Spaceship One makes flight 1 of 2 for X-Prize

[JoeXIII'007]

Spaceship One made its first flight of 2 for the X-Prize. Think it will make it? This first one was pretty shaky.

[dubious elise]

oh man, i'm so excited about this project. i really think that they can complete another flight successfully. their problem may have just been lack of experience with the actual plane itself.

the barrel rolls are really scary though!

[Mike33]

i think spaceship one will win the X-prize. its cool to think that someone other than a scientist at NASA can enter space without government funding.

[trev2023]

It must be cool for the guy who did it, he's one of a very selective group of people that have ventured into outer space. It's cool to hear about how instead of adding dead weight for the extra 400 pounds, they put tons of mementos and pictures and video equiptment so as many people could share the moment as possible.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by JoeXIII'007

Spaceship One made its first flight of 2 for the X-Prize. Think it will make it? This first one was pretty shaky.

I liked one of the post-flight comments about how the unexpected roll demonstrated how simple and safe SpaceShipOne is. Any other crewed spacecraft -- X15, STS, Soyuz -- would almost certainly have had a "really bad day" under such conditions. But pilot Mike Melvill just kept it pointed up and straight until he knew it was on track to make altitude, and shut off the engine a few seconds early to make it easier to cancel the roll.

I wonder who's going to be the pilot for the second flight on Monday.

[ahecht]

Originally Posted by Mike33

i think spaceship one will win the X-prize. its cool to think that someone other than a scientist at NASA can enter space without government funding.

Did you watch the Ansari webcast? One of the comentators said that the X-prise was great because "the U.S. does not currently have a manned space program". And he said this right in front of Sean O'Keefe!

[Hinkel Y.]

It's gonna be close... The Canadian team, The DaVinci Project is on hold right now, which was planned to launch its first 1 of 2 on October 2...

[suneel112]

I also have an idea of some X-planes of my own. I will tell you that one is "personal" size and the other is "commercial / bomber" size. I am keeping the ideas secret so I can further develop them (ie learn the advanced principles of flight and rocket science and materials enough to prototype [or at least cad] a working design) and (hopefully) start my own Engineering Firm.