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YAPSLP: Yet Another Private Space Launch Plan
rleyton writes: "The BBC is reporting here that UK Rocket enthusiast Steve Bennett of Starchaser Industries is planning on launching himself into space soon. He's unveiling a rocket at a London exhibition. Other Rocket enthusiasts here in the UK are claiming it's "Suicide", but perhaps the momentum for a manned Private Space exploration is building?" First step: buy more D engines.
Or do you mean Darwin?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I'm beginning to wonder where our moral responsibility to protect an idiot from himself kicks in...
... the natural deselection of the idiots and corresponding gradual improvement of the breed.
There is absolutely no moreal responsibility to protect idiots from themselves, and in trying to do so you will end up trampling the rights, and dreams, of those who you misidentify as idiots and who would otherwise choose to take a big risk in order to achieve an even bigger payback.
In addition, by protecting "idiots" from themselves you do a disservice to the entire human race, by preventing nature's own cure for stupidity
Seriously, though, anyone should have the right to follow their dream, no matter how foolish or stupid the rest of us think it to be. Had humans incorporated a "moral responsibility" to protect idiots from themselves any earlier than the second half of the 20th century, the Wright Brothers would have never flown, Columbus (and before him the Vikings) would have never sailed to America, and countless other risky inventions and undertakings would never have been permitted. The aversion to risk we have somehow incorporated into a misguided ethos of "big daddy protecting the small minded people from themselves" in the last century is second only to the Patent system in stifling the progress we could have otherwise made.
It is past time we put and end to this nonsense once and for all. If RocketDude wishes to launch, let him launch. If he dies (the probable outcome) then the species is rid of one more fool. If he lives, he will have accomplished something remarkable, upon which he and others can build. It is by taking such risks, sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding, that enduring progress is truly made.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yeah, the A-Team could build anything. Oh, wait "a team", not the "A-Team". Nevermind.
(I pity the fool who can't spell "roketier" correctly!)
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But then again, I could be wrong.
Yet Another Redundant Front Page Slashdot Article.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
... solid rockets are capable of vicious acceleration. I'm talking "supersonic by the time it's left the launch rail" vicious....
... or the longer, funnier, and even vaguely plausible Legend of the Rocket Car.
Think "Darwin Award for the guy who strapped JATO units to an Impala and flew it into a cliff"
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
A long, long time ago
:).
I can still remember how the normal people got to space.
They got together with a team,
to fulfil a president's dream,
And be the ones to win the greatest race.
But now this loony makes me worry.
He seems to be in such a hurry.
He have deep enough pockets,
He's buying lots of rockets.
But I agree that if he tries,
To make his way into the sky,
Hop in, light up, and let it fly,
Then he will surely die.
Sing'n bye, bye crazy roketier guy.
Gonna fix a cement mixer to some rockets and fly.
But those who know say 'bennett's gonna die,
And if he does, nobody will cry',
Yeah if he dies, nobody will cry.
Thanks to Don McLean for one of the easiest to rewrite songs ever
Hopefully, Taco Bell will stick a target in the English Channel,and if the guy hits it, we all get a free Taco.
Hey, they tried it with Mir...
HI Mom!
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Now we know what happened to the guy who designed the :Cue:Cat for Digital :Convergence!
> Good luck to him, and I hope that his gigantic phallus works as designed. *snicker*
You hope he gets screwed by a 100-foot dong? Or do you mean "When I die, I wanna be going up like a rocket into ten thousand feet of pussy..."
(Although I suppose depending on your sex and orientation, either interpretation could be a fun way to go... :-)
Well-put.
I hope the guy makes it too, but I think he's toast.
You kiddies out there who've only watched "nice and slow barely-haul-yourself-off-the-pad" shuttle launches - solid rockets are capable of vicious acceleration.
I'm talking "supersonic by the time it's left the launch rail" vicious. Those of you who have ever seen a surface-to-air missile launch, you've got the right idea. (Those of you into model rocketry, scale up 36 or 72 times - as in, a full-size rocket clearing the launch pad in the same time as your model does! ;)
I don't know what kind of boosters he's using, but I'd sure like to. If someone this crazy is worried about the G forces on launch, I'm putting $5.00 on "The test vehicle launches, but turns him into a puddle of goo in the first second." (I've got another $5.00 on "The test vehicle crash-lands, but it didn't matter because the occupant was already goo before impact.")
On the off chance (maybe 25%) he survives the test flight, I've got $10.00 on "suffocates because he didn't think he had to test the pressure vessel", which I think is a 90%+ probability.
I think it's incredibly cool that he's got the brass ones to build a rocket and fly in it, and I definitely don't think the government should stop him from trying it (as long as he points the damn thing away from populated areas).
But I still don't think he's gonna make it.
IIRC, the main advantage to SRBs (for ICBM's at least) is that they are always fueled. Liquid fueled missiles had to be fueled before launch. In a MAD scenario, the quick launch time was a major advantage.
SRBs have this advantage ANYWHERE that fueling may be a problem, such as wing mounted or ship mounted missiles.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I'll just take a single LOX/Kerosene F-1 motor.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Look at it this way, a lot of other private rocketeers are keeping an eye on Bennett and his launch efforts. Whatever happens, success or failure, they will gain from his experience. Bennet is a voluntary guinea pig. It sounds crazy but come to think of it, Christopher Columbus and his crew were willing guinea pigs too. They sure did not have the technology to send a self-piloted ship across the atlantic and back.
not D engines .... M engines ....
This came up a little while ago at metafilter.com and I couldn't ignore how the paltry sum of the X-prize drives nearly suicidal space launches like this. 10 million to a company that can *safely* deliver the precious and fragile cargo of two human beings to space and back is peanuts, its what they pay for the first 10 seconds of the 4th test flight.
So the X-Prize now drives people like Steve to build an unusually phallic looking rocket out of a cement mixer. If the lottery is for people who can't do math than the X-Prize is for people who can't do physics. To the company that does pull this trick off, the 10 mil will be more like the cheesy gold-plated trophies they passed out in high school.
I saw this a couple of days ago, but didn't submit it. The first thing that I noticed when I looked at the story, though, was that his rocket looks like an enormous dildo.
Good luck to him, and I hope that his gigantic phallus works as designed. *snicker*
You are correct, I misread his original post. The only thing I will stick to is my assertion that he was mistaken about suggesting solid fueled rockets are more efficient, but you (and he) is indeed correct about the density/thrust ratio.
..and yes, manned flight should at best be supplemented by SRBs (like the ullage rockets on the Saturn V), not commanded by them (like the SRBs on the shuttle).
You are absolutely incorrect. Most liquid fueled rockets have a much higher ISP then their solid equivalents. The SRBs on the shuttle have an ISP of 260 something, if I recall correctly, while the SSMEs onboard the shuttle (liquid) have an ISP of over 400.
ISP is, basically, a measure of how much a pound of propellent goes towards propelling something.
The SRBs are cheap heavy thrust rockets, but nowhere near as efficient as liquid fuel.
The whole reason the army switched from liquid propelled rockets to solid fuel was because of the accidental explosions (and of course casualties) during the handling and transportation of these dangerous time-bombs. There is no way this guy, whith his hit and miss track record, should be playing with liquid-fueled rockets.
I just started reading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: time , which is about... um... well, it's kind of complicated. But the main character is a failed-astronaut space nut who launches his own spaceships (one manned by a squid, one manned by him) for his own exploration. The year is 2010, and most governmental space programs have fallen into disrepair.
It just reminded me a lot of these private launch types.
And it's a very good book.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
And if he comes back in more than one piece, we'll ALL be able to pat him on the back.. in several different countries simultaneously! It's win-win!
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PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
b) Steve Bennett is a self-aggrandizing loon.
If website design skills have anything to do with building space craft, these people aren't going to get further then Wales.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Renews for nerds Yet Again Stuff That Rematters
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Yes. Untested ship designs generally don't explode on launch. Untested rockets regularly do.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Is it just me, or does this sound like an old TV movie Salvage, with Andy Griffith playing the role of Bennett?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
A poorly-built wooden ship works like a raft.
A poorly-built airplane, provided you're not thick enough to push it off a cliff, works like a wagon.
A poorly-built rocket works like a bomb.
I'm beginning to wonder where our moral responsibility to protect an idiot from himself kicks in...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
But it looks like all the smart ones are leaving first.
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One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
There are a couple of issues: Unlike the colonization of North America, there is, as far as we know, no indiginous life that exists in space. Suprisingly, this makes things a bit more complicated, because we are not going to be bound by any humainly directed decisions based on the atrocities of past conquests.
Which means we can grab real estate in space with impunity. If history guides us here, chances are who is first, who claims it first will mean nothing (heck, there are people on Earth now selling land on the moon!).
My guess is, when we figure out a reason to make space valuable (weather it be minerals, military.. who knows), the people who will end up with it will be the people who can win in the courts and ultimatly, on the battlefield.
And chances are, yes, we will end up governments on other bodies (the moon, for example) who will want their independance. It's going to be exciting.
The Internet is generally stupid
"...perhaps the momentum for a manned Private Space explosion is building?"
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I've noticed reccently that there are several members of society trying to launch there way into space. They are just trying to achieve low earth orbit for the most part, but has anyone considered how space will be ruled? Think about it. North America and South America (though already inhabited by the Native Americans) were 'discovered' by Europeans according to your average elementary school textbook. Companies sponsored explorers to colonize this 'new world'. Eventually, after a couple hundred years, these continents revolted and put their own governments in place. One must wonder how space will be ruled. The moon and Mars are both out their waiting to be colonized. The question is, will the settlers allow themselves to be controlled by an opressive earth based government? With companies sponsoring to get into space. Space habitation will be a quicky realized dream. Before we know it, we could have a moon-based government. It's kinda weird.... Of course, besides tourism. What is the moon going to manufacture. Bauxite? What is Bauxite used for anyway? By the way, I know everybody else has mentioned this already. But this has already been covered /.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
At this rate there's no need to worry about a "Nike solar system" or a "Microsoft galaxy". Just let'em all launch themselves into deep space on rockets fueled by egotism.
"I'm rich! I can do anyth---*crash*"
I've met Steve Bennett and I have to say he seems like a nice guy. I've also met some of the other people mentioned in the BBC News article and they know what they are talking about too.
I wish Steve all the luck in the world but, from what I've read and heard, he's setting himself up for a very big fall. At best, his rocket won't get off the ground (and perhaps not even off the drawing board). At worst, he's going to end up as a human firework.
Test, test, test is the mantra of every respectable physicist, especially so in the fields of aero- and astronautics. Anyone who would put his life on the line in an initial test flight of this nature has to be missing some of his marbles.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Seriously Estes has E Engines back in production :-)
Or check out my web site for a whole bunch of people who have forgotten more about rockets than Steve Bennett Knows.
- But other rocket experts are worried, not least because the Thunderbird capsule is actually a converted cement mixer, containing sheets of hardboard and a few computer joysticks.
...it occurrs to me that maybe he should be putting the hardboard on the outside, the way the Chinese do it (No. 96).Or perhaps he intends for the mixer to break up, so he can float down a la Lawn Chair Larry, no doubt frantically gripping his SideWinder 3D.
On that note (I am far, far from being a rocket scientist): does anyone know what the reentry problems are? AFAIK, the atmosphere reaches up to 40km (well, just gets thinner and thinner, but 40km is a nice number), so crashing down from 100km gives 60km of free fall, giving him a reentry speed of mach 2.7 - so not exactly the MIR, but still perhaps an LD50. Or are my numbers completely screwed?
yes, we have no bananas
You kids have too easy these days...
Back in my day, we had no money. When we wanted to go into space we couldn't buy ourselves a ticket aboard some "spaceship". We had to build our own rocket (made from wicker of course, until they levied that tax on wicker goods) and then we pushed it uphill both ways in the snow. And we liked it! Bah!
Sounds like he went from nothing to a leading contender for a Darwin Award.
"I wish I were a real boy, because then my mommy would love me." Really? I think I see a dead movie.