Private Space Plane to attempt launch
 

SpaceShipOne will try to climb 62 miles up Monday morning, leaving Earth's atmosphere for a few minutes to become the first privately funded, non-governmental manned spacecraft.

It is designed by Burt Rutan and pictures of it and it's wild looking mother ship can be seen here; http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/photos.htm

Wow, that is very cool. I have a couple of questions about this since I haven't read the whole story yet.

1. How is it going to handle the heat? I don't see any kind of heat reflective material on the plane.

2. Is NASA going to provide ground control for them, or will they do it themselves?

ok a third question...

3. How much will the government participate in this, and how did they get permission to close the airspace needed to make the launch?

From what I read on it, they are doing their own telemetry/ground control with a van that has duplicate flight instruments.

The military is quite interested in the outcome of these tests, I think that would explain why they are helping by letting them launch and recover near the Edwards test range. The idea of being able to reach space on a private sector budget, would have to be VERY appealing.

I don't think they are going high enough or fast enough to reach escape velocity, just going to hit the outer edges of the atmosphere, similar to the old X planes. That would explain the lack of heat shielding.

Also it folds the control surfaces on the rear of the plane @ 90 degrees, to create drag and help slow the plane on reentry. It is described as being similar to the feathers on a shuttlecock, helping to slow and create stability during the reentry phase.

Fascinating stuff here, and knowing Burt Rutan's past ability to shed conventional flight parameters, and do the seemingly impossible, I would put my money on him achieving this goal ;)

Do you mean Burt Rutan? I've heard of Burt and Dick, but I never heard of a Bill Rutan. Burt is an amazing man, with so many innovative aircraft to his credit. Vari-eze, Voyager, that Beech Starship, and many others. A true pioneering genius.

Just to clarify, this won't even reach orbital speed, which is itself much less than escape velocity.

Must have been a glitch with your browser...............[whistle]

They won't "really" be in outer space, just a "low earth orbit", so the real heat of re-entry won't be there, you can bet ya sweet rear end that Nasa and Norrad will be tracking, and these test are supposed to be without Gov help. The question I got is CAN I GO, God I'd love too.
Another question is will customs & immigration hassle them as they did me a few weeks ago, going and coming from Brazil[laugh] . People here don't know how sweet we have it, except for the drug dog in Atlanta humping my bag that had my vibration equipment it ( That'll be another story), the 2 Gov guys at the jetway where laughing so hard, they where crying, and Jack, do you people not EVER let these dogs have any "fun", they asked me if I had a dog, I said Yes, the guy said "you may want to check her for being in heat", I told him "you may wanna check you dog for being GAY, because my dog is a male Rot, but I did have a female cat". He slapped me on the back and said have a good flight home, the WHOLE time laughing his butt off.
It's funny now, but it wasn't then.
I don't know if ya'll have heard, but there was 3 B'ham policemen gunned down on Friday, all 3 where dead at the scene, 1 other got away unhurt, this all went on about 2 miles from our shop. First reports are that they got shot with an SKS and thier vest had no chance of protection. All 3 where very well known in the hood, well respected and trusted, it's a crying fricking shame