Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne to attempt 62 miles tomorrow morning (1 Viewer)

[Julie K]

It's hard to beat spaceflightnow.com when it comes to reporting on such matters:
http://spaceflightnow.com/ss1/status.html

 

[Julie K]

It's hard to beat spaceflightnow.com when it comes to reporting on such matters:
http://spaceflightnow.com/ss1/status.html

 

[Peter Kline]

CNN covered the flight from the beginning and came back several times and showed the landing. There was coverage on Fox and MSNBC as well. A news conference will be held about 1 PM EST to give final figures on how high the plane made it. There were some reports that the rocket engines turned off prematurely.

 

[Peter Kline]

CNN covered the flight from the beginning and came back several times and showed the landing. There was coverage on Fox and MSNBC as well. A news conference will be held about 1 PM EST to give final figures on how high the plane made it. There were some reports that the rocket engines turned off prematurely.

 

[Philip_G]

BARELY.

 

[Philip_G]

BARELY.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Boy starting your astronaut career at age 62 is pushing the envelope in another way!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Boy starting your astronaut career at age 62 is pushing the envelope in another way!

 

[Jack Briggs]

History was made today. Big time.

 

[Jack Briggs]

History was made today. Big time.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I really like the rocket fuel: laughing gas and rubber!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I really like the rocket fuel: laughing gas and rubber!

 

[Chris]

Huzzah! This is wonderous news. Finally, space flight comes to the private sector

 

[Chris]

Huzzah! This is wonderous news. Finally, space flight comes to the private sector

 

[Greg_R]

So when will the next flight occur? Doesn't it have to be within 30 days to win the X prize?

 

[Lee L]

Well, they said that the June flight was more of a dry run to make sure everything was go for the actual X prize 2 launch try to come later. It does seem like we should hear something soon about it though.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Al systems are go, so to speak. The guidance-system anomoly that marred its initial flight into the lower reaches of space has been resolved.

Media reports -- and the current news media are terrible at their space coverage -- mistakenly refer to SpaceShipOne's first spaceflight as "achieving what Alan Shepard did in 1961."

Not accurate. An accurate comparison would be with the X-15 rocketplane that made some suborbital flights (with the record being 67 miles altitude in 1967). The Mercury-Redstone 3 mission was a ballistic flight that reached 115 miles altitude -- and it lasted all of fifteen minutes.