http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,64123,00.htmlX Prize contender Burt Rutan says his team has solved a control problem that threw its spacecraft off course during a historic flight last month and that the next time the ship flies it will be to capture the $10 million space jackpot.
"That's a complete, entire yes," Rutan said when asked whether his Scaled Composites team had gotten to the bottom of a trim-control problem experienced during SpaceShipOne's voyage to an altitude of 100 kilometers on June 21.
Today's the Day. After the flight -- the first time a civilian flew a private craft into space -- pilot Mike Melvill said a control needed to steer SpaceShipOne at supersonic speeds malfunctioned. The problem caused him to veer more than 20 miles outside the flight's planned re-entry zone over Southern California's Mojave Desert.
But Melvill was able to use a backup system to control the craft and made a perfect landing after gliding back to the ship's base at the Mojave Airport. At the time, Rutan said the problem was the most serious safety issue encountered during the development of SpaceShipOne.
"There is no way we will fly again without knowing the cause and without assuring that we fixed it," he said at a press conference following the flight.
But in a telephone interview Tuesday, Rutan said the "flight-control anomaly" on June 21 "was not serious." The problem, he said, had been traced to an actuator -- a device that drives flaps and other aircraft control surfaces. The actuator delayed moving one of the ship's flaps because it "had run against a stop," limiting its movement. The glitch helped push the craft off course and led Melvill to use his backup controls.
Rutan also said a review of data from the June 21 flight had uncovered the cause of another anomaly Melvill reported.
The pilot said that immediately after he fired his engines, SpaceShipOne rolled 90 degrees to the left. When Melvill tried to correct the uncommanded movement, the ship then rolled 90 degrees to the right.
Rutan said Tuesday that wind shear -- violent air currents aloft -- triggered the rolls. He said the shear-induced problems were the major factor in the flight just nudging the 100-kilometer boundary of space instead of soaring to a planned altitude 10 kilometers higher.
"We flew that trajectory on a simulator, and we found that it cost us 30,000 feet," he said.
With the June 21 issues analyzed and resolved, Rutan said the next time SpaceShipOne flies, it will be to win the X Prize. The prize requires a privately funded craft to fly into suborbital space twice within two weeks to win the $10 million jackpot.
But Rutan said his team plans to do more. "We'll do three flights in two weeks," he said.
It's not a matter of showing off. Scheduling the extra flight will allow the team to capture the prize if it falls short on the first or second attempt.
The X Prize requires the flights to be capable of carrying three big people -- each at least 6-foot-2 and 198 pounds. For the prize attempts, ships can carry a pilot and weight equivalent to the two passengers.
Rutan said passengers won't fly on SpaceShipOne, at least at first.
"The only time we could do that is the second X Prize flight, because the earlier flight is an envelope-expansion flight" during which SpaceShipOne will fly with a heavier payload and employ a longer rocket burn than on earlier missions.
"Whether we fly passengers on the second flight we'll decide later, but there's no way we'll do that on the first flight," he said.
Given the contest's requirement of 60 days' notice before a prize attempt -- and the lack of any notice so far -- the earliest Rutan or other teams could fly for the cash is now around Labor Day. The prize offer expires at the end of the year.
Topic: Space Ship One Back On Course (Read 938 times)