Slashdot Mirror
Pizza Hut's Space Program: First Launch
Legion303 writes: "This details the Pizza Hut-funded rocket that was sent up. Good first step in the privatization of spaceflight, although PH wouldn't have been my first choice of companies ..." The original plan was to be up last November, then last February, but better late than mis-delivered, I guess. Here's the original story hemos posted way back when. 500 million viewers is a lot of delivery business ...
The Proton uses hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants, which inherently don't create any smoke, and very little light. The Shuttle's SRBs burn rubber and aluminum with ammonium perchlorate oxidizer, and emit incandescent molten aluminum oxide particles. This bright glow makes the mixing at the edge of the SRB plume easier to see- it's also there for the Proton, but isn't glowing.
:)
That really is how the Proton looks at liftoff- only aluminized solids and kerosene-fueled rockets have bright yellow or orange exhaust plumes, pretty much all the rest are transparent and pale yellow or blue. However, I have managed to make a nitrous oxide/ethane fueled engine produce a pale green plume by getting the mixture ratio just so, and a LOX/kerosene engine can run purple if the mixture is too lean (this eliminates the soot that makes the plume bright orange/yellow). LOX/alcohol is generally bluish for the same reason a gas flame on a stove is blue- it's an emission line of carbon monoxide.
Working with rockets can be quite a lightshow
The Proton uses nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4, oxidizer) and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH, fuel). See this page. Both of these chemicals are highly toxic. They were popular for liquid fueled ICBMs because they were non-cryogenic and storable.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Pizza Hut believes making great pizza is "rocket science"
... so that's why they haven't figured it out yet!
Here's a picture of where space exploration (funding) is headed:
Shuttle Ads
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
First of all, what has Pizza Hut REALLY done here that the government hasn't? The US has scraped up whole lot more than 2.5 million over the years.
But I see what you were trying to say, and in response to that I say, the only reason the government has "failed" is because its citizens don't care about space exploration anymore. Noone's really cared much about the space program since we landed on the moon. It's been over 30 years and we haven't attempted anything even close to that since. True, the trip to the moon served very little real purpose, but one would think we'd have done _something_ bigger than we've done by now. Alot of people today just think the space program is a waste of money. "We should be spending all of that money to fix problems here on Earth" they say. They just don't realize that ALOT of modern technology has come from NASA. Space-based experiments have saved lives and improved the quality of a whole lot of others, people just don't realize that at all. It's our responsibility to tell Uncle Sam where we want our money to go, and if NASA isn't getting the funding we all want it to, it's our own fault.
Secondly, I would like to point out that there is virtually nothing that ISN'T commercialized. There's only so much money the government can put up by itself. Can NASA hold patents? I don't know, but I would think if they could, they could be pulling in alot more money from licensing technologies, giving them a bit of return on investment. Maybe they already are, but I honestly have no idea. But anyways, look at railroads, cars, airplanes. All forms of transportation that may have been government subsidized, but still commercially driven. Space travel will join them. Bio-engineering, chemical engineering, etc. all areas of research that may be government subsidized, but again, are mainly commercially driven.
So, in the end, things will be fine. This isn't that dissimilar from what's happened many times before. In fact, I say it's about damn time. Commercialization=more rapid growth, and I'm all for rapid growth of the space program.
"Why hasn't this happened already?", you might ask. We've become too soft. People have forgotten about the sex appeal of the early manned program and war. We get all teary eyed with 7 bureaucrats posing as astronauts get blown up in a gold plated mockery of Yankee Ingenuity. What a crock!
Maximum altitude and/or minimum time to a particular height wins. Breath oxygenated saline to absorb high g loads? I don't know -- I don't care because I'm not climbing on top of one of those vertical dragsters anytime soon so it's none of my business, but I know plenty of young guys with hormonal overload who would jump at the chance to fill their lungs with oxygenated saline if it would get them a buxom babe, so who are you or I to stand in their way?
To hell with government programs, let's be reasonable about this space stuff.
Of course, since the mortality rates will be rather high in such a competition so you would need to hold the Winternational Rocket Races in someplace like Belize or Nigeria rather than el wimporoonie countries with sensitive quiche-eaters like the United States or any of the rest of the industrialized world.
If sacrifices must be made to get technological civilization out of the biosphere, then so be it!
Extreme sports -- HA!
Seastead this.
Large amounts of cash missing, grainy "photos" offered as proof that they ... um ... painted a miniscule logo on a rocket. Riiiiighiiit.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
One large Super Supreme for all Mankind. Hold the Onions.
(I don't think that's exactly what it was in the movie, but it's what's in the script that I found)
-ElJefe
world's largest proton rocket emblazoned with a Pizza Hut logo on the fuselage.
Not to be confused with equally sized rockets devoid of the pizza hut logo or any smaller pizza hut sponsored rockets.
--Shoeboy
See the NASA page that explores other avenues for space commercialization.
Although it is extremely unlikely that advertisements could fund an entire mission, they may provide significant supplementary revenue. Advertisements may be purchased on their own, but they are generally integrated into overall promotional campaigns. As such, they have the potential to generate additional revenues on the order of $3 million to $5 million or more per mission. For example, Columbia Pictures was willing to pay $500,000 for space on the side of the first Comet launch to promote the release of "The Last Action Hero." This was split between Westinghouse (Conestoga) and Space Marketing, Inc.
You gotta keep your action-oriented-box-office-bombs-starring-bulky-br utes straight. :)
[