Rutan hits 200k feet! Almost there!

In article ,
(Peter Stickney) wrote:

However, granting that - here's the list of altitude flights by X-15
#3 66672, (Which, it should be pointed out, wasn't the ablative coated
X-15A-II 66671.

Date (1963) Elapsed since Altitude Comment
previous flight
18 June 0 Days 223,700' Pilot: Rushworth
27 June 9 Days 285,000 Rushworth, (over 50 miles)
U.S. Astronaut
qualification
19 Jul 22 Days 347,800 Pilot: Walker (Over
100 Km) Intl Atro
qualification
6 Aug 17 Days Abort Weather Abort &
Computer overheat
13 Aug 7 Days Abort APU doesn't start
15 Aug 2 Days Abort weather Abort
22 Aug 7 Days 354,200 Walker: second
Intl Astro Qual

All X-15 operations postponed due to weather for 6 weeks after this
flight.

So, we've got 2 high altitude flights separated by 9 days,

Two-thirds of the height of the max alt flights needed under X-Prize.

What we have is two "qualifying" flights in July/August, separated by a
month, two hardware failures and a couple of weather failures. So, by
your own admission, they couldn't do it.

I'd say that if somebody had really wanted to fly 2 over 100 Km X-15
flights somewhere around 10 days apart, they'd have certainly been
able to do it.

But, in the actual records, they *couldn't*. Computer overheat,
vulnerability to weather, bad APU... nope, they couldn't manage it, even
with the less-stringent "rules" in effect.

If the Rutan craft doesn't manage to do the two flights in two weeks
because of some weather issues, will you argue that they could have done
it?

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