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Amateur Rocket Heads Into Space
scubacuda writes "Space.com has an article on a group of amateur rocketeers (the Civilian Space Xploration Team) hoping to send the first amateur rocket, Primera Spaceshot 2002, into space by the end of June from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. If all goes well with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the team will send a rocket stands about 17 feet tall (5.18 meters) and weighs 550 pounds (249 kilograms) 62 nautical miles (114 kilometers) in the atmosphere (12 miles higher than the 50-mile altitude largely regarded as the boundary of space). (MSN version here)"
Don't worry; this team are doing an unmanned launch. Rocketguy can still be the first one to get the Darwin Award for it.
The FAA won't clear them to fly. Why? To protect them from the The Terrible Secret of Space!
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
Will we be able to buy them in a twelve pack like flying cars in the year 2000?
Oh well, guess not. We should get both by <?php echo year+25;?>.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
and bam you are done
Nice choice of words.
Heh, but somehow I don't imagine it being the first time you've said 'Yes, I'm 18' on the web.
thanks for your rocketry story! i remember building model rockets when i was younger, and dealing with all sorts of details that went into the launch. my younger brother was into it, too, and i think some of these details were a little too much to bother with.
see, we were super competitive. i remember building a C power rocket one afternoon. my siblings and i were very competitive. the aforementioned brother HAD to build a rocket, too.
of course, he, being the youngest brother, ended up getting shafted in the dough-for-fun-fund. he wound up scrounging enough money to buy the Mosquito, a rocket that used A (AA? AAA? what's the smallest rocket?), and was no taller than a pencil.
launch time was nearing for me, so he set to work at a feverish pace. he soon came out with this hideously spray-painted, still-wet and dripping with paint yellow and black rocket that looked uber pizacrap.
we launched it in front of our house in the suburbs. neighborhood kids came out to watch. he threaded the rocket onto the launching pad, connected the fuse up, and started the countdown.
3...
2...
1...
FWOOOOOOOSH!
sucker flew straight! straight up REAL FAST! all these kids were ooohing and ahhing. even the folks across the street were impressed! the rocket didn't get too high-- it was still very visible when it began to slow down and arc downward.
there's something terribly graceful about a rocket gliding in the air-- it was beautiful. not a peep was heard in the crowd.
so heavenly, so peaceful! we knew that any moment now, the tiny secondary charge would gently pop the nosecone off and unfurl the streamer which would let it fall gently to the ground...
so graceful!
then BOOM! the rocket BLASTED toward the earth at something akin to warp 10. kids were screaming and tried to run away, but it was just too fast! it impaled itself into the ground, several inches deep, still smoking, and then caught fire.
kids were crying. parents were yelling. we began to try to figure out what happened. he glued the nosecone, which is supposed to pop off, into place.
that secondary charge had nowhere to go but out the back of the rocket. and when the back of the rocket is facing up, the rocket's gonna go down. fast.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY:
NEVER GLUE THE NOSECONE IN PLACE.
also, WET SPRAYPAINT IS A FIRE HAZARD.
Damn, I hate the english system of units.
What do the English have to do with this? They use metric. =)
I have a similar story
I won an essay contest in 5th grade and got to go to Space Camp. One of the days there we built estes rockets - I think we used the Payloader, because there was a clear tube below the nosecone. We found some lucky insects and shot them off.
One girl's rocket wouldn't start. After several failed launches, the instructor unhooked it and tried to take the engine out. She couldn't. These rockets had a hook assembly in the bottom and had been hastily put together. This one had the hook glued in place and unable to move, keeping the engine from sliding out. The instructor had no problem pushing it farther in though. So she just shoved in a new engine.
It launched successfully on that windless day, everybody clapped, and a few seconds elapsed. These engines were single stage engines - some engines are made without a delay so they can ignite another stage while a lower stage separates. In this case, the delay allowed the rocket to point downward before the "second stage" was ignited. The old engine that had had problems was now sending the rocket straight at us. We yelled and ran, and the rocket made touchdown right where we had been standing, the slender nose cone burying itself about 6 inches into the soft dirt and the engine still burning, the body tube twisted and blackened, unraveling about its sprial seam.
A few of us ran back toward the rocket to get a look at it. And right as somebody was pulling it out of the ground, that's when the _second_ ejection charge went off...
:-)
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
We used to take the "C" or "D" engines and strap them to homemade lego dragsters. From much experimentation and many demolished legos, we were finally able to make it go straight. Man, did those things go fast! Phase II (live gerbil driver) was scrapped due to maternal intervention
Not being too bright (still), I once launched an Erector Set. Seriously. It was actually supposed to be a rocket motor test stand (forget why I needed *that*), but it had one design flaw. Though the stand was held down by one of those big 6v lantern batteries, the motor thrust was directed skyward, instead of towards the ground.
And yes, this thing was built from a 70's vintage erector set: potmetal, bolts and nuts.
When the day came, I set this thing up in the back woods. I was 14 or so, so mom was in attendance. Slipped in a nice C-motor, wired it up, stood back, and flipped the switch.
The battery flew a good six feet. The stand -- did I mention it was an erector set? -- shot straight up about 5 feet, tipped over 90 degrees or so and began swirling like a dervish through the woods, bouncing off tree trunks, hurtling sidewards at myself and then my mom (both of us running for our lives at this point), spewing smoke and exhaust every which way, before the motor finally burned out and the thing crashed down in a heap in the grass, about 15 feet from where it started.
We approached it gingerly, coming up to it just in time for one last convulsive, metallic lurch as the ejection charge fired.
Mom, she just looked at me grimly and said "You're not trying that again." Me, I did not become an engineer of any description.