Rutan's Documentary on SpaceshipOne

Saw this over the weekend.

I recommend it highly. I think it was on the Discovery channel but not 100% sure.

Called Black Sky--it chronicles Rutan's history and the development of SpaceshipOne. Lots of on-board video and pix of "the worlds greatest hobby shop"

I've yet to see it in its entirety, only bits here and there but its really well done. I just wouldn't want to on the ground crew that had to clean up all the M&Ms after they melt all over the place. Really a remarkable achievement. It would be nice to know what caused the big buckle under the engine bay.

I was astonished when I saw him empty out all those M&Ms while in zero G. I can't imagine introducing FOD into a cockpit where it might interfere with the controls or otherwise be a nuisance. We used to invert T-37s, "shake" them a bit, and then gather up any loose stuff that collected on the canopy. Gary

FOD stands for "Foreign Object Damage" and M&Ms are soft and will not jam controls or linkages. Other than that they are messy when they melt.

>FOD stands for "Foreign Object Damage" and M&Ms are soft and
>will not jam controls or linkages. Other than that they are
>messy when they melt.

"Melt in your cockpit, not in your hand"

I watched the documentary and I was astonished at the accomplishment. It was also interesting to see what Burt plans for the future. Melvill also indicatred that he wanted to take something into space and he knew the M&M's would not jam the controls as they would crush under the pressure.

>FOD stands for "Foreign Object Damage" and M&Ms are soft and
>will not jam controls or linkages. Other than that they are
>messy when they melt.

I always giggled at the mis-nomer. The D is caused by the FO, but the FO is called FOD when you pick it up. Real FOD is like the engine J75-P17 I saw that had a tiny screwdriver go through it, not much left, no question about the D in Foreign Object Damage.

Gary,

Mellville did mention that he used M&Ms so that they would crush if they got into the flight controls. Still, I was a bit surprised too, loose anything is a no-no in a cockpit..

LAST EDITED ON Oct-11-04 AT 01:46 PM (CDT)
 
I do remember him mentioning that the candy was soft, but I agree with you regarding no flotsam in the cockpit. This is particularly important since the controls were (gasp!) mechanical. I believe that Burt said something to the effect that using computers and fly by wire systems would have been cost prohibative.

Another thing that really puzzles me is that they didn't wear pressure suits. As I recall, the USAF used to require them for any flights over 50,000 ft. (Tom McCain, jump in here) I shudder to think of what might have happened if they had a loss of pressure. I wonder what they contemplate for passenger flights?

As an aside, I did see around 60,000 ft. in a T-38. It was one of my final missions before graduation and my IP (Lt Bob Helt - Google him for SR-71) said something like "I've got it. Watch this!" He put the aircraft in a shallow dive, lit the burners, picked up airspeed and zoomed up to an unauthorized altitude. The sky wasn't black, but was close. One engine did flame out, but was quickly re-started. Sheesh, the silly things we did when we were 21 are unimaginable at age 58. Gary

>Saw this over the weekend.
>
>I recommend it highly. I think it was on the Discovery
>channel but not 100% sure.
>
>Called Black Sky--it chronicles Rutan's history and the
>development of SpaceshipOne. Lots of on-board video and pix
>of "the worlds greatest hobby shop"
>
>Curt

The test pilots had a lot of faith in Mr. Rutan what a accomplishment. I am not sure I would like to go to space in a kite. No heat sheilds and no space suit.

He did say that the M&M'a would just break if they were to get into the controls. Though I was rather shocked that he did it too!!!! What a mess to get cleaned up. I also was interested to see that he did not wear a "Space" suit. I guess these guys know what tey are donig though.

>>Saw this over the weekend.
>>

>The test pilots had a lot of faith in Mr. Rutan what a
>accomplishment. I am not sure I would like to go to space in
>a kite. No heat sheilds and no space suit.

Hardly a kite! I was fortunate enough to sit in on a slide presentation that Rutan gave on his Tier One Program at Oshkosh last year. When he was through, I would have got on board for a ride right then! Absolutely no doubt in my mind that he would do it and do it safely. One thing I have observed about Burt Rutan, he is the most complete and free thinking person I have ever met, and he is very good at finding like minded people to staff his team and he has complete faith and confidense in them to do their job and lets them do it.
Sure it had a heat shield. It has a heat ablative paint on it, and he said that they could put paint on it that wouldn't show a mark, but they went with what they had because the scorch marks made the pilots feel more brave! No real need for tiles like on the shuttle. The friction is relative to the speed, mass and area of the machine. In the feather mode, ( more like dethermalized for a free flight modle) he said that the airspeed indicator would never read more than 120 knots, even though their actuual speed at the start of re-entry would bealmost mach 2.He calls the system 'Care Free Re-Entry", no matter what attitude the airplane might be in, they will re-enter properly. The pilot can sit there with his arms folded.
No real need for space suits either. The Space Shuttle crews flew in jump suits or shirt sleeves up until the Challenger accident, then went back to space suits. If things were to go REAL bad, on SpaceShipOne, or the Shuttle, a space suit ain't gonna help.
Some people remark about the fact that they spent 25 million to do it. Well, the U.S. Government makes 25 million dollar mistakes every day and have nothing to show for it. Think how much money each Presidential candidate is spending, hundreds of millions of dollars, and somebody is going to loose! My guess is that Paul Allen has already reallized a return on his investment. The X Prize money aside, when the name "Virgin"went on the side of the airplane, I'm sure Mr. Branson wrote a PRETTY Big check to do that, and it was probably pocket money for him!
No, I wouldn't exactly call it a kite!
Dan McEntee

The scary part for me was not the M&M's.

It was the flight where one elevator took an excursion to full deflection while the ship was out of the atmosphere. And would not respond to the controls to get it back. Had it stayed that way, the ship would have been uncontrollable on the way back down.

Melville kept his cool and let the circuit calm down and it finally responded.

Rutan did well. The pilots did well.

But theres no question they were cutting some corners on this program.

The point is if you know what corners to cut and are not bit with really bad luck, you can do that and get away with it.

Great effort!

Let's hope it fires up interest in civilian access to space.

Cy

I loved the programs. Watch for it again because I saw two different programs with the same topic and name. The second appears to have been sequel to the first with the M&M's. It continued the story with footage of the final two flights, another hour I think, as I got in on the last 45 minutes of that episode and didn't at first realize it was a sequel.

I did watch the program, and it was a remarkable accomplishment indeed, but still a long way from putting a man into orbit.

As the old saying goes, "A trip of 1000 miles starts with a single step.", Its started.

Burt Rutan already has the conceptual plans for Tier 2 and Tier 3, orbital and interplanetary respectively. These include space stations. I predict inside of the decade that Burt and other entrepeneurs will have opened up access for the general public to orbital space and the beginnings of space station hotels will be in operation. Do not underestimate Burt. Others have and have been very much surprised at the result.

LAST EDITED ON Oct-11-04 AT 03:35 PM (CDT)
 
I know these people are masters of their craft, and I hope you are right. It would be nice to cut the government out of the loop, and give the taxpayer a break for a change! They can probably do a better job at 1/4th. the cost.

Actually Don,

The cost break may be better than 25%. Dennis Tito paid the Russions $20 million to go into space. Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic are going to charge $190,000. True, it is suborbital, but that is still a big reduction in price. That is a 105 fold reduction in cost to the public. As economys of scale come into the equation, the price could come down much more. Similar to what happened with PCs, cell phones, long distance calls, etc.