Cloning SpaceShipOne
Posted: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 11:04 AM by Alan Boyle
If you're a fan of SpaceShipOne, the world's first privately developed manned spacecraft, it's pretty hard to beat last year's act at the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wis., when the historic rocket plane was flown in for an appearance on the way to the Smithsonian. But today, AirVenture is unveiling a replica in its Oshkosh museum that can do something the original is no longer able to accomplish.
Don't expect the replica to zoom out of the place where it's hung in the AirVenture Museum to the edge of outer space, like its forebear did back in 2004 to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. But the SpaceShipClone will be able to fold its wings into the "shuttlecock feather" configuration that SpaceShipOne used during its descent.
EAA AirVenture Museum |
SpaceShipOne museum replica assumes the feathered position.
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You can see the folding trick in the images and video offered on
this museum Web page. "They plan to show a SpaceShipOne video every hour that interacts with lights on the replica as it feathers in sync with the video flight footage," spacecraft designer Burt Rutan told me in an e-mail during the
buildup to
today's exhibit dedication.
Rutan regards the "feathering" action of the wings as one of the project's chief innovations, since it made SpaceShipOne's "carefree re-entry" possible. And he'll use the trick again in the next-generation SpaceShipTwo that is due for its rollout a little more than a year from now. A fleet of SpaceShipTwos could start carrying paying passengers into space by 2008 or so.
Rutan said he had hoped the wings could have been folded and unfolded on the original SpaceShipOne in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
"I wanted the NASM in D.C. to feather the real ship on odd years," he wrote, "but they placed it so the tails would hit the Spirit of St. Louis."
To learn more, check out this interactive look at SpaceShipOne's tricks - and take a trip down memory lane via Scaled Composites' Web site and our own "New Space Race" special report.
