Oral Presentation: SpaceShipOne

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SpaceShipOne Revolutionizing Space Tourism Outline • What is SpaceShipOne? • History • How does SpaceShipOne work? • Beyond SpaceShipOne The First Non-Government Manned Spacecraft Three-person vehicle for suborbital spaceflight Designed by Scaled Composites, a company founded by aerospace engineer Burt Rutan Funded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft 1996 - Concept design work and some preliminary development April 2001 - Full development program began in secrecy April 1, 2004 - Scaled Composites received the first license for sub-orbital rocket flights June 21, 2004 - First spaceflight October 4, 2004 - Won the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE White Knight carries SpaceShipOne to about 15,000 meters above the Earth. Accelerate almost vertically at 3 g’s. More than 100 km above the Earth. Speed: 3000 km/h Weightlessness The ship's empennage converts (using pneumatic-actuated 'feather') to a stable, high-drag shape 5 or 6 g's of deceleration Parabolic trajectory Turns into a glider at about 16,000 metres above the Earth. Touchdown at 145 km/h. SpaceShipOne now hangs at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group of companies and Burt Rutan are teaming up to create the world's first civilian passenger spaceliner Virgin Galactic, the company that will offer the flights, will launch them from spaceports in the New Mexico desert May begin commercial flights in 2009 Twice the size of SpaceShipOne Can carry six paying customers and two pilots © 2008 WJ. Revised: 2 Dec 2008.

Those were the PowerPoint slides I used in my oral presentation about "an exciting new invention" yesterday during my English class.

I know I had left this blog idle for more than half a month, so hopefully I can provide you with more updates during this long weekend. We will have an extra holiday this Friday to commemorate the death of one of our fellow students from Nottingham University - he was brutally assaulted by a group of parang-wielding men just a few kilometers away from our campus (read more here). May his soul rest in peace.