Gransee
Flashlight Enthusiast
This is what I did with my monday! (sorry for the poor quality and unedited pics)
Taxi roll out was at about 6:37am. You can see the dawn sun to the left. In fact the sun was a major contender in most of the pictures making it difficult to photograph the vehicles.
The dawn of a new era in space travel:
SS1 in boost phase. Boost starts at about 50,000 feet alititude and burns for about 75 seconds to 250,000 feet. The vehicle then coasted to it's max altitude of about 330,000 feet. Altitude was verified by nearby Edwards AFB tracking station. Several problems during boost phase including some, "loud bangs", buckling, trim problems, etc. In fact, this picture does not show it as well as one of my other pictures but the boost phase was not straight, the vehicle did an S on its way up. Mike had to fight it to keep the vehicle pointed in the right direction. The motor shut off prematurely. This cost them some alitude and they just barely made it. They were just 400ft over their 100km goal. Some fixes and this vehicle will be able to make even higher altitudes. The smaller contrail on the left is either the WhiteKnight mothership or (more likely) the tracking jet (I don't know it's designation but it looked like a black 2 place Alpha jet). I say this because the angle suggests the contrail was too high to be the WK and that position is also optimal for photographing the accent.
SS1 gliding back to the airport. Wing is in conventional configuration at this point. Small propeller chase plane folling to see if they could determine any sign of damage from those loud bangs during accent. Turns out there is some buckling around the nozzle (see pic below) but the vehicle is ok to land.
The triumphant Mike Melvill. Btw, the registration number "328KF" was selected because that is their target altitude.
Sitting on the tail gate of the truck is Paul Allen and Burt Rutan. Rutan is wearing the yellow shirt.
The famous sign.
Larger image of sign photo.
Here's a quick edit of some of my video footage. It was really tough to contend with the sun, follow these small dots without a tripod and contend with a cranky autofocus on my Sony (I finally just stuck it in infinite focus). On glide return, I mistakenly followed the Starship (one of the tracking vechicles) instead of the SS1. On the landing roll I caught up with the right vehicle though.
SS1 Video (wmv, 15.1mb)
Peter
Taxi roll out was at about 6:37am. You can see the dawn sun to the left. In fact the sun was a major contender in most of the pictures making it difficult to photograph the vehicles.
The dawn of a new era in space travel:
SS1 in boost phase. Boost starts at about 50,000 feet alititude and burns for about 75 seconds to 250,000 feet. The vehicle then coasted to it's max altitude of about 330,000 feet. Altitude was verified by nearby Edwards AFB tracking station. Several problems during boost phase including some, "loud bangs", buckling, trim problems, etc. In fact, this picture does not show it as well as one of my other pictures but the boost phase was not straight, the vehicle did an S on its way up. Mike had to fight it to keep the vehicle pointed in the right direction. The motor shut off prematurely. This cost them some alitude and they just barely made it. They were just 400ft over their 100km goal. Some fixes and this vehicle will be able to make even higher altitudes. The smaller contrail on the left is either the WhiteKnight mothership or (more likely) the tracking jet (I don't know it's designation but it looked like a black 2 place Alpha jet). I say this because the angle suggests the contrail was too high to be the WK and that position is also optimal for photographing the accent.
SS1 gliding back to the airport. Wing is in conventional configuration at this point. Small propeller chase plane folling to see if they could determine any sign of damage from those loud bangs during accent. Turns out there is some buckling around the nozzle (see pic below) but the vehicle is ok to land.
The triumphant Mike Melvill. Btw, the registration number "328KF" was selected because that is their target altitude.
Sitting on the tail gate of the truck is Paul Allen and Burt Rutan. Rutan is wearing the yellow shirt.
The famous sign.
Larger image of sign photo.
Here's a quick edit of some of my video footage. It was really tough to contend with the sun, follow these small dots without a tripod and contend with a cranky autofocus on my Sony (I finally just stuck it in infinite focus). On glide return, I mistakenly followed the Starship (one of the tracking vechicles) instead of the SS1. On the landing roll I caught up with the right vehicle though.
SS1 Video (wmv, 15.1mb)
Peter
