Slashdot Mirror
Private Rocketplane Test A Success
HobbySpacer writes: "XCOR
announced the success of the first phase of flight tests
for the EZ-Rocket. In the most recent flight, Dick Rutan fired both of its rocket engines to take off and reach a speed of 160knots and an altitude of 6200 feet. The vehicle is a Long-EZ kit plane modified to hold
twin 400 lb thrust rocket engines fueled by isopropyl
alcohol and liquid oxygen. The project is not aimed at a homebuilt EZ-Rocket but will demonstrate safe and reliable rocket propulsion.
The primary goal is development of reusable launch technology that leads next to a high altitude sub-orbital rocket vehicle for
space tourism,
rocket
racing (e.g. vertical drag racing at air shows) and the
X-Prize competition."
The best thing would be a one way run away from a crowd, say out into a desert.
Just make sure the chutes do not fail.
Sound like something that could be cool out in a place like Death Valley.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
XCOR is doing it just right. I've always felt that the way to space is paved with a market - a REAL market not platimum mining fairy tales - a small group, and a small, non-gold plated start. Equipment that's simple, tough, reliable, not cutting edge.
I'll bet there is a market for Me-163 and X-1 replicas. Maybe not a huge market but a market nevertheless.
There was a business in Texas building Me-262 replicas, full size, exact in the airframe but using modern engines and avionics. They had orders in hand, deposits, and airframes well under way. I stopped following them some time ago and don't know if they delivered: last I heard there were problems.
Get more people flying rockets - even if it's in the atmosphere at subsonic speeds - and you've taken the first crucial step.
Congratulations to XCOR! Smart, hard working, visionary people.
The primary goal is development of reusable launch technology that leads next to a high altitude sub-orbital rocket vehicle
Could a missile fired from sub orbit on an (relatively) inexpensive platform such as this one, actually knock out a satellite?
Yes I realize that the missile would have to be expensive enough with it's payload and whatever guidance it would need to find it's target.
But if these things can be made as cheaply as they say, I wonder if small governments (okay i am sicking of typing the "T" word) could use this kind of technology to cause a lot of mayhem.
Actually, a balloon first stage is incorporated into a number of fairly credible amateur rocket designs. By using a balloon to bypass the heaviest 15-20 miles of the atmosphere, you're cutting down not only on drag, but distance. This means you have to carry considerably less fuel, leading to a smaller, cheaper, and possibly more reliable design. It probably won't be used for getting large multi-ton objects into space, but for a small one-two man capsule, or a small satelite, a balloon launch makes a good deal of sense.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
celcius, freezing at 0, boiling at 100
Nothing special about these temperature points. The only one that matters is absolute zero = 0. I mean, there are 180 degrees fahrenheit because of historical accident, but at least Fahrenheit adjusted his scale so that fractions would not occur in normal use. The original Roemer units were four times the size. (ie Fahr / 4 both size and scale).
Reameur scale is at least logical in that its degrees represent the increase in volume as 1000 units of alcohol are heated. It ranges from 0 to 80.
Without further comment, the Celcius temperature had freezing at 100, and boiling at 0. The current scale was called Centigrade, but Celcuis was coopted when everyone forgot about the mark I fiasco.
AngleYes, the wonderful simplicity of the metric system, which was intended to replace all measures, did supprisingly poor on angle and time. Despite the so-called decimal advantage, and that the kilometre was intended to be a centisimal minute at the surface of the earth, and so replace nautical mile, neither the decimal division of the quadrant, or day took off. When you calculate the speeds in decimal days, you will start to see the silliness of unrestrained decimals:
1 km/h = 2.4 km/H = 0.24 m/S, and
1 mph = 4 km/H = 0.4 m/S.
Speed limit in usa = 55 mph = 220 km/H.
(1d = 10 H = 1000 M = 10000 S.
Distance. A furlong is 660 feet, as anyone can see. A mile is clearly 5280 feet, as it should.
Imperial ounces don't exist. They're avoirdepoise, troy, or fluid ounces. The context defines the missing adjective. Just as it does with cubic, square and linear measure.
And while you're at it, I notice that you are supprisingly silent on mill, a length, angle and volume, or K, a number, temperature, distance, mass, speed. The truth is, that relying too heavily on a matrix naming does lead to lots of confusion. We won't even go into the prefixes like deci vs deka.
10 mm to the cm
100 cm to the meter
1000 meters to the kilometer
1000 ml to the liter
It is of course interesting here, that apart from preaching how the metric system uses prefixes and so forth, how the "centilitre" is noticably absent. Even more so the nightmare of deci- vs deka, hecto, or Myria-. Oh well. There goes consistancy.
Both systems suffer from the Roman weight-fraction legacy. An uncia was a 12th measure, this gives the foot of 12 inches, and the troy lb of 12 ounces, and an hour of 12 ounces. Mind you, any metric unit divides into 1000 mills. Depending on context, the builder's mill is the mm, where the chemist's mil is a ml. And we won't even worry about "gammas", a mass and magnetic field, and "lambdas" a volume, and "micros" a mass, not to be confused with "microns", a length, or "ohm", a capacity and resistance unit, or "farad" (a capacatance) vs "faraday" (any of a number of electrical charge units).
Metric is still bound by the same sorts of mentality that drives the imperial system. One talks of millions of kilometres, not *gigametres, or "tonnes", not "Megagrams". So much for "logic". Mind you, the names are wildly long that people look for shorter names.
And we won't even worry too much about a large number of special symbols that you need to express its units (eg raised 2, 3, greek Omega, mu). Like, you can't write sq m, you have to put m^2. Where I can write ft or Ft or FT, mm, Mm and MM can be milli or mega- metres.
What's even more impressing is that the prefixes are both patchy, and overload letters, for example, m and M differ by nine orders of magnitude (milli, and mega), and somewhere we got to squease a third m for micro into this lot. Luckily, we can steal the greek mu for this end.
The whole prefix multiple system has been coopted into computing, where one can use K as 1000 or 1024, depending on what your needs are. Megs, Gigs and so on are simply K*K, K*K*K &c. So a 1.44 MB floppy is actually 1.44 * 1000 * 1024. Hmmm.
Metric is MUCH simpler than imperial.
I seriously doubt this, too. The numbers that metric are easier to convert between one and another unit, but I can not seem to recall doing conversions from capacity to volume units all that often, that rough rules could not handle. But to achieve this simplicity, much had to be sacraficed.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I find it unbelievably strange that John Carmack (of Doom,Quake fame) is also building a rocket capable of transporting humans. He's made a ton of progress. His company: Armadillo Aerospace
I'm very suprised to see nobody else in this forum recognize the name "Rutan." The Rutan brothers, especially Dick, are huge figures in experimental aviation. The Design that was modified for this experiment was originally created by Dick. As were many other novel and very successful airplanes. Among them were the "Voyager" aircraft that circled the globe unrefueled. He also has an "nonsymetrical" twin engined, twin hulled aircraft that carries eight people, goes 300mpg and is fully aerobatic. Trust me, this guy knows his stuff and is quite unlikely to win the Darwin arward. Not saying can't, but given this guys intelligence and experience, I don't believe he could ever be a candidate.
Open Source Aviation... AKA Home Building