private rocket ship

[gyronutt]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=2&u=/nm/space_xprize_dc

[gyronutt]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040927/wl_uk_afp/britain_space_transport_040927191256

[Victor Duarte]

yes its tha anzari X prize http://www.xprize.org/
rutan is great

[Hognose]

Guys,

I am here in Mojave covering this... we will have live coverage starting at about 0800 EDT... yes, it is 0400 EDT now... 0100 PDT.

http://aero-news.net/

We are sitting on some stuff that we will release just about that time. Our goal is to be the first up with some of this news. I'll be shooting pictures, too.

Lots of cool stuff here in Mojave, Palmdale, etc. Haven't seen gyro one though. :(

cheers

-=K=-

[Victor Duarte]

what a luck !! enjoy !! ( and take a lots of pics )
burt rutan ouakbar ;)

[ahancock]

Looks like they did it.
Alan

[Victor Duarte]

clap clap clap ! , big up for rutan, i love this man, who never stopped looking up.
kevin, did you succeed in taking some pics or did you have short breath ? ;)
cheers

[Hognose]

Victor, mon ami, you are not going to believe this. On the first flight I was perfectly positioned on the far taxiway shooting back towards the crowd. The only other still photog there was Mike Massee (who is Scaled's webmaster). So I shoot the Tier One combination taxiing out. I shoot the takeoff of the two chase planes. Tier One starts to roll... my (borrowed) Canon *&%&##$ D60 tells me, dead battery! I just charged it. I pull out my backup Nikon 5400 point-n-shoot... dead battery. I have a spare and finger fumble it in.

I get the unit receding into the distance. #$@#$!! Then I discover that you can get the last bit of use out of the D60 battery by flicking the power switch off and on and manually focusing. So I get a few more shots. Mike is busy shooting. And laughing at me.

The air-to-air you see from that flight was shot by Jim Campbell in Bob Scherer's Starship high-chase plane. There was also a photog from Life magazine (which I guess is between bankruptcies again) on the Starship, but he did not contribute any photos to the pool. He did complain a lot, that's what he's remembered for. All the air to air is from the June 21 or September 29 flight. No air to air stills were shot on Oct. 4 because the photogs were bumped off the Starship by some of Sir Richard Branson's horse-holders, coat-check-girls, and knob-polishers. I would have though he'd have had a higher class of knob-polisher, is all I'll say about that... those people were all bored witless with the tedium of Mojave and <yawn> private space flight.

On the next flight I was better prepared but not as well positioned. Once again I had trouble with the D60, this time an error that I had the very devil clearing.

One thing I got that's very cool is audio of both press conferences, with a lot of details that have not made it into print yet.

The night before the second flight, the Scaled team all went over Burt Rutan's house and they watched the Discovery Channel video together. It was their first chance to relax.... The next day Burt could not stop talking about the video. He could not believe how good it was. He is a guy with very high standards, and he is blunt to the point of cruelty when others do not meet his standards, so it must be a very, very good video. I don't have a TV but am hoping for an early release of the DVD. I hope also that it is released in worldwide formats so that people like Victor can see it also.

One of the sad things at Mojave: one of the most prominent landmarks on the airfield is the old Rotary Rocket hangar (there are two, one large and one small). The large one is mostly disused, and the Rotary Rocket Roton atmospheric test vehicle is still inside. This machine was going to be a spacefaring gyro! It did fly in powered-rotor mode at Mojave. The test pilot was Brian Binnie who flew the second X-Prize flight of SpaceShipOne (he also flew the Dec. 17 flight where the landing gear collapsed. Some bimbo from the Bakersfield TV station blamed that accident on Binnie's Naval past which he dismissed, but it really set Burt Rutan off....!)

The Roton idea is probably perma-dead. But some of the Rotary gang got together and started another company, XCOR, which is still hanging in there. I interviewed Jeff Greason of XCOR and that interview will be running on Aero-News in a few days... I hope.

Back to Vic's original question, of course I have photos, thinking about how to put them up without watching my copyrights go pissing away in the wind.

cheers

-=K=-

[Victor Duarte]

wow kevin, great !!!
and thank you to share what must be an amazing moment !
you say b rutan is quite an awfullperson, i dont think, hes just may demand a lot from others just as he demands a lot from himself, i m also like that and it may be interpreted as "cruelty" but no, i think guys with such projects just dont see when they step on other's feet , not by bad inrentions, just by distraction..

i hope you can crawl by there and take some other precious infos...

for your copyrights : theres a way : use them in a FLASH movie, this way, people can see them but cant save them to disk, they only can prit the screen..

if you re not familiar with flash, I am, so, if you whish, i can send you an "empty" movie, where you can insert your photos, check my site http://zeeoo.free.fr i can send you the sources and the "how to" (for free)

cheers

[Hognose]

No, I don't think he is an awful person! I've met him, and seen him here and there for many years, but so have a lot of guys. I can't say I personally "know" him: we're not buddies or anything. I guess another way to put what I said, is that he does not suffer fools gladly. I frequently encounter him among the press, so I get to see fools interact with him. It isn't pretty but sometimes they are such fools they don't even know when they have been insulted. He isn't unpleasant to people for no reason. Just don't waste his time.

Sometimes he does things the unconventional way just to be unconventional (his own traveling plane, Boomerang, is an example of this). Sometimes for a reason. Every single thing on SpaceShipOne is there for a reason -- except maybe the sticker that says "keep your hands and feet inside the spacecraft at all times." (this is a common warning on amusement park rides). Every single angle and fillet on Proteus is there for a reason.

cheers

-=K=-

[Victor Duarte]

sorry kevin i didnt want to mean rutan is a bad person, how to say.... maybe a kind of naturally rough one ? i understand better what you mean, that may be funny to see all the bees spinning around him now thats he's known, but they shurely dont know his path until know.. i dont know even more, but as i said, i love this guy.

Latecoere said "acording to my calculus, thats impossible to do, thats why we must do it" , i guess he heard this sentence one day ..

kevin, enjoy the chance you have to be so close to what appears to us like a Grail (the second after Dreyden FC)... and just go on with pictures.. and dont forget your battery :D (D60 is a really good shooter BTW), let us know about your pics..

pleased to read you

[Luc De Keyser]

The Boomerang is not unconventional just to be unconventional. I have read Rutan's reasoning behind this design and it made so much sense, one starts to wonder why everybody else has symmetrical dual props. He is too good a designer to just be freaky.
Luc De Keyser

[Victor Duarte]

right luc, i just regret he is gone on the high end of design..;not a disaster at all but i think this man can give again something to the popular aviation as he did with the EZ..
lets wait... when he ll be a billionaire, i bet he wont stay at the office but will come back to the workshop ;)

thomas.. your link in your profile is mispelled...

cheers

[Hognose]

Luc,

I have to disagree with you. IMHO Burt began with a rejection of symmetry as a concept. It helped that he had two slightly dissimilar engines lying around the shop. It became an exercise to see how far you could take dissymmetry. Absolutely nothing on the airfcraft is symmetrical, no matter where you draw a "centreline" -- but it all balances out.

I think it is good that we don't vote on the language threads are in, or I might be struggling in French or Walloon or something. I think Victor has a lot of languages, like many Europeans. I can read most European languages but don't speak any competently, except English and German.

I did have enough French to understand Victor's website and recommend it to all who want to understand our "awEsome frenchie" with the Portuguese name a little better! I would rather be beaten with sticks than use Flash but Victor uses it well -- once you figure the navigation out.

Victor, as far as Rutan giving something back is concerned: he has always wanted to be back in the homebuilt kit or plans market. The US legal system makes it simply impossible: the laws are written in such a way that the lawyers can loot even the innocent. They usually loot their own clients too. You might be interested in this older interview with Burt.

http://www.airspacemag.com/ASM/Web/TWD/Rutan2.html

Air & Space: If there was a reform in the aircraft design/manufacture liability laws, would you consider starting up again?

Burt Rutan: Yeah, if there was an environment such as I wasn't at risk. If I was not at risk of losing my life savings because I sold a set of plans to someone, I would put out several kits. Absolutely.

Unfortunately, the lawyers are the biggest contributors to our political parties. Even when the politician is not a lawyer, lawyers own him.

The interview is from around the time Proteus was firming up so I would guess, what, late nineties? One of the projects he talks about is a composite fighter. Interesting.

The first page of the interview is here:
http://www.airspacemag.com/ASM/Web/TWD/Rutan.html ...and in it he talks a little about his motivations in designing Boomerang.

cheers

-=K=-

[Hognose]

A company called Morrow Aviation in the Seattle are was going to make a kit of the Boomerang. Then they were going to certify it. Then they were going to build a fleet of them and certify them and fly them as taxis.

Then they were flying regular planes as taxis and not talking about Boomerangs any more. And then they were gone. You can see various versions of the ill-fated firm's website on the Internet Archive wayback machine. (web.archive.org).

Sounds like another example of "two rules for making a small fortune in aviation."

cheers

-=K=-

[Victor Duarte]

thank you kevin,
now i understand the weight of the lawyers, i forgot lawyers is a mass product in US ;) and its arriving here soon .. a drag to some good ideas..alas
i didnt find the page in web.archive.org ..

you re talking about Hughes rules ? ;)

best regards

[Hognose]

To find any site in the Wayback Machine (The name is from a time machine in a cartoon show for kids in the USA in the 1960s):

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://morrowaircraft.com

Just substitute the name of the site you want to check for "Morrow Aircraft" (and maybe that is why you did not find it, because I said Morrow Aviation before). The pages are usually incomplete but they are better than nothing! You can bring back many of your long-lost dead sites like this.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://rotaryrocket.com


Yes, Hughes is a good example of the two rules for making a small fortune in aviation.

(1) start with a large fortune.

(2) know when to stop.

Of course, Hughes wound up crazy as a bedbug.

cheers

-=K=-

[Victor Duarte]

ok kevin, i got it, .webarchive is interesting indeed..

just one thought .. if we could expect better aircrafts, faster, lighter, stealtth, unmanned etc etc , i really didnt expect a private pilot in space before the next half century, it s really amazing that this time, private inventors, non official agencies succeeded in quite no time... it s just like if someone announced you that time-machine works ! thats exiting, it looks like a second aviation-pioneers time.

will space-kits be available ? ;)

best regards