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October 11, 2004
Report from X2
NSS Executive Director George Whitesides writes:
Greetings all,
Another short note to celebrate the second successful X Prize flight of SpaceShipOne and to recognize those who participated.
This time, it went flawlessly. An old man who had lived in Mojave for years said to me later in the day that the weather was the best they had seen in years. Years! It was true – warm even in the early morning, before the sun came up, and absolutely no wind. We all hoped it was a good sign, as it turned out to be.
Roll out of the vehicle was ten minutes early, which sent the news cameramen running back to their stations, spilling coffee as they went. Burt and his crew probably didn’t want to take the gift of no wind for granted. The take off was as spectacular as ever – the sight of a real personal space ship taking off is still surreal to me. We watched White Knight ascend pterodactyl-like into the distance, then the crowd wandered off to get food and wait the 45 minutes required for the ship to drag its cargo up to altitude.
The drop was fraught with tension. The countdown was given over the PA’s, five minutes … two minutes … thirty seconds … there it goes! Everyone was thinking about what had happened last flight. And what the implications would be for space if something went wrong. But the drop was clean, and Brian Binnie lit the rocket almost immediately. A single contrails split in two. We watched the ascent, turning from the Jumbotron screen to the sky above, and both just kept looking good. Minor perturbations as the vehicle ascended but no rolls. The rocket’s contrail seemed brighter and thicker this time, and possibly closer to the airport. Woosh! Straight up, and up, and up, higher than seemed possible. Like a white rope unrolling into the sky. [continued...]
Upon successful feather of the vehicle, the space people in the audience let out a sigh and some whoops. Eric Anderson, who was doing an interview with me, gave a thumbs up sign. And we all smiled, almost in disbelief, that this moment that had been so long in coming could, in the end, have gone so perfectly.
The post-flight ceremony had Peter and Brian and Burt and Paul and Sir Richard – some of you may have seen the picture of the last three sitting on a pickup truck bed, hanging out as they watched Brian wave an American flag on top of the vehicle. You got the sense that the reality of the world was changing before your eyes, that all these things that we had dreamed about for so long – were actually happening, right now. And that sense was strange, and happy, and maybe even bittersweet – in the sense that the world of space was changing before our eyes – that it would no longer be just a family in which everyone knew everyone else, that now big money and bodyguards and ‘buy this can win a trip to space’ would soon be coming. All of it what we’ve always said we wanted, perhaps now about to happen.
We’ll see. It was a terrific opening act for space. The proof will come later, in the success of Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace and a series of increasingly-large Falcon rockets. A lot of promises are now being made, and it is up to us to help them get kept. But it was a great start.
Thanks to Mark Hopkins, Jim Spellman, Elaine Walker, Larry Evans, and some young volunteers whose names I didn’t get, we continued our grassroots promotion of NSS, distributing many hundreds of Ad Astra copies and raising the visibility of the society in the crowd. Rich Godwin and his brother Rob organized a terrific public event the night before, to which I hear some Burning Man faithful contributed. Bart Leahy and Cliff McMurray wrote a great paper on space tourism which was distributed to the media, and which is now available on the website. Interviews with Fox News, the New York Times, and other outlets brought the society some good publicity. All in all, it was a good day for NSS as well – this has raised all boats.
Posted by apsmith at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2004
SpaceShipOne wins the X Prize!
In answer to Elaine's song...
This from Bruce Mackenzie:
The Ansari X-Prize has been won by Burt Rutan's SpaceShip One.
- A significant step for non-government activity in space, possibly
leading to tourist sub-orbital flights.
Also, with future rotating tethers, you might only have take a sub-orbital
hop to catch a tether and fly off to a higher orbit.
The story is on on Fox TV and various web sites, including Space.com
(a bit off topic of NSS chapters, but...)
-Bruce Mackenzie
>> SpaceShipOne Wins $10 Million Ansari X Prize in Historic 2nd Trip to Space
>>
>> 04 October, 2004: MOJAVE, CALIFORNIA -
>> The craft soared to 368,000 feet, reaching the required altitude necessary
>> to win the X Prize. The craft landed later in the morning after a flight
>> that went off as planned.
...
Posted by apsmith at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)