virtual SPACE CADET

FLYING THE SPACESHIPONE SIMULATOR

YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE living in the last hut at the end of the longest dirt road in Tasmania not to know and appreciate what Burt Rutan and his Scaled Composites team have accomplished in their Tier One space program. Fortunately, some of the networks, notably the Discovery Channel, have produced some of the most interesting, technically correct-and, to me, profoundly emotional-coverage seen in years.

So you may ask, what can we, the small editorial staff of a magazine devoted to the aviation adventure contribute to SpaceShipOne (SS1) coverage that hasn't already been detailed by others? How about if we put you at the controls of SS1 and give you a pilot's-eye view of a truly history-making aircraft while we fly the SS1 simulator?

FOR THOSE OF US who are engrossed by sport aviation, it seems as though Burt Rutan has always been there. My involvement with him began in the '70s when he was working for Jim Bede of BD-5 fame in Newton, Kansas. I was sitting in an office with Jim Bede and his test pilot Les Birvin, when a tall, excited guy burst through the door.

"I've got it; I've got it," he said, as he threw some papers and napkins on the desk. It was Burt Rutan, and his energy was so high that had the lights been off, he probably would have given off blue sparks. He had just returned from a trip, but prior to his departure, a casual conversation had taken place about what it would take to keep an airplane in the air indefinitely. While on that trip, Burt's brain wouldn't leave the subject alone, and he came back with tons of thoughts and calculations that, as I remember, involved using photocells to drive electric motors.

Today, 30 years later, Burt Rutan still gives off sparks, and his achievements continue to stack up so that it's obvious that he will eventually be counted among the most important influences in aviation. He and I zigzagged across each other's paths constantly during his odyssey; the same goes for Mike Melvill and his oh-so-patient and brave wife, Sally. For that reason, the Tier One program means a lot to me.

I emailed Burt asking whether I could come out and fly the simulator in an effort to understand the craft Mike and the other Scaled Composite pilots had had to cope with. Hearing them describe what they've done is one thing, but to truly understand it, I felt I needed to sit at the controls and experience it-well, not really experience it, since I'd be sitting in a hangar in the Mojave Desert and not perched on a cone of flaming rubber 62 miles straight up! Burt's immediate response was, "Sure, come on out." And so began my quest to become a virtual astronaut.

First, understand that you can't buy a simulator for a revolutionary form of spacecraft off the shelf. Along with designing and building their own launch aircraft (White Knight), the Scaled team designed and built the simulator, right down to writing all of the required computer code.

I sat for quite a while in White Knight while getting a cockpit checkout from crew chief Steve Losey, so when I crawled into the SS1 simulator, I was at least familiar with its general layout; the two cockpits are practically identical.

The simulator itself is a composite (what else?) "egg" suspended in a web of steel supports. Next to the door is a white line on which is written "If you aren't at least this tall, you can't ride this ride." And above the door, it says, "Keep arms and legs inside the spaceship at all times." Humor has always been key to the Rutan operation.

The seemingly odd arrangement of the windows-dictated as much by structural demands as by ergonomics-gives sight angles probably 10 to 15 degrees on either side of straight ahead; but when you look straight ahead, you see the back of the nose hatch. In fact, in an emergency situation requiring a bailout or other immediate egress, the control panel, or TONU (Tier One Navigation Unit), the rudder pedals and just about everything from the pilot's knees on down is jettisoned, giving free access straight ahead. But, when you're flying, you can't see squat right in front of you.

Having wrestled your way into the centrally mounted pilot's seat, you're struck by the seeming simplicity of everything. You might expect a massive array of system controls and computers, but other than a couple of rudimentary control panels and some switches, including those for launch-arming on the fuselage frame above you, basically, all you have are the stick, the rudders and the rectangular TONU box that sticks up between your legs.

The TONU is the airplane. Every bit of avionics, instrumentation and systems monitoring is in that black box. It's a CRT probably a foot wide by 18 inches high that is split into two pages-top and bottom. The presentation on the top half is the flight-direction system, and the bottom half is a multipage presentation that can be scrolled through to access a wide array of information about what the craft is doing and how the systems are functioning.

The page usually displayed on the bottom during flight is a horizontal situation map that continually shows the craft's position in relation to Mojave (now Space Port) Airport and what the pilot must do to return. Remember, this is a glider, and going around after a bad approach isn't an option. Maybe that's what the "one" in SpaceShipOne means: you get one shot at landing it, so you had better be on the ball.