rotarygod
10-04-2004, 02:19 AM
Just curious if anyone is following the Ansari X-prize. For those of you who don't know what it is, in 1996 a contest was announced that would award $10 million to the first privately funded (no governments) team who successfully put a human in space and returned them safely within 2 weeks. There are more details to the rules but that is the short side of it. There were 27 teams entered from 7 countries. So far only 1 team has proven truly serious and they are hopefully about to win.
On Sept. 26, Scaled Composites which is designer Burt Rutan's (he design the Voyager aircraft that flew nonstop around the world in '86) company successfully completed flight 1 of 2 to an altitude of 100km. They have 2 weeks from this date to get the second flight made. On Monday morning they will attempt that second flight to 100+km. It will be live on the discovery channel beginning at 6 a.m. PST.
Sunday night there was a 2 hour discovery channel special on the project. It had some very nice video footage of the design, build, and testing stages of the craft. It is a 2 part vehicle. The "mothership" is called White Night and the spaceship is Space Ship One. Their vehicle has a very interesting approach to space flight. There are no flight computers, no pressure suits, and no heat shielding. Just some very creative engineering. Go check it out online. It is going to open the door for cheap, reliable commercial space travel. Maybe not soon, but you've got to start somewhere.
I love this stuff! It'll be a day for the history books.
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/
On Sept. 26, Scaled Composites which is designer Burt Rutan's (he design the Voyager aircraft that flew nonstop around the world in '86) company successfully completed flight 1 of 2 to an altitude of 100km. They have 2 weeks from this date to get the second flight made. On Monday morning they will attempt that second flight to 100+km. It will be live on the discovery channel beginning at 6 a.m. PST.
Sunday night there was a 2 hour discovery channel special on the project. It had some very nice video footage of the design, build, and testing stages of the craft. It is a 2 part vehicle. The "mothership" is called White Night and the spaceship is Space Ship One. Their vehicle has a very interesting approach to space flight. There are no flight computers, no pressure suits, and no heat shielding. Just some very creative engineering. Go check it out online. It is going to open the door for cheap, reliable commercial space travel. Maybe not soon, but you've got to start somewhere.
I love this stuff! It'll be a day for the history books.
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/