[geeks] Woohoo! SpaceShipOne does it!

[Brian Dunbar]

On Oct 5, 2004, at 11:20 AM, james wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-10-05 at 10:14, Brian Dunbar wrote:
>> On Oct 5, 2004, at 8:14 AM, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>
>>>> From: Kris Kirby <kris at catonic.net>
>>>> Date: 2004/10/05 Tue AM 10:25:19 GMT
>>>> To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>>>> Subject: Re: [geeks] Woohoo! SpaceShipOne does it!
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 4 Oct 2004, Ido Dubrawsky wrote:
>>>>> http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/04/spaceshipone.attempt.cnn/
>>>>> index.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Awesome...makes me think about going back into the Aerospace 
>>>>> field...
>>>>
>>>> Indeed. The Age of Commercial Aerospace will be upon us shortly..
>>>
>>> Apparently, Virgin has licensed the technology, they want to offer
>>> "space travel"...
>
> I assume that this altitude is not beyond the reach of gravity? If the
> ship's systems fail will they return to earth?

Depends on how they fail.  A very bad failure and you'll come back ... 
in small pieces.  If the rocket simply cuts out or stops before the 
burn is complete they still go 'up' just not as far.  It's a 'mere' 
sub-orbital hop - SS1 goes UP and comes BACK like a mortar shell.

>
> And, is this altitude high enough to be usefull for placing small
> satellites in orbit?

Nope - not going fast enough.  At that attitude you could release a 
rocket and _it_ could obtain orbit.  The ASAT weapons the Air Force had 
(or still have?) were lofted that way from an F-15.

~brian