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SpaceShipOne makes history
By Alix Paultre
On the 21st of June, 2004, history was made by Mike Melville, the first private astronaut in history. He flew in a spacecraft designed by Burt Rutan, called the SpaceShipOne, to an altitude of 62 miles up, above the internationally recognized boundary of space. SpaceShipOne (SS1) is the name Burt Rutan gave his mini space plane, the spaceborne part of his effort to win the Ansari X Prize. The SS1 is carried to a high altitude (over 50,000 ft.) attached to the underside of a carrier plane called the White Knight, which is based upon an earlier high-altitude aircraft design Rutan created called the Proteus. The craft will provide over 5 minutes of zero-gee conditions for its occupants, as well as a phenomenal view of the earth from space, with a re-entry stress of up to 6 G's for less than 10 seconds. The SS1 has stubby wings that fold upwards during re-entry to stabilize the vehicle for reentry, orienting the vehicle to a belly-first attitude that increases its drag and reduces its speed. The SS1 is designed to take three people in a shirtsleeve environment (as opposed to having to wear pressure suits) to an altitude of 100 kilometers, over 60 miles up. By pressurizing the interior of the craft, it is able to carry more people, as the added bulk and weight of pressure suits are eliminated, as well as make the ship more amenable to tourist flights and other commercial use. Of course, without pressure suits, there is an increased danger, but as Columbia and Challenger have demonstrated, when something goes wrong at a high altitude, it isn't usually the low pressure that kills you. The engine in the SS1 is a hybrid solid/liquid rocket using nitrous oxide and hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (A kind of rubber). The combination actually burns together rather cleanly, releasing mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and nitrogen in a powerful chemical reaction. A further advantage is that the components are easy to handle and far less toxic than most rocket fuels. The space transport system began as a concept in 1996, with the full development program starting in 2001 under complete secrecy. The two craft were unveiled on April 18, 2003. Born in Dinuba, California on June 17, 1943, Elbert L. (Burt) Rutan is an aviation revolutionary, entrepreneur, and designer who learned to fly at the age of 16. Rutan's Awards include the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, "Engineer of the Year" by Design News, the British Gold Medal for Aeronautics, the Collier Trophy and the Presidential Citizen's Medal. He entered the International Aerospace Hall of Fame in 1988 Burt obtained a degree in aeronautical engineering from California Polytechnic University in 1965, and worked for the US Air Force as a civilian flight test engineer until 1974, when he formed his first private company, the Rutan Aircraft Factory. The company provided him a vehicle to commercialize his radical designs, and he sold revolutionary light aircraft such as the VariEze, Quickie, and Long-EZ to hobbyists and serious pilots everywhere. The aircraft were distinguished by their wing-forward canard designs build with composite materials, concepts that flew in the face of traditional aviation paradigms of the time. In 1982, Rutan founded Scaled Composites, Inc. and developed prototypes of seven aircraft including the Beech Starship, which due to shortsighted management and development errors on the part of Beechcraft, failed to achieve commercial success. This setback did not stop him, and in December of 1986, his Voyager aircraft left and returned to its starting point at Mojave, California, completing a 25,000-mile flight in 216 hours. It was a non-stop and unrefueled around-the-world flight, the first in history.
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