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I
have watched with interest the development at Burt Rutan’s Scaled
Composites of their space program designed to carry man into space.
This development consists of a “first stage” called the White Knight, which
carries the “space ship” aptly named Space Ship One. The
amazing thing is this is privately funded program and doesn’t require a
billion dollars for every launch like the space shuttle.
The
first stage carries the space ship with its crew of three to an altitude
of 50,000 feet and launches it. The space ship fires a rocket motor at a
steep angle and accelerates to 2500 mph, reaching 100 kilometers (330.000)
feet. At this point, the space ship assumes an attitude with the aft
portion of the wing and tail, flips up and enters a dethermolizing mode
with high drag. As the ship slows and gets into the lower atmosphere at
about 80,000 feet, the wings and tail reconfigure to a glider type and the
ship returns and lands at low speed.
The
space ship has a thin ablative layer to help with the high temperatures of
re-entry. After the flight, this layer is re-applied and the ship is
ready to go again.
The
“White Knight" has two J85 turbo jet engines. The
space ship is powered with a hybrid rocket motor that uses features from
both a solid fuel and liquid fuel rocket. It is not a throttle-able
engine; It is either on or off. It uses Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas)
and HTPB (rubber), which is easy to work with and start by introducing
high temp into the fuel.
The
cockpit is a pressure vessel, so the pilots don’t wear space suits. The
cabin has many redundancies in case of single system failures. The cabin
is supplied with oxygen, and carbon dioxide is removed with an absorber
system. The humidity is controlled, keeping the cabin cool and dry.
The cabin is fitted with small round, double-paned windows to keep the
pressure and strength much like a submarine. Visibility is maintained by
moving the head and looking out the windows.
The
space ship has three flight control systems. The low speed system uses
rudder and elevator, which are controlled conventionally with cables.
The supersonic system is controlled via electrical actuators that control
the elevator trim and upper rudder segments. The upper atmosphere
control is achieved with high pressure, air-fed reaction nozzles.
Another novel system Burt has come up with is to configure both cockpits
with the same controls so they use the first stage to train for the space
ship flights. The first stage has about 60 flights on it (more by
now), and the space ship has been doing glide tests.
I
can just see the modern glider pilot in the future going out to the launch
site pulling his rocket glider out of the hanger and getting the club
airplane to tow him to 50,000 feet, where he launches into the atmosphere,
re-enters and glides around for a few hundred miles. Hats off to
people like Rutan, who has the foresight to design anything that is
worthwhile. I would love to see some creative modelers build flying
models of these. Incidentally, a group of businessmen from St. Louis
have offered a ten million dollar prize to the first person to launch
three people into space and return, then to repeat it within two weeks
using the same hardware.
If
you are interested in the progress of this project, click on their website
at www.scaled.com and watch these
interesting developments. Also the April 2003 issue of Aviation Week
magazine has a great article, as well as the Oct. 2003 issue of RCM.
That’s all for now and keep those models flying till next time.
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