Black Sky: Winning the X Prize

This documentary is about the two final flights of the Burt Rutan rocket-plane flights which both broke the 100 km. altitude barrier and thereby won the X-prize. It is a great, exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at events.

The documentary is the sequel to "Black Sky: The Race for Space", which tells the story of the development and test flights of SpaceshipOne. The Discovery Channel film crew that made both documentaries got exclusive access to the project, and it certainly shows that nothing was hidden to them.

Presented in a quick almost music-video-like pace, the documentary doesn't delve into much technical detail, but rather goes for an emotional impact, through the interviews with the protagonists: engineers, pilots, their families and Mr. Rutan himself. With great frankness they discuss their aspirations and fears, and really manage to transmit the entrepreneurial spirit and "frontier" mentality that was the backbone of the project. Also, the fears of the relatives of the test pilots come through in some rather emotional parts of the documentary.

The SpaceshipOne flights looked rather effortless on TV, but here we get to see that, well, it wasn't all that simple to strap a big huge rocket to the back of a man, and propel him into the stratosphere! Cockpit views during flight makes it clear that it took a lot of guts to get into SpaceshipOne, a real pilot's plane with only the minimum of instrumentation to keep it light. There were some harrowing moments during the flights, and it is all told in nail-biting detail.

For an exciting and touching documentary about the SpaceshipOne prize-winning flights, this is the one to watch.

Burt Ruttan was a genius to see the recovery needed no plane or parachute just folding the wing into a feather mode to slow the drag until a subsonic mode and unfolding the wing and a glide to land. Every else thought of heat he knew how to counter that. That's how he won the X prize.

Now that SpaceShip One is a sub-orbital ship with 1 man the need to create a cabin with a low weight material that weights less than steel for a stronger body and wings. Now they need to have better material for the windows they need to have a interior foil material to protect the civilians in space too. All Burt Rutan needs to get that in space by doubling the rockets power, adding computer for calculating GPS mapping and pressurization to make a orbital flight.

I loved how Burt Ruttan made some risks where more were more careful. They thought of the way we recovered past space missions and he took the way that the X-15 and Space Shuttle failed to forget a rocket plane.

NASA should take this idea as a safety recovery for the ISS Space Station and Shuttle in case needed