SpaceShip one goes to pluto

[dragon]

Well looks like spaceship one will be the first civilian ship to go beyond the moon, at least part of it.

December 20

Pluto Mission to Carry Piece of SpaceShipOne

The January liftoff of the New Horizons spacecraft bound for Pluto is toting a number of items, including a U.S. flag, as well as a compact disc containing more than 430,000 names.

But at a NASA New Horizons press briefing held December 19, mission officials played it coy in responding to a reporter’s question to be a bit more specific on other objects that might be onboard. That information is to come after departure of the spacecraft.

One of those mystery items to be hauled to Pluto is a piece of SpaceShipOne, the pioneering suborbital rocket plane that made repeat trips to the edge of space in 2004. The milestone-making piloted vehicle is now part of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum collection on public display in Washington, D.C.

Word about the piece of space plane making the voyage to Pluto came last month via SpaceShipOne’s chief designer, Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.

“New Horizons…has a piece of carbon fiber from SpaceShipOne and it’s going to Pluto…which is kinda cool,” Rutan told reporters November 12 prior to a gala honoring the aerospace pioneer held at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado.

http://www.space.com/astronotes/astronotes.html

[LadyTevar]

Oddly enough, Nitram and I happened to see SpaceShip One hanging in the Smithsonian this week!

The ship was TINY! It was barely as big as the "Spirit of St. Louis"! And the poor thing had been thru the ringer, there were scratch-marks and rubbed paint all along the body, and the engine nozzle had a HUGE dint in the bottom of it!

[dragon]

Oddly enough, Nitram and I happened to see SpaceShip One hanging in the Smithsonian this week!

The ship was TINY! It was barely as big as the "Spirit of St. Louis"! And the poor thing had been thru the ringer, there were scratch-marks and rubbed paint all along the body, and the engine nozzle had a HUGE dint in the bottom of it!

Lucky guys I would loved to have seen it. Even though its amazing that a cilivan company could make something that small do what it did for as much as it cost. I beat NASA couldn't have done it so cheap.

[Uraniun235]

I wouldn't fault NASA engineering for that so much as NASA administration. NASA has accumulated a titanic amount of red tape over the years (a lot of it from the Shuttle program and it's insane maintenance requirements) to the point where a billion dollars is spent every year just on the thousands of people whose job it is to check and quadruple-check each and every Shuttle part.