The maiden solo flight of the privately-built SpaceShipTwo on October 10 moves forward the day of passenger travel to the suborbital heights. That date marked the successful completion of the first piloted free flight of SpaceShipTwo, named the VSS Enterprise.
“We at Scaled look forward to an aggressive flight test schedule,” said noted aerospace designer, Burt Rutan, who founded the Mojave, California –based Scaled Composites in 1982.
“The fun started on 10/10/10 and will continue as we reach our goal of passing onto our customer a spaceship capable to provide the space experience to thousands of adventurers,” Rutan explained in a recent communiqué to this reporter.
Rutan underscored the milestone first glide test of SpaceShipTwo, released at 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) from the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft.
During its first flight, the spaceship was piloted by Pete Siebold, assisted by Mike Alsbury as co-pilot. The two main goals of the flight were to carry out a clean release of the spaceship from its mothership and for the pilots to free fly and glide back and land at Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
The WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo launch system is being built by Scaled for Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceliner company.
Right out of the box
Rutan spread the kudos around to the Scaled team that is dedicated to making suborbital space tourism a reality.
“Configuration/aerodynamic designer, Jim Tighe got it right the first time,” Rutan said. “Our spaceship demonstrated impressive flying qualities right out of the box. Its flight test-measured stability and gliding performance [that] exceeded the pre-flight predictions.”
Systems that usually require post-first flight tweaking, like the unique Michael Fuchs-designed landing gear and the flight-director/avionics system, developed by the Pete Kalogiannis-led team, performed to perfection, Rutan said.
The flight control, electrical, pneumatic, environmental control system and launch systems “were also flawless on the first flight, giving us confidence that we can move forward with the testing without major modifications,” Rutan added. “Scot Story’s team also deserves kudos for their work to develop a light, robust all-composite airframe structure.”
Pushing beyond to the final frontier
Flown by both pilot Pete Siebold and co-pilot Mike Alsbury on the first flight, the test crew opened up two thirds of SpaceShipTwo’s required subsonic speed envelope, maneuvered it above 2-g’s, checked its dynamic and sideslip handling, exercised its flight-path control system “and made a perfect landing…spot-on the runway target,” Rutan pointed out.
Lastly, Rutan congratulated project lead Matt Stinemetze, mission control lead Brian Binnie and their team of engineers as well as Crew Chief Steve Losey and his team of fabricators who built and maintain the first commercial manned space system. “There is not a better group of research and flight test talent in the world,” he concluded.
Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group,was present during the first successful flight.
“This was one of the most exciting days in the whole history of Virgin. For the first time since we seriously began the project in 2004, I watched the world’s first manned commercial spaceship landing on the runway at Mojave Air and Space Port and it was a great moment,” Branson said. “Now, the sky is no longer the limit and we will begin the process of pushing beyond to the final frontier of space itself over the next year.”
To view a video of the first glide flight of SpaceShipTwo, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUVe3a496Y
By Leonard David