May 2003

Scaled Composites got a mention last month, and I can now show you a picture of the White Knight high-altitude carrier aircraft with the underslung SpaceShipOne in place during a recent test flight. No rockets were fired but the takeoff and landing using White Knight's turbojets went fine, with only minor problems with some spoilers which turned out not to be required anyway. Burt Rutan looks on target to win the X-Prize for the first repeated trip into space by a private craft with this combo. But that prize is US$10 million and he's spending around US$20m on the project. The payback is in adventure tourism, and when that gets going White Knight craft will be launching more people in a month than the entire world has done to date.

To make the commercial part of the venture easier, Burt has done some sensible things. The two craft share the design of much of their control systems, so the jet-powered White Knight can act as a simulator for SpaceShipOne pilots to train on as well as keeping maintenance costs down. It can even act as an astronaut trainer for other craft. Scaled Composites were also kind enough to make this image of SpaceShipOne available. It will be able to take three people of normal size and health. One clever trick it does on re-entry is to flip the tail fins up over the body of the craft, automatically positioning the whole thing in “belly forward” mode without any other pilot input during re-entry. The whole project has been done with as much use of simple, manual controls and inherent stability as possible.

Burt Rutan is not in the habbit of pre-announcing things, so we don't know when the first flight will be yet. When Burt is ready, I guess. Some pundits are suspecting that he'll go for an attempt on the 100^th anniversary of the first powered flight in the US by the Wright Brothers. But that's just a guess.

TransOrbital, my pet satellite launch company, has a bit more news to announce. We've had the test satellite spotted with both telescopes and in exceptional visual conditions with the naked eye. Still no sign of those images I said I'd make. Sorry about that, we'll see what we can do for next month. Still, it's nice to have our craft's orbit independently checked.

Many fishermen in these parts have discovered the advantage of using GPS to relocate a favourite fishing spot. Some “free range gardeners” also allegedly use them to locate well-concealed cash crops in the bush. Oh yes, I think aeroplanes and hikers use them for something or other too. This GPS system currenty consists of only American satellites (image on the right), and Europe has noticed that all is not well in international relations so an alternative GPS system called Galileo has been decided on by the European Space Agency and the European Union. Guess how happy America was.

Their big fear is, of course, that someone who is unfriendly to the US will use the signals to target weapons. As the option of being friendly is out, the strategy of claiming “interference” was used – a bit of a stretch coming from America which deliberately allocated the Russian GPS GLONASS frequencies for other internal uses. Galileo will operate on the same frequency as the US GPS, and so the same basic electronics work for both and America cannot re-allocate the frequency. By having more satellites to pick from and averaging the result across both systems, accuracy can be much improved. Both US and European systems were designed using techniques that minimise interference, and the US have now dropped their opposition on those grounds but maintain a general opposition to what they see as an independent targeting system. But regardless of US opinion, the first of 30 satellites will be launched in 2006 with the complete constellation going in 2008. This gives everyone a nice, long time to build rockets to launch it all, and to get the receivers on the market.

The most recent shuttle disaster still manages to stir up some pretty amazing political wrangling. Among the more dubious moves is a decision by NASA to put the members of the previously independent accident investigators on the NASA payroll. This allows NASA to exploit a legal loophole that allows “federal employees” to conduct their business in private and prevent their findings from becoming a matter of public record.

Of course, being on the receiving end of an additional US$134,000 salary and what amounts to an official licence to cover up won't affect the investigators' impartiality one bit, will it?

There are 13 investigators on the board. Seven of them are serving US millitary officers, so their impartiality is already known. Two are federal transport officials and one is a NASA employee already. Even the head of the American Federation of Scientists is quoted as saying “They perpetrated a trick that I believe is unseemly. They are playing games with the law in order to avoid full disclosure.” together with a note adding that the move damages the principles of open government. So it looks like NASA and the US Government want this over quickly, one way or another. Some – including retired NASA engineers - say that the shuttles are now unsafe with any modifications, but the US cannot lose its manned spaceflight capability for the three or more years it would take to build a replacement system and so the shuttles are likely to be pressed back into service again as soon as possible. I wish the pilots and passengers luck.

NASA Are preparing to launch another couple of Mars rovers in June. One Mars Exploration Rover (MER pictured right) should go up on the 2^nd and the other on the 25^th. Imaginatively named MER-A and MER-B, these are a lot more capable than the cute Sojourner rover that captured the public's imagaination – provided NASA can land them there in one piece on the 4^th and 25^th of January 2004 respectively. ESA Will also launch a Mars probe on the 2^nd of June, the Mars Express orbiter and Beagle 2 lander. Beagle doesn't move but does have a robotic arm. Sojourner could not wander far from its parent craft, but these intelligent rovers may travel up to 40 metres a day. The MERs will not only be examining the ground, but the air, as the cameras can record the progress of weather patterns.

The identical devices will both land near Mars' equator, some distance from where water is suspected to exist. As well as high-grade cameras, these rovers have microscopes and grinders to examine the insides of rock with. For about 3 months the audience is going to be glued to it, whether signs of life are discovered over there or not.

This edition is also on the web, just point your web browser to http://olliver.family.gen.nz.   vik@olliver.family.gen.nz
"It said 'Install Windows 98 or better', so I installed Linux." - anon.

Back to the Launchpad main page http://olliver.family.gen.nz/launchpad