One of These Aircraft is Not Like the Others
SpaceShipOne on the floor beside the Spirit of St. Louis of the National Air & Space Museum. (Credit: National Air & Space Museum)
I posted this photo earlier from the National Air & Space Museum. And it got me thinking. Exactly what do these aircraft have in common? How do they differ?And what does this tell us about flight test and prizes?
So, I dug into things a bit. The results are in the table below.
| Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis |
Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis |
SpaceShipOne | |
| Manufacturer: | Ryan Airlines |
Bell Aircraft | Scaled Composites |
| No. Built: | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| First Flight: | April 28, 1927 | Jan. 25, 1946 | May 20, 2003 |
| Final Flight: | April 30, 1928 | May 12, 1950 |
Oct. 4, 2004 |
| No. of Flights: | 174 (Spirit of St. Louis) | 158 (83 X-1-1, 74 X-1-2, 1 X-1-3) | 14 (6 powered) |
| Total Flight Time: | 489h 28m (Spirit of St. Louis) | ? | 4h 11m 11s |
| Major Milestone: | First solo trans-Atlantic crossing | Broke sound barrier in level flight | First private spaceflight |
| Date of Major Milestone: | May 20-21, 1927 | Oct. 14, 1947 | June 21, 2004 |
| Pilot for Major Milestone: | Charles Lindbergh | Charles Yeager | Mike Melvill |
| Seats: | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Top Speed: | 133 mph | 957 mph (Mach 1.26) | 2,170 mph (Mach 3.09) |
| Service Ceiling: | 16,400 ft | 71,902 ft | 367,360 ft |
| Wingspan: | 46 ft | 28 ft | 16 ft 5 in |
| Height: | 9 ft 10 in | 10 ft | 8 ft 9.6 in |
| Length: | 27 ft 7 in | 30 ft 11 in | 28 feet |
| Loaded Weight: | 2,888 lb | 12,225 lb | 7,920 lb |
| Power Plant: | Wright Whirlwind J-5C | Reaction Motors XLR-11-RM3 | N2O/HTPB SpaceDev hybrid |
| Predecessor: | 1926 Ryan M-2 | None | None |
| Successor(s) & Variant(s): | Ryan B-1 Brougham, Ryan B-7 Brougham, Ryan C-1 Brougham, Ryan B-1X Brougham | X-1A, X-1B, X-1D, X-1E, X-2 | SpaceShipTwo |
| Awards Won: | $25,000 Orteig Prize | Collier Trophy | $10 million Ansari X Prize; Collier Trophy; Iven C. Kincheloe Award |
The most striking figures in the table involve the differences in the number of flights and the flight time. The Spirit of St. Louis had a total of 174 flight before it was retired to the Smithsonian Institution lasting nearly 89.5 hours. Charles Lindbergh’s Orteig Prize-winning flight took 33 hours and 30 minutes out of that total. The aircraft was flown extensively before and after the historic flight from New York to Paris.
Interestingly, an exact copy of the Spirit of St. Louis was built for the Japanese newspaper Mainichi. It apparently had a short operational history. Wikipedia reports it set a number of records in 1928 before a crash put it out of commission for good.
The X-1-1 (Glamorous Glennis) flew 83 flights over four years of operations between 1945 and 1950. The second X-1 flew an additional 74 times, while the third one had a single glide flight before it was destroyed following a captive carry. We don’t have total flight times for the three aircraft.
By contrast, SpaceShipTwo had a mere 14 flights, with six of them being powered by the ship’s hybrid engine. Three of those flights made it into space by flying higher than the 100 km Karman line. The vehicle’s total flight time is just over 4 hours 11 minutes.
This is an extraordinarily short flight test program for an experimental vehicle. Scaled Composites had originally planned to fly it after its 14th flight, which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize. However, financial backer Paul Allen decided ; he decided to ship the spacecraft to the National Air & Space Museum. He was worried that if SpaceShipOne kept flying, someone could get hurt.
The decision to end testing of SpaceShipOne after only six powered flights ended up limiting its value its successor, SpaceShipTwo. Scaled really needed a lot more flights to understand the propulsion system, how the vehicle’s composite structure held up to flight stresses, and a number of other issues.
The Spirit of St. Louis is the only aircraft of the three to have a predecessor, the 1926 Ryan M-2 mail plane. In order to extend the aircraft’s range to 4,000 miles, the wingspan was extended 10 feet and additional changes were made. The aircraft had a number of successors.
SpaceShipOne had the biggest leap to its successor. It was a small three-seat vehicle roughly the size of the X-1. SpaceShipTwo is three times larger, with room for two pilots and six passengers in the back. Engineers have had a difficult time scaling up the hybrid engine for the larger vehicle.
The X-1’s successors included the X-1A, X-1B, X-1D, X-1E and X-2. The X-1E was the rebuilt second X-1 aircraft, which was retired in 1951. The X-1E completed 26 flights between 1955 and 1958.
25 responses to “One of These Aircraft is Not Like the Others”
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Mr. Messier, I think you hit the nail. I feel that VG might have not the resources
to perform the required sophisticated development and test program necessary to
get at the end a safe vehicle [edit: I mean specifically for example, the complete lack of rescue measures, a fact that must be compensated by a very high general realibilty and safety level]. I interpret that in a way that that SS2 program is doomed already.
I sort of think Parabolic Arc is mostly just four bots talking to each other.
One bot keeps publishing variations of the same story and then three other bots hang around the comments section reposting variations of the same comment.
Somebody perform a Turing test on this place.
Sir, my opinion is completely self-sustained and sovereign, furthermore I am always free to critize Mr. Messier if necessary.
Don’t reply to the trolls matt. It just feeds their addiction.
Hey, you’re not Matt’s boss. He can do what he wants.
Three comments, and not a single one that contributed anything to the discussion. A ill-informed rant against Matt & Parabolic Arc, an incorrect claim about why Allen retired SSOne, and now this. If you want to go troll, find another place to do that.
>discussion
lol
Yup, useless as always.
Proving once again that he has nothing to contribute to the discussion, ass-teroid man just keeps shooting blindly. For all anyone knows he’s a paid flake….um, flack. I hear Putin has those, too.
“Ass-teroid”
lol. Alright, I’ll admit that is pretty funny.
“He was worried that if SpaceShipOne kept flying, someone could get hurt.”
Doug, were are you getting that idea from?
Secondly, wow, you jump all over the nation. Have fun.
Paul Allen, who owned SpaceShipOne and actually made the decision, implied it in his autobiography.
http://www.thespacereview.c…
‘As Mike Melvill struggled to keep SpaceShipOne on course during its
ascent on its first suborbital spaceflight on June 21, 2004, Allen
recalled, “I can honestly say that all thoughts of the X Prize vanished.
I kept repeating to myself: I just want him safe on the ground again.”’
“When SpaceShipOne landed on its final flight on October 4, 2004, winning
the X PRIZE, Allen felt a mixture of relief and excitement. “[N]o one
had been hurt; I felt a huge burden lifted,” he writes.”
Thanx
To be fair, that’s not the same thing as saying he was afraid somebody would be hurt if Spaceship One kept flying.
In my opinion, it sounds like he was expressing relief that if went off with only a few hitches and nobody did get hurt, at least during the flight.
Your opinion is wrong, as usual. He was afraid the ship might get destroyed in an accident. I have that on the best authority.
The X-1 as it actually led to developing the technology for supersonic flight. All American and western supersonic aircraft own a debt to it and the series of X vehicles that followed it’s success.
By contrast neither SpaceShipOne nor the Spirit of St. Louis created sustained technological breakthroughs, they merely won much over hyped prizes in what were basically PR stunts.
TBH they had that technology. The transonic XF-86 Sabre flew 2 weeks before Yeager broke the sound barrier. In fact, it’s even quite possible it unofficially broke the sound barrier (in a dive) before X-1. While the F-86 wasn’t supersonic, this aircraft, rather than the rocket powered straight winged X-1, really became the forefather of US supersonic jets.
There are a number of claims that the sound barrier was broken earlier in a dive, including the one for the XP-86 (it didn’t become the XF-86 until after the U.S.A.F. was created later in the month). But the key difference was the X-1’s breaking of the sound barrier was in level flight, was intentional, and was part of a program to systematically study the aerodynamics of transonic flight. That is where the legacy comes from the X-1 and not from other craft that claim to have accidently broken it earlier.
And it’s a key difference, and to bring it around to Doug’s intent in this post, SpaceShipOne did make it into space, but unlike the X-craft it didn’t follow up that achievement with a systematic study of the aerodynamics of the design or propulsion tradeoffs. That is why the delay for SpaceShipTwo has been so long and also possibly a factor in the fatal accidents associated with the development of SpaceShipTwo.
Rutan refused to give SpaceDev and Jim Benson any credit for the SpaceShipOne hybrid motor. He cut ties with SpaceDev and decided to bring the engine development in house. They didn’t really understand what they were dealing with. Three engineers paid the price in 2007. SpaceDev was brought into the program a year later.
Yes, it is really sad how badly they treated him.
I used to know Jim Benson when I lived in San Diego. I remember running into him outside the Scaled Composites hanger after the June 21, 2004 flight. He told me it was good I was able to make it to see SpaceShipOne fly as he didn’t think it would make many more flights. As he noted, a prize is no substitute for a good business model, something I think events afterward have shown.
During the Ansari X Prize winning flight in October 2004, there were people in the crowd with signs saying SSOne Powered by SpaceDev. You could see them in the background during the broadcast, which had everyone but someone from SpaceDev as a guest.
During the 10th anniversary celebration, Rutan took full credit for the engine. It was surprising given how much trouble the engine has caused, but neither Burt nor Peter Diamandis would let reality intrude into the celebration.
They had a whole part of the celebration that dealt with X Prize supporters who had died during the previous 10 years waiting for the era of personal spaceflight to arrive. And they had Branson there to plug SpaceShipTwo. But, not a single mention of the three engineers who died for that dream to come true.
Yes, they really cut him out of the picture even though the prize would not have been won without his propulsion technology. It was also tragic how their arrogance cost three engineers their lives and injured three others. And shameful that they snubbed them in the anniversary show.
But what also goes unsaid is how Sir Richard Branson really bailed out both Burt Rutan and the Ansari X-Prize. If he hadn’t stepped with tons of funding their would have been no SpaceShipTwo. As Paul Allen notes in his autobiography he was basically finished with SpaceShipOne, it was just too dangerous for him, something I think that hit home during the June 21 flight. If you watch the Black Sky documentary you could see the fear that existed in the control room that it was doomed, and the relief when Mike Melville finally got the shuttlecock mechanism locked in place for landing and the chase planes reported SpaceShipOne hadn’t lost any pieces.
If it wasn’t for Sir Richard, I suspect Burt Rutan would have had to shop around for other backers for SpaceShipTwo, and given how much money was needed I don’t think he would have found any. When you think about it the availability of Jim Benson’s engine and the bankrolling of SpaceShipTwo as a loss leader for the Virgin Brand really saved the X-Prize Foundation from ruin.
The larger SpaceShipTwo was Rutan’s idea. If Branson hadn’t gone for it, Rutan would have found someone else to fund it. Space Adventures was interested. Peter Diamandis wanted a piece of the business, but he got outbid.
Both were indeed interested, but its difficult to imagine either one being able to raise the $250-300 million that Richard Branson has spent on it. Likely enough it would have turned out like the Rocket Racing League or Space Adventures’ lunar mission, a burst of PR, many interesting news stories and then a quiet shutdown.
Diamandis interest was thru Space Adventures.