"Prof. Langley's Flying Machine"

Continuing my little research project to see how often inventions profiled in Popular Science pan out over the years, I've just received this copy of the July 1896 issue.

Wow. Looks more like a newspaper than what we would think of as a magazine, and a low-budget one at that. Something like a high school newspaper.

But, amazingly enough, it's still recognizably the same magazine I write for today. Same entertaining mix of articles about science and technology, peppered with ads for gizmos and remedies.

My favorite article of the bunch is the one called "Prof. Langley's Flying Machine." No byline given, though the entire issue is copyright 1896 by Benj. Lillard. Perhaps he wrote all 32 pages?

"The daily press has recently contained accounts of a very successful trial of the model of an aerodrome or so-called 'flying machine,' invented by Prof. S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. As is well known Prof. Langley has been quietly studying the problem of aerial navigation for some time. His present machine is only a model, though a very large one. No less an authority than Alexander Graham Bell has given his signature to the statement that 'No one could have witnessed these experiments without being convinced that the practibility of mechanical flight had been demonstrated.' Prof. Langley, in giving details of the aerodrome, says that it needs no gas to lift it, and that the power is derived from a steam engine through the means of propellers."

The steam-powered aerodrome weighed 24 pounds, according to the article, had a wing span of 14 feet, was made of steel, and flew for about half a mile.

The man was on the right track, seven years before the Wright Brothers' first powered flight, and Alexander Graham Bell thought it would change the world. "Bell inclines to the idea that within five years this invention will have absolutely changed the face of warfare, will have made armies unnecessary and battle ships so much useless junk."

Check out the Wikipedia entry on Samuel Pierpont Langley.

Rocketplane update

I've just learned that Rocketplane has in fact approached the FAA about their spaceship in progress. I don't know anything beyond that at this point, will let you know when I do.

[sqeak-squeak-squeak]

That's the sound of me backpedaling just a bit. Seems Rocketplane really is serious about following through. I apologize for suggesting otherwise.

I remain skeptical about the company's plan, but I'd like to be proven wrong. I say a good healthy dose of skepticism never hurt anyone about to climb into a commercial spaceship fueled with explosive liquids. Keep the feedback coming....

Virgin Galactic vs. Rocketplane

So two spaceship companies plan to build suborbital tourist ships in the coming year. A Virgin Atlantic Airways offshoot, Virgin Galactic, and Oklahoma startup Rocketplane Ltd. both plan to offer tourist flights to space for about $200,000.

Okay, so I have 200 gs burning a hole in my pocket and I want to go to space. Who do I go with? Well, let me break it down with some info I've gathered in interviews with people from both companies:

Virgin Galatic
Ticket price: $200,000
Launch date: first tourist flights scheduled for 2008

Rocketplane
Ticket price: $192,000
Launch date: first tourist flights scheduled for 2007

At first glance, looks like Rocketplane will get me there sooner for less money. Cool. Maybe I should go with them. But let's dig a little deeper.

Virgin Galactic
Personnel: executives, pilots, and other folks drawn from Virgin Atlantic Airways, a successful airline for 21 years
Technology: brand-new spaceships built by Scaled Composites, the company that sent the first (and so far the only) privately funded astronauts into space

Rocketplane
Personnel: head engineer is a 30-year veteran of Lockheed's famous Skunk Works division, known for its innovative approach to aerospace design; chief test pilot is a just-retired NASA astronaut; other personnel drawn from various aerospace businesses
Technology: a used Learjet gutted and fitted with a rocket engine

[insert record scratch here]

Waitasec. A used Learjet? Well, actually just the fuselage and engines, according to that Skunk Works veteran, David Urie. Why? Because it's cheaper than designing a new fuselage from scratch.

The design calls for flying the ship to 20,000 feet on the jets, then lighting the rocket to get to space. It's theoretically possible, according to my contact at MIT's Space Systems Laboratory, Dr. Raymond Sedwick. But it's never been done.

And there's the rub. These guys say they'll fly paying passengers--and not just any paying passengers, but ones able to blow almost a quarter of a million dollars on a what amounts to a fabulously expensive roller coaster ride--in an experimental spacecraft built around a used business jet. Because its cheaper.

And there's more, unfortunately. Turns out the rocket engine is going to be preowned as well, of the highly explosive liquid fuel variety. That's because the built-from-scratch engine they were going to use blew up on the test stand. And something for me to follow up on: a tipster tells me that Rocketplane hasn't approached the FAA about certifying their hot-rodded Learjet--surely a requirement for following through with their business plan.

Which leads me to wonder: just how serious is this company about following through with its business plan? Better find out before you give them any money.

At the very least, arrange for a tour of their hangar and see what they're working with over there. And let me know what you find out; they wouldn't send me any photographs of the work they say is in progress.

In the meantime, I'm putting my money on Virgin Galactic.

Update on 11/14/05
Be sure to hit these two posts for corrections and clarification:

Rocketplane Update

Humbled

"Science Never Stops"

One of my interview subjects for a Popular Science article recently joked that appearing in the magazine was the kiss of death, since, he said, the mag is mostly about crackpot schemes that never come to anything.

I mentioned that to PopSci photographer extraordinaire John Carnett, who's been working for the mag a lot longer than I have. He strenuously disputed my interviewee's claim. In fact, he said, PopSci has done a great job of breaking stories of new technologies and covering their development over the course of decades.

I decided to find out for myself and buy up a stack of back issues on eBay. The May 1947, 75th anniversary issue seemed like a good place to start, since it's a look back as well as forward. There are a few wild ideas in here, to be sure, but I was amazed at how much of it's on track.

Like this artist's concept of a future rocketship in the cover story. Looks uncannily like a certain privately built craft that made headlines last year, doesn't it? And this prediction in the same story, by Harland Manchester:

"Tiny radio receivers and transmitters, with circuits printed instead of wired (see p. 101), will be as common in pockets as fountain pens, with great savings in time, gasoline and shoe leather. In short, everyone may soon become accessible to everyone else...."

The only way Manchester missed the mark in that bold claim was in predicting the longevity of fountain pens! But there's an ad for a pen that "writes on a miniature sphere" on page 53.

And, holy shit, here's a story called "Camera Coughs Out Finished Prints" about an invention by one Edwin H. Land, president of something called the Polaroid Corporation, that not only takes photographs, but develops them in one minute as well. "A model of his camera has been designed for large-scale production," reads a caption, "but plans for it are undisclosed."

Okay, so the story called "Businessman's Radio Fits in a Briefcase" is pretty funny, but it's a project for readers that has to use existing technology.

Now I can't wait to see what other PopSci predictions have come true over the years. I just hope my wife doesn't notice how my initial "just a few" eBay purchases kinda sorta got away from me at some point between the July 1897 issue and, oh my God, all these 1960's issues with space stories actually written by Dr. Wernher von Braun....

XP Cup suggestion box

Just had a very interesting conversation with the X Prize Foundation's Ian Murphy: he wants me to let him know if I have any suggestions for improving next year's X Prize Cup.

It's a great opportunity to have a hand in shaping what will hopefully become the premier event for space enthusiasts. I need some time to mull this one over, but if you have any ideas yourself, especially if you were at this year's Cup, post them here, and I'll pass them on. Or visit www.michaelbelfiore.com to find my address and email me privately.

PopSci XP Cup report

My photos and descriptions of vehicles at the X Prize Cup on October 9 just went up on the Popular Science website. It's the lead on the site for now....

I've just handed in a piece on the coming year in space tourism for the January issue, and I'm at work on a piece about the rocket powered bicycle built by Tim Pickens, president of Orion Aerospace. Popular Science is keeping me pretty busy these days.

I'm also working on what I very much hope will be the final revisions on my proposal for a book about commercial spaceflight. My agent has already sparked strong interest from more than one editor. I'm itching to hit the market as soon as possible, especially since this book proposal has been more than two years in the making.

Stay tuned...

Photos of Starchaser exploding at XP Cup

Well, not exploding exactly, now that I see it close up:

http://flickr.com/photos/robfuel/sets/1136827/

Rob Fuel is the only reporter who managed to get up close to the Starchaser rocket firing that closed the X Prize Cup last Sunday, and he got some amazing photos.

He told me in an email just now that rather than the engine simply blowing up on ignition, as the rest of us reported, the rivets blew off of the engine's backing. The engine actually fired normally for a second or two before flames erupted in all the wrong places.

Rocket Low Rider

I found this year's X Prize Cup to be something of a disappointment, more about hype than substance. And it didn't help that food was in short supply on the ground, as attested to by an attendee quoted in a report for the Las Cruces newspaper. I'm all about food at events. Feed me well and I'm happy. If there isn't good food, well....

However, schemes are already trickling in for next year's Cup that should make it more exciting.

For instance, Tim Pickens, president of Orion Propulsion tells me he's hatching plans for a rocket powered low rider pick up truck.

Here he is with Orion engineer Angie Fulmer at the Orion booth at the space symposium held in Las Cruces just before the X Prize Cup last weekend.

"You take a truck," Pickens told me as I snapped this picture. "You don't do anything to it. It's just a nice ride you buy from some teenager. They put all their money in it, and now it's a low-rider."

Then you bolt a 2,000 pound thrust hybrid rocket engine fueled by nitrous oxide and asphalt into the truck bed. Most of the time you hide the rocket engine behind the tailgate.

But when you pull up to a red light next to "some smart-Alec with a thumpin and bumpin" sound system, you can drop the tail gate and "you say 'I got your noise right here!'" and boom! light that thing up and blast off down the road in the world's most powerful drag racer.

Pickens wants to show up at the next X Prize Cup in the rocket rider with Fulmer behind the wheel to help turn heads, and then do some rocket demos everyone can relate to. Now, that I'd like to see.

There's a serious purpose behind Pickens's fun. "What it will do," says Pickens, "is it'll show the inherent safety of hybrids." Not to mention get people thinking about how they can get their own rocket to ride in. And isn't that what a rocket expo should be all about?

X Prize Cup live blog

4:36
Starchaser's rocket engine just blew up. We heard a big "pop" out here, and then instead of the nice 20-foot plume we'd been promised, we got a huge fireball, and a rolling cloud of black smoke. Starchaser CEO Steve Bennett, then on the stage narrating said, when asked what we'd just seen: Well, we thought we give the X Prize Cup a grand finish by blowing up our engine.

So ends the first annual X Prize Cup. Hoo boy.

4:18
Searfoss just made another run. Getting details now on what went wrong with Armadillo. Carmack talking now on the stage. Says everything went smoothly; the rocket's control system kept the thins steady even in winds that have forced the scrubbing of Tripoli's planned model rocket flights. But the Armadillo rocket set down just slightly off center from where it lifted off on a piece of steel plate that served as launch pad. One leg came down on the pad, the other three set down in the mud that had formed from all the rain last night. The craft tipped over, and, as it turned out, cracked a high pressure blabididy blah something.

I tell ya, my head is getting baked out here. Not used to this blazing desert sun. Mouth parched. The crowd has really thinned out now. Dust blowing across my laptop from the desert. Food all eaten here in the tent, largely, it seems, by people without press badges. "Batches? We don't need no steenkin batches."

Someone prominent in the field who shall remain nameless suggested to me before I came here that this event looked like it was going to be more hype than substance. I'm not sure that this point that he was wrong. Lots of mockups here, very few actual vehicles. And of all the stuff here, only one is actually capable of reaching space, an unmanned rocket by Up Aerospace.

The Up Aerospace guys are standing by themselves next to their rocket. "We should have built something wider," Up Aerospace pres. Jerry Larson told me, as he stood by himself next to his rather slim rocket. "That way I'd have more shade."

Thing is, when you get close to their rocket, you can see that that it's made to fly, not just look cool. The aluminum body is finely machined, smooth, solid to the touch, without rivets or obvious welds. I commented on that to Larson. "Yeah," he said, "that's because it's real."

2:22 p.m.
Armadillo just launched the first of their rocket flights. Turns out we had a pretty sucky view here at the media tent--Starchaser's trailer is in the way. We saw it take off to about 20 feet, translate sideways, and then descend behind the trailer again. What we didn't see was that it tipped over when it landed, fell on its side. I caught a glimpse of it on the video feed we have here, but they didn't give us a reply. I'm going to hit the media stand over by the jumbotron for the next flight, which still going ahead as planned. On the feed I can see that the craft is right side up, ready to go again. Heading over to jumbotron...back in a mo....

1:35 p.m.


1:15 p.m.

Searfoss just made his first EZ Rocket flight. There'll be one more before the day is out. Far as I can see, it went off without a hitch. Just beautiful. Definitely a crowd pleaser. Pretty windy here, but apparently that wasn't a problem.



Greetings from the media tent at the first annual X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I've got a good view of the runway where XCOR's EZ Rocket will take off later, and also a direct shot of the stand where John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace and Steve Bennett's Starchaser will fire their rockets. They're about a half mile from here to comply with FAA regs, but I'll see what I can do with my telephoto.

It rained hard through the night and some of us were seriously worried that the event would be washed out. Happy to report that's not the case, though are a lot of low-lying clouds. Rick Searfoss, who will be flying the EZ Rocket, told me low clouds could be cause to scrub his flight. I'll keep you posted on that.

Everyone's in a great mood here. A cop at the gate told me 10,000 tickets have been sold. The souvenir tent was mobbed immediately when the gates opened. I grabbed a couple of X Prize Cup lapel pins and an Ansari X Prize program from last year--pretty sure this stuff's going to sell out.



Just before the gates opened Brant Sponberg of NASA's Centennial Challenges and Innovative Procurements announced a new partnership with the X Prize Foundation. NASA is planning two new centennial Challenges. These are NASA-awarded prizes inspired by the X Prize. Details are to be forthcoming, but Sponberg told us the basics:

One prize is tentatively called the Suborbital Payload Challenge. It will be a cash prize for a reusable rocket capable of lofting a payload into suborbital space. Sponberg didn't say how high NASA wants it to go, but he said it will be higher than the 100 km altitude of X Prize class vehicles.

The second one will be called the Suborbital Lunar Analog Challenge, for a vertical-take-off-and-landing rocketship that can fly to a to-be-announced velocity. The idea is to develop technologies that would be useful for NASA's planned manned lunar lander. Seems to me Armadillo Aerospace is a shoo-in for that one. Don't know if Carmack and crew have heard about it yet.... I'll pop over to their tent after I post this to find out what they think of it.

All previous centennial Challenges have had cash prizes below $250,000. Sponberg says these two new ones will be for larger amounts, but again he didn't say just how much larger.

Prepping for the X Prize Cup

Greetings from Las Cruces, New Mexico!

The X Prize Cup goes down at the airport here on Sunday, and I'm snapping photos and writing about it for the Popular Science website. Also gathering story ideas for future issues.

XCOR Aerospace's Rich Pournelle invited me to join the XCOR crew on the tarmac today for prep work on their EZ Rocket.



This rocket powered airplane will be flown at the Cup by former shuttle astronaut Rick Searfoss. Since it's the only manned vehicle to be flown at what will become an annual air show for spaceships, it's pretty much the main event as far as I'm concerned.

So it was a no-brainer for me to blow off a press conference held at the same time and take Pournelle up on his invitation. So glad I did, too, because I got to see Searfoss do a practice flight.



I also got to stop by the hanger where John Carmack's Aramadillo Aerospace crew was prepping their vehicle.



Armadillo's vehicle is a 10-foot-tall technology demonstrator for their planned one-man suborbital spaceship, which Carmack says could launch as early as next year.



Very cool stuff, and though I don't know yet what happened at the press conference, I'm sure I had a lot more fun than my colleagues who went to that.

I'm walking something of a fine line here with my blog, since I'm committed to blogging the XP Cup for PopSci.com, and I don't want to scoop my own story.

However, I have a pretty good idea of what my editors at PopSci want, and I think I can reserve that stuff for them and only cover the stuff they don't want here. For instance today's prep work--it'll be old news by the time PopSci posts my stuff for them on Monday, at the earliest.

After I got the PopSci assignment, was planning not to blog here at all, just to play it safe, but XCOR's Dan DeLong told me today that he told the XCOR folks left back home in Mojave to keep an eye on my blog for news from the Cup. I don't want to disappoint! And I don't think anyone else will be blogging from the Cup, so it looks like it's up to me.

Stay tuned!

Rocket Racing League

I wasn't able to get to the press conference after all--too much prep to do before heading to the X Prize Cup on Wednesday. But two of my editors from Popular Science went to the annoucement of Peter Diamandis' latest venture, and I've gotten the scoop from one of them.

Diamandis is starting a rocket racing league, like the Indy Racing League (IRL). The first event will be held next September. Teams will race rocket planes based on the XCOR EZ Rocket design. Races will be held around the U.S., and then the top teams will face off at the Reno Air Races.

Initially XCOR will build 10 rocket racers. My editor tells me that these babies will cost $1 million each, so that will be a nice boost to XCOR's finances. I'll find out more when I see the XCOR folks at the XP Cup.

These rocket racers will not leave the atmosphere. In fact the EZ Rocket's ceiling is 10,000 feet, according to Aleta Jackson at XCOR. Eric says that the rockets can only burn for up to four minutes, though they can start and mid-flght. Once they burn through their fuel, they'll taxi in for a quick, auto-race-style servicing, during which they they'll be refueled.

The significance of this as I see it isn't whether or not these planes will reach space, but that the races will further the technologies needed for safe, routine spaceline operations.

Engines that can start and restart mid-flight, vehicles that can be quickly refueld, not to mention be reused, and are safe enough to operate around crowds--all of this will help the emerging commercial spaceflight industry.

MSNBC's Alan Boyle filed this report after the press conference.

The Rocket Racing League launched its Web site today.