Canadian rocket team readies for space
July 15 - Canada's Brian Feeney says his Da Vinci Project staff is ready to challenge SpaceShipOne for the Ansari X-Prize and expects to roll out his more conventional-looking rocket (compared to aircraft-like SpaceShipOne) the first week of August. Feeney, who has aerospace and rocket design experience, plans to ride the rocket himself when it lifts off from Saskatchewan later this year. The rocket is powered by laughing gas and paraffin and is launched from a helium-filled balloon after reaching 80,000 feet.
SpaceShipOne to try for space prize
July 14 - Scaled Composites officials say they have found out what caused the trim problem and are ready to make a try this fall for the $10 million Ansari X Prize that goes to the rocket team reaching the edge of space twice in two weeks. Look for an official announcement at Oshkosh concerning the team of Paul Allen, who funds the project, and Scaled Composites. SpaceShipOne will fly with one pilot and lead ballast representing the weight of two additional 198.4-pound people and make the flight to 100 kilometers (62.1 statute miles) twice in a two-week period. The trim problem wasn't really a problem, Scaled Composites officials discovered. A left and right roll due to wind shear got SpaceShipOne off its proper pitch profile, called the pitch schedule. To get the craft back on the proper path, full trim was used that ran the pitch tab against the stops, causing an automatic
3-second time-out. After that it would have worked normally, but ground controllers, thinking it had failed, went to a backup system. In fact it had worked as designed.