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SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier
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Space Walker  
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2003 10:59 pm
Posts: 100 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark, Skandinavia, Europe, Blue planet 
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 SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier Posted on: Wed Dec 17, 2003 9:32 pmToday, 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....
http://scaled.com/projects/tierone/New_Index/news/121703.htm |
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Excellent Posted on: Wed Dec 17, 2003 9:35 pm It will be great to watch them gradually increase the speed and altitude in progressive flights.
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Space Walker
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2003 10:59 pm
Posts: 100 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark, Skandinavia, Europe, Blue planet
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Found a picture Posted on: Wed Dec 17, 2003 9:39 pm |
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Launch Director 
Joined: Thu Oct 23, 2003 4:31 pm
Posts: 18 Location: UK
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Posted on: Thu Dec 18, 2003 12:06 am Wowww, is all I can say!!! He's really going for it, Rutan is going sub-orbital!!
I mean seeing airborne SpaceShipOne ignite its engine today must have struck fear into all the other contenders and possibly some space agencies too, that a small group in the private sector are doing such apparently "highly expensive", "highly technically advanced", "very risky" activities - Way to go Rutan! I'm really excited and impressed. 
If the private sector can do this today with many other groups all around the world building/testing the own new rocket engines, whats it gonna be like tommorrow? At this rate it seriously won't be long before individuals are reaching space shuttle, ISS and satellite orbital altitudes and when that year arrives it'll be time for the conventional space agencies to move over!! _________________ We're going back... www.transorbital.net/ | www.lunacorp.com | www.asi.org | www.space-frontier.org |
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Moon Mission Member  
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2003 8:46 pm
Posts: 1204 Location: Kapellen, Antwerp, Belgium, Europe, Planet Earth, the Milky Way Galaxy
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Posted on: Thu Dec 18, 2003 12:14 am I can only say "wow, cool, great, stunning!"
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Space Station Commander  
Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2003 9:22 pm
Posts: 858 Location: New York, NY
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Posted on: Thu Dec 18, 2003 1:58 am rutan's in the home stretch now, i think he'll have it won by february.
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Spaceflight Trainee 
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2003 5:34 pm
Posts: 42
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Very very very exciting. Posted on: Thu Dec 18, 2003 3:19 am I have been hoping for this news all day, I can't believe it actually happened!
Lepton |
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After the excitement Posted on: Thu Dec 18, 2003 2:04 pm I have a question about the landing gear problem. It was easy to overlook at first since the success was so exciting, but why is spaceshipone having trouble with the landing gear of all things? I'm sure retractable landing gear is very complicated (I don't know anything about airplanes (or rockets)), but it has been around for a long time. I thought that landing gear would be fairly standard by this time. Does spaceshipone use special delicate landing gear because of weight concerns? Or are there other reasons that spaceshipone needs special untested landing gear?
I would really hate for an xprize attempt to end in such an undignified manner (I have not doubt that scaled will fix the problem long before an xprize attempt). Lepton |
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Posted on: Thu Dec 18, 2003 3:18 pm My guess is that it has something to do with the steep approaches. Here are some great pictures:
http://www.mojavebooks.com/mhv/031217-1.html |
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