Rutan To Embrace Space, He's "Finished With Airplanes For A While"

The guy who put Mojave, CA, on the map, SpaceShipOne into the history books, and himself at the top of the list as the most-admired airplane designer in decades, says the time has come to move beyond all of the above. In recent candid talks including a recent wide-ranging interview with well-known space writer Irene Mona Klotz and a December 20th interview with George Nemiroff, Burt Rutan says that Mojave won't be the only spaceport for the coming project, that it won't -- it can't -- look like SpaceShipOne, and that he is finished with airplanes for the time being.

SpaceShipTwo Design

Despite widespread speculation that the design for the new ship, intended to fly space tourists for Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic spaceline, Rutan implied that he was still in the early phases of conceptual design of the new ship. The shoulder-wing layout of the original SpaceShip is out, as it contributed to the stability problems of that craft. Rutan described these problems as "roll coupling" in an October press conference, explaining that rudder inputs at speed --SpaceShipOne approaches Mach 4 in climb and re-entry -- could produce an unintended roll like the one that bedeviled astronaut Mike Melvill on the initial X-Prize qualification flight, "X1."

SpaceShipTwo will be a larger plane, with room for up to eight paying passengers, and the passengers will have more comfort and more room than the two passenger couches in SpaceShipOne -- which have never been filled with anything but ballast. Rutan compares the cabin diameter to the Gulfstream V, a trendsetter among business jets (the G-V cabin is about a foot and a half larger in diameter than SpaceShipOne). SpaceShipTwo will fly longer, and higher -- as high as 87 miles, which would be a new record for spaceplanes (the current record, 367,442 ft (69.6 miles) is unofficially held by Brian Binnie in SpaceShipOne; the FAI is still working on Mike Melvill's June 21 flight, 281,300 ft or 53.27 miles). To make it to higher altitudes, the boost phase will be longer, and passengers and crew will experience greater acceleration forces -- up to 6 G.

The schedule that Rutan has set out for his team is extremely aggressive. In his December 20th interview with George Nemiroff, he said: "We will be flying within about two and a half years or so. I think it will be certified and actually in commercial operation in about four years."

So What About SpaceShipOne?

It's retired, and it's going to be in the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall in Washington. Rutan told Nemiroff, "[E]veryone in the world wants to fly on it because it's the only operable, private manned spacecraft. However, Paul [Allen] feels that it needs to be preserved for the Air and Space Museum.... So, I don't think we're still debating it; it probably will not be flown again. I think we'll move on and our future space flying will be done with SpaceShipTwo instead of SpaceshipOne."

The five requests to fly payloads that have come in are gratefully acknowledged, but they're going to have to wait. At least there will be no question about the significance and authenticity of this pioneer craft (the Wright Flyer was displayed in London by an outraged Orville Wright when the Smithsonian gave credit for the first flight to the Institution's own Dr. Samuel P. Langley. Only after World War II, when the Museum relented and acknowledged the Wrights' primacy did the Flyer, which is acknowledged to be only partly made of original parts, return to the USA). The SpaceShipOne that is going into the museum is indeed the very first private machine that carried its human pilot across the Von Karman line (100km) into space.

The immediate retirement of the SpaceShipOne vehicle is news, as in October Rutan was intent that the spaceplane would fly again, as part of the Virgin Galactic/SpaceShipTwo development program. He had already turned down requests to fly scientific payloads in the craft, believing that any further flights should be targeted towards the objective of future passenger operations.

Implications

Some things have not been stated, but are implied in those that have been. A SpaceShipTwo with eight or nine seats, higher altitudes, and longer burn durations is going to be a significantly larger, heavier spacecraft, perhaps three to four times the size, and presumably weight, of SpaceShipOne. The current launch vehicle, White Knight, does not seem to have the scalability to launch a machine of that size, so Rutan must be designing a new launch platform, or radically redesigning White Knight, as well as working on the space vehicle.

Further, in her carefully-worded article, Klotz writes that Branson's ships will be "based on" SpaceShipTwo. The implication is that Mojave Aerospace Ventures will produce one or more prototypes before the short series production run is done.

What About Mojave?

In November, both Rutan and Branson were clearly saying that Mojave was going to be the spaceport for Virgin Galactic. Now, Rutan doesn't say Mojave is out as a spaceport, but he isn't granting exclusivity either: "Mojave is not going to be the only place in the world where there will be a place to buy tickets and fly a spaceflight." Does this presage a move to operate on multiple continents, perhaps? Or is it an attempt to make Mojave compete for the business (as the X-Prize Cup was, for practical purposes, put out to bid?) Or is Rutan simply making a prediction? This is getting as complicated as watching Brezhnev in the bad old days. Fortunately, Rutan's intentions are considerably more benign.

What Will A Flight Be Like?

So far, the people who have been enthusiastic about shelling out $200,000 for a space flight haven't been too picky about their accommodations. Sir Richard Branson, of course, built his airline's reputation on its high-touch Upper Class service, and SpaceShipTwo will have plenty of passenger room, with reclining couches to help passengers -- even elderly, frail passengers -- handle G-forces. There will also be plenty of amenities -- the service is promised to meet or beat Virgin's Upper Class standards. Rutan had never flown Upper Class before his trip to London to participate in Sir Richard's announcement of Virgin Galactic, and he was very impressed with the service. But when he talks about his joint venture with the British entrepreneur, he can't help being most excited about the very idea of flying in space.

"Instead of shoulder harnesses and tight seatbelts we want this roller coaster-type bar that you fold out of the way and you can float around," Rutan told Klotz, describing a free-flight experience that will be as unrestricted as possible. "This experience is going to have very few restrictions... because [people] are doing it for fun and every person has a different idea of what fun is."

Maybe that explains why he, and Branson, have already signed up -- and not just for themselves: each has also reserved a seat for his father. I guess that's a pretty good expression of confidence in the program.

After all, Rutan has already said, if a flight was risky, he could be safer and crew it with "a lawyer. Or a liberal."

FMI: www.scaled.com