Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A SpaceShipOne Special!

Episode Date: June 28, 2004

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Join us for the flight of Spaceship One on Planetary Radio. Hello, everyone, and welcome to a special edition of our show. Yes, I was lucky enough to be out there in the Mojave Desert when Mike Melville became an astronaut in Bert Rutan's little spaceship on the morning of June 21st. Stay with us to hear coverage of this historic flight that you won't hear anywhere else. Bruce Betts was there, too, as you'll hear in this week's edition of What's Up. Emily Lakdawalla will be back next week with another great Q&A segment. Covering the flight of Spaceship One may seem a little out of character for Planetary Radio.

After all, we usually talk about missions measured in millions or billions of kilometers, not a measly 100 or 62 miles. But there was no denying that Bert Rutan of Scaled Composites and his benefactor, Paul Allen of Microsoft, were planning to make history. Hundreds of people have flown into space over the last 43 years, but every one of them did so on the tip of a rocket owned by a national government, built by thousands of people, and operated at a cost of, well, a lot of money. This would be something entirely different. Scaled Composites has just 125 employees, and only a fraction of them were hands-on

with Spaceship One and its weirdly beautiful mothership, the White Knight. The entire budget? A little more than $20 million. Pocket change for NASA. Could they do it? I knew I had to be there to find out. Sunday, June 20, 9 p.m. What was I doing wandering among hundreds of RVs parked in the desert? Looking for a party, that's what. But the 60-mile-an-hour wind was making it hard to see and even harder to breathe,

what with the dust and sand blowing in my face. So when I saw a funky-looking old bus among the Winnebago's, I decided to drop in. Maybe some of these veterans of the Burning Man Festival could tell me why they had joined thousands of other enthusiasts hoping to see the first private flight by a human into space. Unfortunately, the wind followed me inside where the revelers were trying to light a patio grill. We're getting blasted with sand through the window here.

Let there be barbecue. This is not a traditional group. I think most of us here were probably born too late to like, there's shuttle launches and stuff like that, but like, from my perspective, I was born in 71, so I remember the tail end of Apollo and like stuff going on, and then it got really quiet. There was other, there's shuttle stuff and whatnot, but I don't really know what kind of people are out here. It's just, this is, we know each other through Burning Man,

but a smaller group of us are in our Space Geeks, so this came up, and we keep in touch enough to know, to read the websites and know what's going on and keep up with the Rutan site and stuff like that, and just decided, yeah, we'll take the day off work, and it's important to see.

So, yeah. And you'll be, what, up on top of the bus tomorrow at 6.30? Yep. Oh, hell yeah. I don't know if we'll sleep between now and then. We'll see. My daughter is here with us right there. She's, you know, got another month cooking in my wife before she comes out.

But this is her first major historical event. This is going to be a fantastic thing to be able to look back on and say, hey, you were there with us and we saw this. How many of you folks would go if you had the shot? I would go. You got a ticket. That's what we're here for. We're going to FaceTime.

That party I was looking for turned out to be on another part of the vast Mojave Airport, soon to become the Mojave Spaceport. It was well underway by the time I got there. The National Space Society and some other friendly groups had pulled three rented RVs into a circle. It helped slow the wind and gave them a great place to turn up the techno beat. Not really my kind of tune, so I caught a few hours of sleep. Monday, June 21st, 4 a.m. The sun wouldn't rise over the Mojave for more than an hour, but there were already as many TV cameras, satellite trucks, and reporters

as I had ever seen at an event. Behind them, farther back from the tarmac, were thousands of hopeful viewers. Some had emerged from their RVs to find that the wind had whistled away. Others had clogged Highway 14 from Los Angeles all night to get here. One of the first people I found was Peter Diamandis, founder and president of the Ansari XPRIZE Foundation. It was Peter who decided to offer a $10 million prize to the first private company that could fly humans just past the edge of space

and do it again within two weeks. Peter, it's 4 o'clock in the morning. It's dark and dirty. This is not even an XPRIZE attempt. What are you doing here? I'm enjoying life. This is America's historic return to space. It's like early days of the shuttle launch. Everybody's gathered. The media trucks are here. There's a buzz in the air. I was coming in on the 14, and I could see the cars starting to line up as L.A.'s space enthusiasts are coming out to Mojave. in the air. I was coming in on the 14th and I could see the car starting to line up as

LA's base enthusiasts are coming out to Mojave. Did you get out to the public area yesterday where all the RVs are? No, I didn't. I actually have been here with a lot of friends at XCOR and just gathering, getting ready for the activities today. Well, there are plenty of people here, but I wanted to tell you because I think you'll be interested in this. I'm sure you've seen them in the distance. There are thousands of people over there who came out, spent the night in what must have been 60 mile an hour winds to see this. That's great. Well, these are the people we're doing it for. You know, it's been

40 years that we have entered space, and the hope and expectation by all of us that we'd have a chance to go has materialized. Well, it's materializing here today in the months ahead as these ships privately designed specifically to carry the public into space are taking flight. And it's appropriate that the public is here. This is their space program. Burr Rutan said that he is not doing this for the prize, although he doesn't mind a bit if he happens to win. He thinks

that's great. But he said that the way, essentially the way you've structured this prize is the right way to do it. And that part of that is that you guys don't interfere. We set a goal. 100 kilometers, three people, twice in two weeks, and then we

have 27 teams taking 27 different approaches. It's sort of Darwinian physics, Darwinian evolution going on in rocket science. And we don't care what solution gets us there. If you can get there in a cardboard box twice in two weeks, 100 kilometers, that's great. And the fact of the matter is we don't know what the best solution is. No one can know that we can't pre-guess it. We shouldn't pre-guess it. So we'll find out.

We have the American Spaceship One team taking flight today, and if all things go well, they could go for the XPRIZE later this summer. We've got at least five other teams building full-scale ships and engines from the American Armadillo Aerospace Team, the two Canadian teams, Canadian Arrow and Da Vinci, the British Star Chaser Team. So it's exciting stuff, and all of us should enjoy these heroes, these visionaries, these dreamers pursuing their aspirations. They're going to pull you away to do the Today Show for the East Coast.

Just one other question. Did you have any idea that this would be as successful as it has turned out? When we kicked this thing off back eight years ago now, we had a hope and a desire, but no real expectations yet. The ships coming out of this are really beautiful, and I wish Bert the best of luck today. Thank you very much, Peter. Now there was nothing to do but wait for the 6.30 a.m. rollout of the White Knight and Spaceship One. I could think back to the press briefing held just 12 hours before. Paul Allen got it started, making sure we knew that this was as much a labor of love

for him as it was for Bert Rutan. Tomorrow, we will attempt to add a new page to the aviation history books. If our attempt is successful, Spaceship One will be the first privately funded spaceship to reach suborbital space. Spaceship One's pilot will also become the first civilian pilot to ever cross the boundary of space in a completely privately funded vehicle. I am extremely proud to be part of what I think is one of the most challenging and rewarding initiatives taking place in the field of aviation and aerospace today. The vision, talent, and entrepreneurial drive of Bert's team and everyone involved in these new private space endeavors will undoubtedly lead to unprecedented successes and many new firsts in the years to come. Then it was Bert Rutan's turn.

His homespun opening may have been calculated to provide good sound bites to all of us in the media, but there was no denying the sincerity of his feelings about this mission into space. Wow. I've been to two goat ropings in a county fair, and I've never seen anything like this. I didn't realize there were this many cameras in Mojave. Are some of you guys from out of town? Clearly there is an enormous pinup hunger to fly in space and not just dream about it. Last night our Discovery documentary film team went out to this field out here about a mile where the public is parking their motorhomes and are gathering to watch tomorrow's flight.

The first motorhome to arrive, I'm told, was Lynn Plank from Oregon. And she told the documentary guys that they are here because she wants her grandchildren to visit Jupiter. And she feels that we're opening the door to someday make that possible. The new private space entrepreneurs, I'm one of them. We do want our children to go to the planets. We are willing to seek breakthroughs by taking risks. And if the business as usual-usual space developers continue their decades-long pace, they will be gazing from the slow lane as we speed into the new space age, this time

not for prestige, but this time to fulfill people's dreams. Yes, we will be doing barnstorming, just like the early airplanes. However, we're heading to orbit sooner than you think. We do not plan to stay in low-Earth orbit for decades, but to enable high adventure and exploration as soon as the new technologies allow. And so, hold on. The next 25 years will be a wild ride. That's my prediction.

One that historians will note that was done for the benefit of everyone. And Paul, I'm delighted to thank you for making that happen. 6.30 a.m. on Monday. The sun had risen. The near-hurricane winds had become a gentle, encouraging breeze, shooting straight down the long runway.

Perfect takeoff conditions, we learned from the folksy play-by-play team on the PA system. When they weren't providing updates or interviewing Kern County supervisors, they would turn up the music, some of which was not exactly what you might have expected. The chase planes took to the air, and then it was time for the White Knight and its human payload to roll by just yards away from me as I sat in the dirt at the edge of the tarmac. There we go. Is that gorgeous or what?

I think that every hair is standing up on the back of my net. And here we have officially, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, launched into a new era of space travel. It took a full hour for White Knight to reach 48,000 feet. All the thousands of us watched as it slowly circled over our heads until only the slowly forming contrail could be seen. Finally, the time came for the rocket to fall away and make its ascent into space. Three, two, one, go.

There it is. Right? That's it. Everyone knew exactly when the mighty rocket engine was lit. Suddenly, a new, much bigger contrail appeared in the sky near the rising sun. This one shocked us by zipping along like a lit trail of gunpowder. Up there, 62-year-old Mike Melville was being pressed back in his seat by 3 Gs of acceleration and downward by another 4 Gs.

Spaceship One was rising almost straight up. The rocket burned its odd combination of rubber and laughing gas for 80 anxious seconds, and then Mike threw a switch, shutting it down. Spaceship One continued to rise toward its goal of 100 kilometers, but now the crushing acceleration was replaced by weightlessness. How he had time to release a bag of M&Ms into the cockpit is unclear, since Spaceship One was experiencing some frightening problems as it rose. Mike would later tell us about the bang he heard,

which may have been when a good-sized dent was knocked in a fairing. We also learned that the rocket's trim controls malfunctioned, forcing him to rely on backup systems to keep it under control. Yet it continued to rise on backup systems to keep it under control. Yet it continued to rise on its ballistic course. And then we heard this announcement. Just confirmed with my boss that we have temporary confirmation that we flew the Spaceship One over 100 kilometers. Okay, do the translation.

100 kilometers, 328,000 feet, 62 miles. 62 miles, a done deal. Wow. Over 100 kilometers. That is beautiful. Now it would take 30 minutes for Spaceship One to glide back to the runway in front of us. 30 minutes for Spaceship One to glide back to the runway in front of us. The first few of those minutes were spent with its stubby wings folded up in the revolutionary feathered re-entry Burt Rutan was so proud of.

At last, we sighted the tiny ship approaching from the south. Push it down. You've got the runway made. Gears down, and here comes Spaceship One. Final glide path. down and here comes spaceship one final glide path and the culmination of a flight nine years in the making 10, 5, keep it coming, 4, 3, 2, nice job. A perfect landing. Woo!

Spaceship 1 recovered on 3-0. There it is, a craft that has been to space and back today right in front of you. It seemed like only moments later that we were treated to a surreal vision. A ship that had just returned from space was being towed by a pickup truck. Some of the scaled composites crew sat on the back of the truck, feet dangling out over the open tailgate. Spaceship One pulled up directly in front of the VIPs and more than 500 media reps, and out popped a brand new astronaut. Too thrilled to wait for a microphone,

Mike Melville began to yell out his reaction to the wild ride, including that experience with some tiny colored candies. What was your first thought? Well, we've got to have videos of that. I haven't ate them. They're in the cockpit. What was your first thought, Mike? I was pretty scared when I heard a big bang back there. But everything seemed to go really well. Finally, he was handed a wireless microphone. Okay, the flight was spectacular, it really was. The view from up there, I was so sad that Bert and Paul couldn't be with me

because looking out of the window and seeing this white clouds over the L.A. basin just looked like snow on the ground. And Edwards Air Force Base lake looked about that big. And I know I was 330 or something like that 330,000 feet when I last looked so you know it was a mind blowing experience it really was absolutely an awesome thing

and I'd like to say that to Bert Rutan my best friend in the whole world this could not have been done with such a brilliant brain as this guy's got I gotta tell you guys he thought of this he thought of everything to make it work. And it all worked exactly as he told us. Even when we argued with him

and threw roadblocks in his way, he just drove over us and went to the goal. The colors were pretty staggering from up there. Looking at the earth from up there is, you know, it's almost a religious experience. It's an awesome thing to see. You can see the curvature of the earth from up there is, you know, it's almost a religious experience. It's an awesome thing to see. You can see the curvature of the earth. I could see all the way out, way out past the islands off the coast of Los Angeles,

and I could see all the way up almost to Bishop. I could see way out to the coastline. I could see to San Diego. So you've got a hell of a view from 62 miles. After a few questions and a photo op with Allen and Rutan, Melville climbed up on top of Spaceship One. Straddling the rocket, he rode it back to the hangar behind that pickup truck. Quite a different ride from the one he had taken minutes before, reaching three times the speed of sound. That's faster than the bullet from an M-16 rifle. The only remaining event was a post-flight press conference.

The luckier reporters gathered in an auditorium. The rest of us stood under a hot tent watching TV monitors as Paul Allen, Mike Melville, and Bert Rutan answered question after question. Among other things, we were told there would not be an XPRIZE attempt until the problems were solved, but there was confidence they would be solved. It seems fair to give Rutan, the visionary, the last word. He continues to keep his precise plans to himself, but here's what he had to say about the era of public spaceflight he may have ushered us into.

to say about the era of public spaceflight he may have ushered us into. Orbital space tourism makes sense to fly in a vehicle where you stay in it for your vacation because it has to be small and cramped. So you go to a resort hotel in orbit is what you do, and you build something small and cramped so that it's cheap so you can get there. But suborbital, you can't do that. You can't put a hotel up there and visit it because you fall right back down. A transfer van is needed for orbital space tourism, but a transfer van will not work for suborbital space tourism. Now, what that means for suborbital space tourism, you have got to give everyone a large window, and you've got to

get his face close to it, and you've got to give him a lot of and you've got to get his face close to it and you've got to give him a lot of room. And I particularly feel that 100 kilometers is not good. You've got to go to 150 to give them time to unstrap and float around. I'm not a business guy, but I've run some numbers and I really think it needs to have, you know, at least five, maybe six seats. A less down-to-earth Bert Rutan also told us who he really built Spaceship One for, the children of the 21st century,

children who have a right to be as inspired as their parents were by a span of eight years in the 1960s that took us from Earth to the moon, children who will take us to Mars and beyond. I'm Matt Kaplan for Planetary Radio. I'll be right back with Bruce Betts and What's Up. Time once again for What's Up on Planetary Radio with the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, Bruce Betts. He joins me here every week for this segment, but he also joined me in the desert,

in the Mojave, at the launch of Spaceship One. You were out there, and you could see me at one point, but I couldn't see you. Yes, I could see you when you went and climbed up on Spaceship One right before the security dragged you off. It was worth it. It was much easier to see you. I was actually back in the crowd. It was worth it, I'm telling you. It was worth it. It was much easier to see you. I was actually back in the crowd. It was worth it, I'm telling you. It was worth it. Did you get an M&M? Yeah.

No. He was trying for an M&M. They melted. I was very disappointed. It was exciting. It was fun. And, yes, the M&M reference to Mike Melville, the new astronaut, civilian astronaut, letting go with some M&Ms up in zero G. Very cool. Now, it is unclear.

I guess maybe you did learn something with the melt-up, because my impression was that it was unclear whether zero-g had affected the M&M's ability to melt in his mouth but not in his hands. I think that's important research that the Mars company needs to, the appropriately named Mars company, needs to conduct. More cool data from Cassini coming back on Phoebe, and indeed Phoebe, that outer moon of Saturn that Cassini flew by recently, turns out looks like it is indeed from the outer solar system, having formed farther out, being captured, has layering, has ice and rock layer. They see carbon dioxide ice, not something you see in any random asteroid anyway,

but it has a higher density than the other kind of icy moons of Saturn. So some neat stuff. Again, we've got a whole Saturn section going on. Regular updates, planetary.org slash Saturn. Saturn orbit insertion after a seven-year voyage going into orbit around Saturn on June 30th or July 1st, depending on your time zone in the world,

and actually passing through the rings twice, down and up through the rings. Should be a lot of really neat, fabulous data, cool stuff. But what can you go out and look at in the night sky? What can I? Well, right now, Jupiter's the easiest thing in the evening sky. Go out there. It looks like the brightest star-like object out there in the west after sunset. Also, if you have a nice clear shot at the western horizon and you look shortly after sunset,

Mercury has popped its pretty little head up in the west-northwest, and a little above it is the much dimmer Mars. Mercury is sort of Kilroy-like, just peeking up over the horizon. Yes, indeed. If you look carefully, you can see Mercury's hands on either side of Mars. Now, I was... That's not actually true. I was out, of course, in the desert.

Oh, we mentioned this, didn't we? But anyway, I was out there at 3... Why were you out there, Matt? Well, at 3.45 in the morning, and I'm pretty sure I was looking at Venus. Yes, you were, Matt. In fact, I never thought I would see Venus before dawn. It was kind of my goal not to. But in order to see the launch, I, too, saw Venus looking spectacular.

So if you are out there before dawn, look over there in the east. Venus, by far the brightest star-like object over there, looking pretty across the barren, windy desert. Let's move on. this week in space history you probably remember this one matt i know that you were hiking around europe and asia at this time june 30th 1908 wait a minute yeah okayuska impact, a comet-like beast slammed into the atmosphere. Airburst explosion leveled trees for miles in Siberia. The last time we had a really good, powerful impact on Earth that did some damage. Killed some critters and leveled a lot of trees fortunately not a populated area wasn't the high season for tourism either so i guess that

helped tunguska siberia no so anyway um random space back since we did the uh spaceship one launch it was so exciting it reminded me of one of the other types of forays into space from the late 50s and 60s, the X-15 program that also was dropped from an aircraft and then powered its way up into the region's considered space by many. My random space fact is on the X-15, it actually had the first flights that went to Mach 4, Mach 5, and Mach 6. And still, to this day, holds the record for the fastest aircraft flight in history at Mach 6.7, 4,520 miles per hour, as well as still holding just barely the highest flight by winged aircraft other than the space shuttle to 354,200 feet. I loved the X-15.

I was just in love with it. Such a cool plane. It sure was. Let's go on to trivia, huh? All right, trivia. Last week we asked you, in honor of someone that we had met at Legoland, at our little venue last week, who was the commander of the first space shuttle mission that included a Russian cosmonaut.

Who is the commander of that mission, and how did we do, Matt? We did very well, and our winner is one of our regulars. You guys who enter every week and you think, oh, they're never going to pick me because I won before. Well, let's disprove that right now. Dominic Turley. Dominic from Victoria, British Columbia. I won, I think, last December was the best I could tell. Won one of our calendars.

But now he's going to go home with a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Why? Because he said Charles F. Bolden was the commander of STS-60 Discovery that included cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. Indeed. And I had the pleasure of meeting General Bolden. He was right next to your booth at Legoland. And did some really cool sound effects, which I can't possibly recreate of what it sounds

like inside the space shuttle during launch. Are you serious? I am serious. We'll have to get him on the radio. You will have to. Okay. Very, very cool. I'm going to write that down. How about for next week? We're beginning to run short of time. Alright, next week, trivia contest. Who made the X-15? Specifically, the prime contractor, Aerospace Company.

We're not looking for the names of all the individuals. Who made the X-15? And you can go to planetary.org slash radio and enter our contest. Win the fabulous and glorious Planetary Radio T-shirt. If I didn't already have a T-shirt, I'd answer that because I know. But you get your entry into us. We finally gave have a T-shirt, I'd answer that because I know. But you get your entry into us. We finally gave Matt a T-shirt. You need to get that into us by Thursday.

What's that going to be? July 1. Thursday, July 1 at noon so that you can be properly considered for that T-shirt in this week's trivia contest. All right. Are we done? Yes. All right, everyone. Look up in the night sky and think about the giant squid and those big, giant eyeballs.

Thank you. Good night. Well, that was not Captain Nemo. It was Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week here on What's Up. Join us next week as we return to deep space for the arrival of Cassini-Huygens at Saturn. Have a great week.