Design
The design concept is to air launch a three-person piloted spacecraft which climbs to slightly above 100 km (62 mi) altitude using a hybrid rocket motor and then glides to the ground and lands horizontally. Scaled Composites lists the following components of the program:
- launch aircraft (White Knight)
- three-seater human-rated spacecraft (SpaceShipOne)
- hybrid rocket propulsion system
- mobile propulsion test facility
- flight simulator
- inertial-nav flight director
- mobile mission control center
- spacecraft systems
- pilot training program
- flight test program
Read more about this topic: Scaled Composites Tier One
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black—
nor white either—and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)