Spaceship One Press Release

[John Slade]

While our fellow EAA Wright Flyer reenactors were waiting for better wind, pioneer extraordinaire, Burt Rutan, was sending SpaceshipOne vertical to 68,000 feet at Mach 1.2 after a 15 second rocket burn.

Nice going, Burt!

 

 

SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier

 

Today, a significant milestone was achieved by Scaled Composites: The

first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small

company's private, non-government effort.

 

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. 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.

 

Our flight this morning by SpaceShipOne demonstrated that supersonic

flight is now the domain of a small company doing privately-funded

research, without government help. The flight also represents an

important milestone in our efforts to demonstrate that truly low-cost

space access is feasible.

 

Our White Knight turbojet launch aircraft, flown by Test Pilot Peter

Siebold, carried research rocket plane SpaceShipOne to 48,000 feet

altitude, near the desert town of California City. At 8:15 a.m. PDT,

Cory Bird, the White Knight Flight Engineer, pulled a handle to

release SpaceShipOne. SpaceShipOne Test Pilot, Brian Binnie then 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). Brian then 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, Brian reconfigured the ship to its

conventional glider shape and flew a 12-minute glide to landing at

Scaled's home airport of Mojave. 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.

 

The 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. The first

flight of the White Knight launch aircraft was in August 2002 and

SpaceShipOne began its glide tests in August 2003.

 

Scaled does not pre-announce the specific flight test plans for its

manned space program, however completed accomplishments are updated

as they happen at our website:

http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/index.htm. The website also

provides downloadable photos and technical descriptions of the rocket

motor system and motor test hardware.

 

Scaled Composites, LLC, is an aerospace research company located on

the Mojave Airport:

1624 Flight Line, Mojave California 93501

Voice (661) 824-4541

Fax (661) 824-4174

Email: info@scaled.com

[dust]

Why i don't want main retracts on my cozy, seems to me the boomerang had a similar problem

 

enjoy the build

 

Mike

[Jim Sower]

But consider all the folks who ditched Cozys / EZs and got all banged up because the main mounts pitch the plane down, the nose submarines and the whole thing stops in about 18 feet. Similar problems crashing - if the nose gear doesn't hold up long enough (and it's pretty much designed not to) you end up on your back very abruptly. Ditching / crashing gear up alleviates most of that - you skip and slide along and stop much more gradually.

 

And of course there's the extra 15 kts and increased range .... Jim S.

[Dave Clifford]

And of course there's the extra 15 kts and increased range .... Jim S. [/b]

Is there a Cozy MKIV out there flying with the retracts that has documented an increase of 15 kts as compared to the fixed gear??

[Marc Zeitlin]

Originally posted by clifford

Is there a Cozy MKIV out there flying with the retracts that has documented an increase of 15 kts as compared to the fixed gear??

Probably the only canard aircraft that I've heard of that originally flew with standard gear and then installed the Infinity Retract system is Bill Theeringer's L.E. (it's the yellow one). JD at Infinity claims that Bill picked up about 19 mph (17 Kts). There are at least three COZY/Aerocanards that have flown with Infinity gear (one was totalled in a ground accident) but I've never seen performance figures on them, and they were installed from the beginning, so there's no comparison to make.

[Jim Sower]

<... never seen performance figures on them, and they were installed from the beginning, so there's no comparison to make ...>

 

So let's all just stick with "the gospel according to Nat" and stipulate that it's five kts max with a terrible weight penalty ....

[dust]

jim, what is the profile of the LE fixed gear, is it a sleek airfoil like the cozy or is it rather tubular??

 

What speed improvement do people get on a LE with Klaus's farings??

 

enjoy the experimenting

 

Mike

[dust]

If i were to go retracts, which i am too far along to consider and am using other methods to achieve speed, I would see if jack could wire it into my nose gear system.

 

I bought his extra black box that extends the nose gear at 90 kts, I like black boxes.

 

enjoy the build

 

Mike

[Jim Sower]

Mike,

<... bought his extra black box that extends the nose gear at 90 kts ...>

So, you're trying to stay VFR on top, and the clouds are getting higher, and you're trying to sneak up over this one last little build up, and bleed off a little airspeed to avoid going through it, and drop down to 90 kts, and THE &^)&&^#$ NOSE GEAR COMES DOWN??

 

The LE gear is just like the Cozy (they're the same part). It comes at you with an elliptical cross section, the major axis being about three times the minor axis. The speed merchants fair this to a symmetrical airfoil with a thickness ratio of 4 or 5. They are careful to have it at 0 deg AoA at cruise.

 

All of Klaus' stuff works pretty good - wheel pants, kiss spinner, boat tail lower cowl, etc. EZ firewall profile makes for LARGE cowl cheeks so guys are making money down drafting the engine from inlets forward of the cowl cheeks (somewhat more drag, but now it's cooling drag instead of parasite drag, and what used to be the cooling drag is gone - sort of).

 

There's lots and lots of tricks. Root through the last five years of CSA newsletter and read all the go-fast articles. There's LEs making 200 kts with O-320 at RACE events.

 

Too bad about the retracts. There's a body of thought that you end up with MORE fuel on board if you put a sump where the gear bow used to be, and put fuel in the outboard strakes, and with 15 kts better top end, well .....

 

All it would involve is new lower strakes and bulkheads and .....

 

Have fun ... Jim S.

[Marc Zeitlin]

Originally posted by Jim Sower

So let's all just stick with "the gospel according to Nat" and stipulate that it's five kts max with a terrible weight penalty ....

I was too subtle, apparently. My point was that the ONE datapoint we have seems to bear out the 15 Kt. improvement in speed, and that COZY's should have approximately the same improvement that L.E.'s seem to have.

 

On the other hand, as you point out in a subsequent post, having faired landing gear legs and optimal wheelpants may get you a substantial portion of that 15 Kt. maybe 7-10 Kt. I don't know what Bill had on his L.E. before he switched.

 

You know me well enough to know that I have NEVER thought that we should always 'stick with "the gospel according to Nat" ' on ANY subject.

[Jim Sower]

Originally posted by Marc Zeitlin

You know me well enough to know that I have NEVER thought that we should always 'stick with "the gospel according to Nat" ' on ANY subject.

I was too subtle, apparently. My point was that you sounded like you were trivializing or dismissing the ONE datapoint we DO have. Rather than saying "... our single datapoint seems to indicate ..." I was trying to spin it to "... all of the credible data indicates that ...":) You know me well enough to know why I was so confident that the crack about "gospel" would get your attention:p

 

Anyway, I'm given to believe that completely closing wheel wells (Velocity and Infinity both leave at least half the wheel uncovered in the well) will buy several knots (I've heard estimates as high as 5 or 6). As much trouble as it takes to install retracts, it seems foolish not to "finish" the job. The improved safety and range issues are not widely discussed. I think that when a few SQ2000s and Cozy retracts get flying that we'll start seeing a retract mods getting a lot more popular.

 

We'll see .... Jim S.

[marbleturtle]

I started looking at retractable gear options simply because most 200+ MPH planes have them. The best discussion I've seen about retracts is here...

 

http://www.geocities.com/plmjohnson/retractable_gear.htm

 

 

My only issue now is that the retracts at infinity seem a little pricey. I will probably use them anyway. I like the idea of one fuel source (the sump fed by the two tanks), a little higher speed, no-flip emergency landings, etc.