Success!
Dean
Sometimes I hate working midnights. I wound up sleeping through Spaceship One's second successful space launch.
If they can do another in just two weeks, they'll have won the X-Prize for the first successful reusable spacecraft designed and built entirely through private enterprise. And will earn a place in the history books alongside Orville and Wilbur Wright.
It might also mean that Richard Branson and Paul Allen are making a very smart long-term investment.
On the other hand, there were some troubling technical difficulties. Rand Simberg has more. There was a minor control issue on the earlier launch this summer but it wasn't a show-stopper. Let's hope this is similarly minor.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Success!
- Spaceship One News
Then click on the X1 flight SpaceShip 1 button at the top right. It gives you a pop up window with the video,and you can click for the speed you want. And it works in Firefox, too.
Burt Rutan noted the design of of SSO leaves it somewhat unstable in roll, so it's prone to this sort of anomaly, just as the Jun 21 flight exhibited a pilot-induced roll oscillation. After that flight, Scaled modified its pilot training so its pilots could learn to avoid starting a PIO roll. This seems to be a similar type of anomaly that will be corrected via training modifications. Rutan also noted correcting the roll instability will have to be done in the next version of SSO.