Burt Rutan

Earlier speculation on Paul Allen as sponsor of SS1 confirmed.
http://business2media.com/home/pressrel ... b2mid=4349

"Being able to watch today's successful test flight in person was really an overwhelming and awe-inspiring experience. I'm so proud to be able to support the work of Burt Rutan and his pioneering team at Scaled Composites," said Paul G. Allen, who has funded the effort since he and Rutan joined forces in March of 2001

It's really great to know now, that it's really Paul Allen, now I know for sure they won't run out of monney in the comming weeks/months, as manny government projects did..

well, they did a 15 second burn this time, got to 68,000 feet, i wonder how long the next one will be, hopefully it'll keep going up.

Here's the quick math on reaching 100 km and winning the XPRIZE:

The first burn-time was 15 seconds to an altitude of 20 km from the White Knight 14 km release point.

Increase engine burn-time by 45 to 60 seconds to push SpaceShipOne another 80 km.

If no other anomolies are found, I'd guess that the XPRIZE attempt 30-day notice will be given in January 2004.

Up, up, and away!


Picture by Alan Raedecki, http://www.mojavebooks.com/mhv/photos/0 ... p-03-8.jpg[/img]

Looks like a third of the nitrous oxide and half of the solid fuel for a 100km altitude flight were loaded--Aviation Week Article.

Scaled updated their "test updates" page.

They wrote:
Although the damage was not major, repairs are expected to take approximately three weeks to complete.

So, it's a small setback for their team.

So does this place the next flight in Feb?

Well, 17th + 3 weeks (21 days..) = 7th January + Needed work for the next flight... so I guess the next flight will be +- 14 January.

You probably need to factor in the holidays as well...

I guess Scaled already did it, with their 3 weeks of time

Any guesses on what the envelope will be for the next flight? With half full fuel load, they could probably reach at least 100k feet / mach 2. That would be starting to approach the X-15 regime.

that sounds accurate, probably.

The next flight may have less ambitious goals. Namely testing the landing gear, and the repairs. Then another flight to push the envelope further.

i could see that too, another 15 sec. burn maybe then bring it in for a "routine" landing hopefully. maybe they'll do one of those 5 day turnover things. we can only hope i guess.