to recoup my investment,” Allen said. “One was the winning of the X Prize, and one was the licensing we’d be able to achieve with a company like Virgin Galactic. Those were the possible

Подпись: Early ConfigurationPaul AllenҐ ^

Fig. 1.8. After completing the boost, the capsule separated from the booster. It is here where Burt Rutan first applied the idea of a feathered,

"carefree" reentry. Small arms pointing upward from the capsule would safely decelerate and steady the capsule during reentry. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, provided courtesy of Scaled Composites

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Paul AllenFig. 1.9. Because of Burt Rutan’s decades of experience designing aircraft, he decided to abandon the idea of a rocket and parachutes.

His next designs focused on winged aircraft that could make horizontal landings on a runway.

Fig. 1.10. Still called a feather, early winged designs used large spoilers and elevons for reentry. Below the speed of sound this configuration worked. However, reentry occurred above Mach 1, and these configurations could not be controlled. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, provided courtesy of Scaled Composites

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future mechanism of payment back when we were evaluating all this stuff. You didn’t necessarily assume you were going to win. And you didn’t know what the other competition was like.”

Now things started to move full speed ahead.

Between Spaceflights

Preparing SpaceShipOne for its next spaceflight was a relatively simple task that required only minimal maintenance. The spent compo­nents of the rocket engine were replaced with fully fueled components, and the oxidizer tank was refilled. The air bottles used to activate the feather and run the reaction-control system and other systems had to be recharged. The ablative coating for the thermal protec­tion system was restored. And since every flight was an envelope expansion, theTONU was updated after a thorough review of the flight data.

X-15 Comparison

The North American X-15 was the first of three winged vehicles ever to have reached space, the Space Shuttle and SpaceShipOne being the other two. The basic mission profile was similar for these vehicles in that they all used two stages to reach space and glided back to Earth for an unpowered landing. However, the X-15 and SpaceShipOne shared much more in common compared to the Space Shuttle, which was a fully operational spacecraft designed to transport large payloads back and forth from orbit, whereas the other two were research and proof-of-concept vehicles that only reached suborbital altitudes.

Originally conceived in 1954, the X-15 first flew in 1959 and flew the last time in 1968. Its two primary goals were to fly at Mach 6— hypersonic speeds begin at Mach 5—and reach an altitude of 250,000 feet (76,200 meters). The X-15’s 199 powered flights directly influ­enced the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle space programs as well as the U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft.

Table 3.2 shows a comparison between the X-15 and SpaceShipOne.

To conserve fuel, the X-15 was dropped from the wing of a NASA B-52 carrier aircraft at an altitude of 45,000 feet (13,720 meters), as shown in figure 3.20. For its high-altitude mission, the rocket engine burned for up to 2 minutes, and then the X-15 returned from space and glided in for a landing.

This trajectory flown by the X-15 was, however, quite a bit differ­ent from that flown by SpaceShipOne. Figure 3.21 shows the trajecto­ry flown by SpaceShipOne and compares it with both the high-speed and high-altitude trajectories of the X-15.

The most apparent difference was in the profile width of the X-15 high-altitude mission and the SpaceShipOne mission. The X-15 had to cover 331 miles (533 kilometers) in order to reach an apogee above 62.1 miles (100 kilometers), whereas SpaceShipOne only needed 40 miles (64 kilometers) to accomplish the same feat.

Both had the same amount of weightless time and view, but the X-15 traveled much faster to achieve this. The higher speeds meant greater aerodynamic loads and thermal protection require­ments. But the most important difference was that the X-15 had to expend much more energy to reach the same altitude. The greater the energy needed to get from point A to point B, the more expensive it is to fly.

Primarily constructed of lightweight, high-strength titanium, it had skin of Inconel X, a chrome-nickel alloy that would withstand temperature as high as 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. The black coating helped dissipate heat, and it was necessary to design gaps into the fuselage to allow for temperature expansion, which was a feature carried over to the SR-71.

A liquid oxygen oxidizer and an anhydrous ammonia fuel powered the liquid rocket engines, providing a thrust of 28,000—57,000 pounds-force (125,000—254,000 newtons). A reaction-control system that used hydrogen peroxide thrusters on the nose and wings allowed the X-15 to maneuver outside the atmosphere.

Another similarity was the landing gear. To reduce weight and simplify the design, the X-15 used two landing skids at the rear of the vehicle, compared to the single skid at the nose used by SpaceShipOne.

On August 22, 1963, the X-15 set an altitude record of 354,200 feet (108,000 meters). Four years later, on October 3, 1967, a high­ly modified version renamed the X-15A-2 set a speed record of Mach 6.70, or 4,520 miles per hour (7,270 kilometers per hour). The entire aircraft had to be covered in a white ablative coating to increase the thermal protection of the skin up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This was a peak speed, and the X-15 could only run its engine for about two minutes. However, if this speed could be maintained, it would be possible to travel the distance from New York City to Fos Angeles in just over a half an hour.

Although it was a tremendously successful program, four major accidents occurred. One of them claimed the life of test pilot Michael Adams due to a control-system failure during reentry. This accident and the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, also occurring during reentry, were key influences that drove Rutan to develop the “carefree” feather reentry.

Although White Knight began flying about a year before SpaceShipOne, construction of both vehicles began at about the same time. High strength, lightweight composites of carbon fiber/epoxy were used to build the primary structure of both vehicles. Tyson V. Rininger

Tier One

Burt Rutan does not release much information about a newest aircraft while it’s under development. In fact, it is usually not until the aircraft is ready to fly that people finally get a glimpse of his newest project. The in-house name of their secret space program was Tier One. This name wasn’t uncommon to Scaled Composites. Rutan used “tier one,” “tier two,” and “tier three” to designate what he described as the “fun factor” of a program. When tier-one programs came around, the company would always bid on them, since they were highly motivational programs for his employees, which helped him retain his skilled staff while being out in the middle of a great big desert. Scaled Composites normally used the aircraft’s name as the in-house program name. But this program of course had two vehicles.

“I was making a point to my employees that this was going to be the most fun program that we’ve ever done and the most important one for us to do,” Rutan said.

“That was the original reason behind calling the SpaceShipOne program Tier One. Later on when we started to entertain if we should do other manned spacecraft, I just had a feeling that I should make a category for different basic areas of manned spacecraft. Because it seemed like a good breakdown, I defined that if we do programs in the future that send people to Earth orbit, it would be called Tier Two. If we do things that send people outside of Earth orbit to other heavenly bodies like the Moon and Mars, it would be called Tier Three.”

The spacecraft and the carrier aircraft needed names, too. The spacecraft was Rutan’s Model 316, and the carrier aircraft was Model 318. “Those I assign when I first look at the requirements and
have the first idea of what would be the configuration solution. Those model numbers were assigned years before we had a funded program for building.”

Tier One

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Fig. 1.11. The feather mechanism, the most innovative feature of SpaceShipOne, allowed the rear half of the wings and the tail booms to fold upward, which prevented dangerous heat buildup upon reentry but enabled a very stable descent. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, provided courtesy of Scaled Composites

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Tier OneПодпись:г

Fig. 1.12. Since wind-tunnel testing was not part of the design and development of SpaceShipOne because of the large expense, Scaled Composites used a computer method called computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to model the aerodynamics. The photograph shows designer Burt Rutan and aerodynamicist Jim Tighe reviewing a computer analysis of SpaceShipOne. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composites

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Подпись: C-JWSet Mod» 1,(852378 H; TctslT«rel»*n CcrtoJ Tefal Tijruijrcr. Подпись:

SpaceShipTwo and its launch aircraft are Models 339 and 348, respectively.

Rutan added, “We’ve only flown thirty-nine manned airplanes. Most of the concepts don’t get funded and developed.”

One example of this is Model 317. This was the design that squeaked between theTier One spacecraft and its mothership. A new – concept vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) light aircraft, the tail-sit­ter would take off like a helicopter but fly conventionally.

White Knight was named by Cory Bird, an employee of Scaled Composites who also flew as a flight engineer in the carrier aircraft on several of the test flights. Bird had made a drawing of a knight in white armor, which Rutan thought was very clever. The drawing ended up being the insignia for White Knight, too.

And although Rutan names very few of his airplanes, the spacecraft was an exception. “I wanted to make a point that other manned systems that carried people into space tended to be capsules or spacecraft. But if you read fantasy that kids do, it’s always a spaceship. And I thought this is interesting in that there has been a lot of manned spacecraft, capsules, and vehicles, and all these boring names. I felt that this might be the first thing that flies people into space, that you have the moxie to call it a spaceship.”

So, since he considered it the first spaceship, he mixed the words around with numbers. “And I thought, I don’t have any problem

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Fig. 1.13. By using computer analysis, Scaled Composites was able to evaluate the aerodynamic characteristics of SpaceShipOne even before construction got started. However, it was still necessary to test SpaceShipOne in flight to get the complete picture. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, provided courtesy of Scaled Composites

V_____________________________ ) calling this SpaceShipOne because I want to build a SpaceShipTwo, and I want to build a SpaceShipThree.”

Figure 1.14 shows SpaceShipOne mated up to White Knight before the public unveiling and even before paint schemes were added.

In order to be able to fly, though, SpaceShipOne and White Knight each needed a tail number, which is unique identification that every aircraft has similar to a car’s license plate, and had to be registered with the FA A. SpaceShipOne was given N328KF, which stood for

328,0 feet, the boundary line between Earth’s atmosphere and space, while White Knight was given N318SL, where the 318 model number and the SL stood for spaceship launcher.

“We didn’t get our first choices on that,” Rutan said. “For example, I wasn’t particularly enamored by 328KF. I would have rather had 100KM, 100 kilometers. But it was taken.”

Along with the tail number, the type of aircraft had to be identi­fied to the FA A. White Knight was pretty straightforward, but SpaceShipOne wasn’t so clear cut. The FA A felt that commercial launch licensing was required for SpaceShipOne. This was a somewhat long and drawn-out process. So as not to delay flight testing, Scaled Composites initially registered SpaceShipOne as a glider. This made perfect sense because about half the time during a spaceflight SpaceShipOne was a glider. But more importantly, the initial flight test­ing would be done without a rocket engine. So, by calling it a glider first, Scaled Composites was able to buy some time before having to get their commercial launch license, even though Rutan had no intention of using SpaceShipOne commercially.

“When I was out in Mojave for the first-time flight of the X Prize that Mike Melvill flew, it was the first time I had a chance to spend some time with Burt’s design team,” Poberezny said. “And what was striking was the intelligence that he recruited, the youth and the motivation. In other words, they were hungry and they were motivated to be successful and to make a difference. So, I give Burt a lot of credit. When he saw talent, he brought them in.”

Tier OneПодпись: Wingspan: Wing area: Fuselage diameter: Gross weight: Crew capacity: Crew compartment: Engines: Thrust: Fuel: Fuel capacity: Payload capacity: Ceiling: v г

Fig. 1.14. Shown before their paint schemes were added, SpaceShipOne and White Knight share virtually identical cockpits and instruments. But where White Knight has jet-engine controls, SpaceShipOne has rocket-engine controls. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composites

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Rutan gave direction and vision to his staff but still allowed them to exercise their own strengths and abilities. And Rutan would depend on the contributions of the entire team at Scaled Composites to get SpaceShipOne into space.

On April 18, 2003, slightly more than two years after receiving Paul Allen’s backing, Rutan was ready to go public. SpaceShipOne could no longer be hidden away in Scaled Composites’ hangar. All the compo­nents ofTier One were in place, and SpaceShipOne was ready for flight testing. Figure 1.15 shows SpaceShipOne after the curtain dropped.

White Knight had been flying since August 2002. It was strange enough looking, yet similar enough to the way-out look of Proteus that Scaled Composites didn’t worry too much about it occasionally being spotted ahead of time. Both these aircraft have been widely described as looking like giant prehistoric insects or spaceships from Star Trek.

It would be a full month, though, before SpaceShipOne would take to the air for the first time. However, Rutan had a surprise in store for his guests at the coming-out party. He had White Knight do fly-bys for everyone gathered at the flightline in front of the Scaled Composites hangar. Figure 1.16 shows Proteus, the original spaceship launcher, and White Knight, the new spaceship launcher, flying together, and table 1.1 gives the specifications for White Knight.

Aside from the two vehicles, the other important Tier One compo­nents were revealed, refer to figure 1.17.The test stand trailer (TST) was a partial mockup of SpaceShipOne used to develop the rocket engine. A tanker truck called the mobile nitrous oxide delivery system (MONODS) supplied the nitrous oxide (N20) to the oxidizer tank on the TST and in SpaceShipOne. And the Scaled Composites unit mobile (SCUM) truck was used for ground control, providing

Table 1.1 White Knight Specifications 82 feet (25 meters)

468 square feet (43.5 square meters)

60 inches (152 centimeters) for maximum outer diameter

19.0 pounds (8,620 kilograms) at takeoff with SpaceShipOne

one pilot (front seat) and two passengers (back seat) "short-sleeved" pressurized cabin two J-85-GE-5 turbojets with afterburners 7,700 pounds-force (34,000 newtons)

JP-1

6,400 pounds (2,900 kilograms)

8,000-9,000 pounds (3,630-4,080 kilograms)

53.0 feet (16,150 meters)

Tier One

Подпись: ґ Л Fig. 1.15. On April 18, 2003, ten years after Burt Rutan had started to sketch-out designs for a spaceship, the curtain dropped to give the public its very first view of SpaceShipOne. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by David M. Moore V J

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Tier One

Tier One

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Fig. 1.16. Proteus, flying below White Knight, first took flight in 1998 and was originally planned as the carrier aircraft for a single-person rocket. As the spacecraft design evolved into SpaceShipOne, the larger White Knight was required. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composites

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a telemetry link with the TST during rocket-engine testing or SpaceShipOne during a flight.

The last component, shown in figure 1.18, was the flight simulator, which Scaled Composites specially designed for Tier One. It was the first flight simulator Scaled Composites ever built and used for one of their aircraft.

Having a sponsor instead of a customer, building with a robust design approach, performing incremental testing, incorporating as many similarities between SpaceShipOne and White Knight as possible, and conducting extensive pilot training in the flight simulator, White Knight, and Extra 300 aerobatic plane would all prove key factors upon which the success of Tier One would depend.

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Fig. 1.17. Tier One, the space program of Scaled Composites, comprised SpaceShipOne, the spacecraft; White Knight, the carrier aircraft; test stand trailer (TST), the rocket-engine testing platform; mobile nitrous oxide delivery system (MONODS), the nitrous oxide (N20) supply tanker; and Scaled Composites unit mobile (SCUM) truck, a ground-control station. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composites

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Tier One

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Fig. 1.18. Jeff Johnson, project manager for Mojave Aerospace Ventures, sits at the simulator control desk and monitors the progress of a simulation. One of the most critical components of Tier One was the flight-training simulator. Primarily designed by Pete Siebold, it allowed the test pilots to practice and refine the techniques required to fly the challenging trajectory of SpaceShipOne. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by David M. Moore

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Tier One

On November 22, 2001, Steve Bennett’s Starchaser team, based in the United Kingdom, became the first competitor to launch a vehicle while displaying an X Prize logo. The single-person Nova capsule, unmanned at the time, rode atop the Starchaser 4 booster. The rocket reached a height of 5,541 feet (1,689 meters). Courtesy of Starchaser Industries

SpaceShipOne Construction

A

t the front of SpaceShipOne’s stout fuselage, many small portholes take the place of a conventional canopy or windshield, giving the vehicle its truly far-out look. As shown in the views in figure 4.1 and figure 4.2, the twin tail booms are another of the spaceship’s most distinguishing features. In terms of function, however, SpaceShipOne’s feather mechanism is unique among all aircraft and spacecraft. The forward half of each wing is fixed, but the rear halves, including the tail booms, fold upward for reentry.

The appearance of SpaceShipOne bears resemblance to aspects of several pioneering rocketcraft. The bullet-shaped fuselage appears very similar in shape to the Bell X-1, shown in figure 4.3. However, the X-l itself shares a common shape with the V-2 rocket, which was initially modeled after a rifle bullet. The use of a delta wing and stabilizers at the wingtips is also reminiscent of NASA’s early lifting bodies, as shown in figure 4.4.

Burt Rutan’s innovative use of composites took shape in the 1970s when he built his second aircraft, theVariEze. Now with SpaceShipOne, an aircraft so radically different in function, purpose, and performance, Rutan and the Scaled Composites team had to tap deep into their expertise. And when this wasn’t sufficient, they had to risk taking a leap. Their decades of experience with the manufactur­ing of strong, lightweight composite aircraft would be tested to the limits, because so much of the design and construction was brand-new territory. So how does one go about building a spaceship? This is a question that wouldn’t have

SpaceShipOne ConstructionSpaceShipOne Construction

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Fig. 4.1. Among SpaceShipOne’s most distinct features are the round windows on its bullet-shaped nose, the outboard tail booms at the wingtips, and the thick, swept-back wings mounted high on the fuselage. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composites

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Fig. 4.2. At a length of 28 feet (8.5 meters), SpaceShipOne is shorter

than the Bell X-1, the very first X-plane. However, the width of SpaceShipOne, the distance between the tips of the horizontal stabilizers on the tail booms, is 27 feet (8.2 meters), which is comparable in size to the wingspan of the X-1. Mojave Aerospace Ventures LLC, photograph by Scaled Composites

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SpaceShipOne ConstructionFig. 4.3. Parked in front of the B-29 mothership, the X-1 was built by Bell Aircraft Corporation for the U. S. Army Air Forces and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessors of the U. S. Air Force and NASA, respectively. The X-1 ‘s revolutionary use of structures and pioneering aerodynamic shapes and controls enabled Chuck Yeager to become the first to break the sound barrier, flying faster than Mach 1. NASA-Dryden Flight Research Center

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SpaceShipOne ConstructionFig. 4.4. Known as lifting bodies because they were considered wingless, the rocket-powered X-24A, M2-F3, and HL-10 (left to right) dropped from a B-52 to explore the possibility of returning from space in an unpowered glide. Up until then, spacecraft had only returned from space using parachutes, and the data obtained by these vehicles helped pave the way for the Space Shuttle. NASA-Dryden Flight Research Center

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Table 4.1 Size Comparisons for Rocketcraft

SpaceShipOnea

X-1

X-15b

Space Shuttle

Length

28 feet

30.9 feet

51 feet

122.2 feet

(8.5 meters)

(9.4 meters)

(15.5 meters)

(37.2 meters)

Wingspan

16.4 feet

28 feet

22 feet

78.1 feet

(5.0 meters)c

(8.5 meters)

(6.7 meters)

(23.8 meters)

Height

8.8 feet

10.8 feet

13 feet

56.6 feet

(2.7 meters)

(3.3 meters)

(4.0 meters)

(17.3 meters)

Weightd

7,937 pounds

12,250 pounds

38,000 pounds

242,000 pounds

(3,600 kilograms)

(5,557 kilograms)

(17,237 kilograms)

(110,000 kilograms)

a: For last spaceflight of SpaceShipOne. b: For modified X-15A-2 without drop tanks.

c: SpaceShipOne’s width of 27 feet (8.2 meters) is its widest dimension.

d: Gross weights are given except for the Space Shuttle, which is given for landing weight.

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an answer until SpaceShipOne was ready for flight testing. Even then, after each step forward and envelope expansion, it was necessary to make modifications or refinements to overcome the technical challenges that waited in the wings.