SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History - Rilegato

Linehan, Dan

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 076033188X ISBN 13: 9780760331880

Casa editrice: Zenith Pr, 2008

Riassunto

In April of 2003, a company called Scaled Composites lifted the veil of secrecy from a longtime research program and introduced SpaceShipOne to the world. And the age of commercial space travel took off . . . like a rocket. This book chronicles the development of the world’s first commercial manned space program--a program that includes an airborne launcher (the White Knight), a space ship (SpaceShipOne), rocket propulsion, avionics, simulator, and full ground support. With ample illustrations, photographs, and behind-the-scenes information, SpaceShipOne provides a full picture of this classified project--from the conception and design to the deals that brought together Scaled Composites’ Burt Rutan and Virgin Airlines’ Sir Richard Branson to the plans for building a fleet of commercial suborbital spaceships and launch aircraft.

The story of SpaceShipOne combines the adventurous spirit of Charles Lindbergh, the entrepreneurial drive of Howard Hughes, and the urgency of the space race at the height of the Cold War. Author Dan Linehan, who was there at the launch, lets readers in on the drama and details behind the making of spaceships that will take twenty-first-century tourists to the final frontier.

Features a never-before-seen cockpit diagram, created especially for this book, identifying all seventy of SpaceShipOne’s instruments and controls.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

On the first line of the acknowledgments page, author Dan Lineham apologizes to'any of my former English teachers who will have heart failure upon hearing that I actually wrote a book' I'm no doctor, but I have read a lot of space and aviation books, and I can say with certainty that all his former teachers are in no medical danger. This is a fantastic book. Really first rate. Glossy pictures throughout supporting excellent in-depth writing that has inside information with plenty of background history. And a foreword by the late Arthur C. Clarke who accurately says this book is'the inside story of how citizens reclaimed space.' It is so exciting to be reading about modern advances in space (by private rebels!), rather than re-hashed history from 40 and 50 years ago. I was worried that the book would be a few press pictures slapped together with a few superficial words covering just a couple of flights; but this is loads of awesome photographs with detailed and balanced writing coming from unique insider access. There is history and breadth with personal commentary from key players. There is detail with logs of all the flights and a full transcript of the Ansari X Prize-winning spaceflight. Overall a real quality production about a real exciting chapter in human history. --Space Magazine

Before it was ever named SpaceShipOne, the world's first private-sector spaceship was designed for a splashdown if necessary. And when the rocket plane and its carrier airplane made a farewell trip to the museum, SpaceShipOne looked so much like a missile that a skittish air controller nearly denied the pilot permission to land.These and other inside stories come to light in a glossy book titled ;SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History.; Aviation and aerospace writer Dan Linehan's 160-page volume is chock-full of photos and diagrams, as you'd expect a coffee-table book to be - but this coffee-table book also contains plot twists that weren't widely known four years ago, when SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize.For that, Linehan needed access to the sometimes-secretive players in the drama - ranging from aerospace guru Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites in Mojave, Calif., to software billionaire Paul Allen, who put more than $25 million into the first-ever privately backed space effort.Linehan begins the story well before the X Prize, with Rutan's rise as an airplane designer who gradually set his sights beyond the atmosphere. Rutan's initial plan was to build a space capsule that would be air-launched from something like his long-winged Proteus airplane, then come back down buoyed by a parachute and shuttlecock-type fins. 'It was on the drawing board in '93,' Linehan told me today.Initially, the capsule was designed to come down over water, so that it would splash down safely even if a helicopter failed to catch it in midair. After analyzing the design, Rutan decided to go instead with a rocket plane capable of gliding to its landing on a runway. However, he stuck with the idea of designing the wings so that the craft was certain to come down in the right orientation, no matter what happened during re-entry.That's why the comparisons to the shuttlecock stuck, even though SpaceShipOne ended up looking nothing a badminton birdie. 'That's really where the term 'feathered flight' came from,'Linehan explained.Linehan traces every one of SpaceShipOne's flights, beginning with the first unpowered tests in the spring of 2003 and climaxing with the three honest-to-goodness spaceflights of 2004. Photos and diagrams show how the design was tweaked along the way, and the book also boasts annotated pictures of the craft's instrument panel. 'That's the first time that all these instruments have been called out,' Linehan said.Rutan had intended to keep SpaceShipOne flying even after the X - --National Space --Go Flying

as we all know, space flight is hideously expensive and only the goverments of very rich countries can undertake such things. But with advanced technology being available to the private sector, and with the right people and money, it has become possible for non-govermental projects to be attempted, albeit in a modest way. The incentive came with the offer of a prize for the first aircraft using only private funding to reach the edge of space. The vehicle had to reach sub-orbital altitude, carry three people, or a pilot and equivalent balance, and return to earth safely and then repeat it within two weeks. This challenged Bert Rutan to design the vehicle and with the help of Doug Shane as test flight director and three test pilots, the race was on. It soon became obvious that it would be cheaper to launch the 'space crsft' from altitude using another aircraft. Thus two machines were designed and built, The space ship's name is of course 'SpaceShipOne' but the carrier plane was named 'White Knight'. This book tells the whole story in great detail, not only of these machines but other designs and aircraft that came out of the Rutan Aircraft Factory. I suppose the most famous of these was the 'Voyageur' that made the first non-stop flight around the world without refueling. Both aircraft are 'out of this world' when it comes to design; the rocket-powered spaceship has booms on each wingtip that contain the tail surfaces. On re-entry this whole are, including the wings, hinges upwards. This movement and purpose is fully described in the text. The carrier is even stranger. It has the same shape fuselage with jet engines mounted on top, very long narrow wings and booms that carry the tail surfaces very much like the 'Voyager'. This book creeps up on you. There is alot more to it that first meets the eye. It tells you just about everything you want to know about this project and as far as I am aware this is the only book that does. If any modeller builds it for a model competition entry I am not sure exactly which category it should be entered in, but it would be fun! If you are into ground-breaking inventions and like your models a little quirky, then this is for you. --Model Aircraft Monthly, March, 2009

This Saturday marks the fourth anniversary of SpaceShipOne s historic suborbital spaceflight. At the time, the flight was widely heralded including in this publication as a major milestone in the history of spaceflight, the event that would help usher in a new era of commercial space travel that would eventually help make humanity a true spacefaring civilization. That hasn t happened, at least not yet: no one has duplicated SpaceShipOne s feat in the four years since that flight into the fringes of space above Mojave, California. Even SpaceShipOne has remained earthbound since winning the $10-million Ansari X Prize in October 2004The fact that no one else has yet managed the right combination of technology, financing, and execution (and, perhaps, luck) only underscores the magnitude of the accomplishment that Scaled Composites made. That achievement has been recognized in a number of ways, from the Ansari X Prize to other awards and honors for the company and its founder, Burt Rutan. SpaceShipOne itself now rests in the Milestones of Flight gallery at the heart of the Smithsonian s National Air and Space Museum, hanging alongside such historic aircraft as The Spirit of St. Louis and the Bell X-1. Yet, SpaceShipOne s achievement four years ago has gone largely unrecognized in the publishing world: only a few books, like Michael Belfiore s Rocketeers have discussed SpaceShipOne in any detail.That has changed, though, with the publication of SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History by Dan Linehan. As the title suggests, the book contains over 200 photos and illustrations, some by the author himself, spanning the development of SpaceShipOne and its series of test flights. Given that, and the book s oversized format, it may be tempting to dismiss the book as little more than a picture book. That would be an error. Linehan backs up the imagery with some solid research into the project as well as the overall emerging commercial spaceflight field. This includes interviews with many of the key players in the project, including Burt Rutan, Paul Allen, Doug Shane, and test pilots Brian Binnie, Mike Melvill, and Pete Siebold. The book s biggest strengths are the chapters devoted to the development of SpaceShipOne and the test flights that followed. In both cases Linehan goes into great detail describing the vehicle s various subsystems and their development, and then the incremental regime of test flights that eventually led to the vehicle s flight into space four years ago. While Linehan does provide some background information he explains, for example, what a hybrid engine is and how it differs from its solid- and liquid-fuel counterparts he dives deep into the technical details behind that and other subsystems on the vehicle. Likewise, while Scaled published flight logs summarizing each test of SpaceShipOne, Linehan goes into much greater detail about each flight, from the early captive carry and glide flights through to the final, prize-winning trip into space. Given that level of detail, it s likely even those people relatively familiar with the SpaceShipOne effort will learn something new about the development and testing of the spacecraft in SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History. (One quibble: parts of the book could have benefitted from an additional round of copyediting to catch typos and other minor errors, like a reference to former NASA administrator Dan Golden .) In time this book will be superseded by other books; there is, for example, one behind-the-scenes account of SpaceShipOne s development yet to be published. And, in time, SpaceShipOne will be superseded by other vehicles, including the SpaceShipTwo that Scaled is developing for Virgin Galactic. Until then, though, there s SpaceShipOne, and Dan Linehan s fine book about it --The Space Review

L'autore:

In 2004, Dan Linehan attended the launch of SpaceShipOne when it captured the Ansari X Prize. A senior science editor for educational publishing companies, he has a background in physics and engineering, and has written numerous articles about aviation and space. Linehan was the editor and principle feature writer for the California International Airshow’s event program from 2003 to 2005. During 2006 and 2007, he spent two months studying wildlife and environmental concerns in Antarctica and its surrounds. Dan lives in Monterey, California.In 2004, Dan Linehan attended the launch of SpaceShipOne when it captured the Ansari X Prize. A senior science editor for educational publishing companies, he has a background in physics and engineering, and has written numerous articles about aviation and space. Linehan was the editor and principle feature writer for the California International Airshow's event program from 2003 to 2005. During 2006 and 2007, he spent two months studying wildlife and environmental concerns in Antarctica and its surrounds. Dan lives in Monterey, California.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Zenith Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• ISBN 10: 076033188X
• ISBN 13: 9780760331880
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 160