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Rocket Guy Getting Closer - But No Firm Launch Date
BoomZilla writes "Brian Walker, the self styled "Rocket Guy" is making excellent progress with his one-man booster. Project R.U.S.H. plans to launch Brian in to orbit 'sometime later this year'. Brian's site (http://www.rocketguy.com/rocket.html) has many excellent pictures of the rocket and launch site (his backyard!) under construction. This is certainly the real (if somewhat dangerous) deal." (And Napkin Art? Look here.) Update: 05/29 04:08 GMT by T : Brian Walker dropped a note to point out that his plan is actually for a sub-orbital flight 35 miles up, not Earth orbit.
This guy must be seriously confident about his abilities. Just one small error in his calculations and he is dead. I can't manually configure X without screwing it up.
It's all Politics
He's crazy.
Unless things have changed hugely in the last year, and that seems to be precluded by the expectation of launching later this year, he's just another idiot without much clue - but enough money to make a real big mess. Don't take it from me. This guy comes up as a topic of discussion in rec.models.rockets a couple times a year. The wonderful thing about the discussion there is that everyone has some idea of what it's like to fly rockets, and some of them really are rocket scientists (and aerodynamicists, and airframe designers, and so on) in real life.
G'wan, get off your lazy slahdottie behind and Google for it. Dare ya!
You overestimate the harm of a small amount of space junk. One of the things that is going for us is that there is a lot of space up there, and the space to junk ratio is very high. I seriously doubt that a small amount of shot, the couple kilogram that someone could manage to loft, would cause much damage, there are probably already thousands of kilograms of tiny space junk up there. Cumulative effects of thousands of small launches could be bad though.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
NASA? Doesn't he need permission from the FAA to do this? Manned flight, makes him a pilot, right? He'll need to be licensed and his vehicle will need to be approved or he'll need certification as an experimental aircraft, right?
I couldn't find any mention of his getting this cleared with the FAA on the cached website page.
Is there some exception that this guy is using, or do I not understand the FAA regulations? Admittedly, I've not studied them at all...
David Brin wrote a short story several years back on this subject. In it he had a private citizen building a rocket and launching himself into space despite the best efforts of environmentalist, etc to stop him. The rocket malfunctions and drops him into the ocean on the other side of the planet where he ends up staying with a bunch of uplifted dolphins for a few months. Excellent story, might be called "Rocket Man" or something obvious like that but I'm not sure. I'd love to find that story again.
'There is great chaos under heaven, and the situation is excellent.'
I am sure that someone has said this already... but this has go to be illegal. I mean you need a license to pilot an aircraft over U.S. territory why not one for this. Anybody want to explain this to me?
He has bought a Russian pressure suit. As for engine failure, he is buying commercial peroxide rockets, which are very reliable due to their monoproppelent simplicity. The rocket is very unlikely to fail.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Here's some correspondance I exchanged with the RocketGuy last year. I was a bit harsh with him, but I was really concerned that he'd show up in the Darwin Awards:
To:
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 1:57 AM
Subject: WWW:Rocket Guy Site Feedback
Message: Are you going to do an unmanned test flight (or several) before you launch yourself in this rocket?
If not, I suggest you go to space.com and look at the videos under their "launches" section. You will see many rockets exploding and crashing.
If you launch yourself without doing unmanned test flights, it must be concluded that you are either an idiot or suicidal.
I hope that neither is the case and that you do the test flights and insure that you are not remembered as a fool.
Best wishes.
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And his reply:
========
From Brian Walker Fri Oct 12 08:10:26 2001
From: "Brian Walker"
Subject: Re: WWW:Rocket Guy Site Feedback
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 08:10:26 -0700
Yes, I will be conducting unmanned launches. The first will be is a smaller rocket 12 foot high, 320 pounds fuel,gross weight about 4000 pounds). It will demonstarte the separating fins and air launch system.
No, I am neither an idiot of suicidal.
Thanks for the message and concern.
Isn't it time we give him a chance to explain himself, since he's been featured on /. about a dozen times, and he has been called every possible kind of idiot by us?
- Have a picture