SS1 Altitude limit

Does anyone have any idea how much further SS1 would be able to fly before re-rentry stress become too high for the design?

James

If someone really knows it will be Burt Rutan I suppose.

But it may be that he wants to find out by real flights what proves to be the limit in practice of reality.

And it's a very good question to be answered by the XPRIZE CUP. Might he again be a competitor?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Comments about the limits: I was surprised to read that the minimum altitud limit is 100 km.
My surprise was to see the limit expressed in kilomerters, not in miles !!!

This is an other great revolution !

Well sort of. This is only because it's a nice round number rather than 67 miles or whatever. The Americans were still going for 328,000 feet (notice the number on the aircraft of N328K), which makes sense to the Brits and the Americans, but everyone else is happier with kilometres. Actually, as a Brit, as I use both feet/metres/kilometres/miles interchangeably, I can get very confused!

100 KM is the internationally recognized boudary of "space" ...it is in fact, an arbitrary "round" number.

The U.S. actually uses 50 miles, which is obviously less. Only 2 X-15 pilots are intrnationally recognized as astronauts, but something like 4 or 5 of them have U.S. military-issue "astronaut wings"

Melvill and Binnie were given FAA "Astronaut Wings" because they exceeded 50 miles, not 100 KM