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)"

Comments

Re:Solid, not liquid

[RedWizzard]

The difficulties involved in this are the precise reason liquid fuel is used.

You're right about the difficulties of solid fuel rockets but not that they're the reason liquid fuel is used. The reason is simple: solid fuel allows no control over the burn. You can't change thrust except in predetermined ways, you can't shut it down, you can't restart it. That's why liquid fuel is necessary for all but the simplest applications.

Been Done (well, almost)

[jheinen]

The Reaction Research Society pretty much did just this back in 1996. They launched a solid-fueled rocket carrying an amateur television transmitter to a height of approximately 280,000 ft., which is about 46 nm.; just three miles short of the official "boundary". They weren't going for an official record, although I believe it was and remains the highest amateur launch to date.

The rocket reached a maximum acceleration of 35 Gs, and attained mach 4.5 in 5 seconds. Their site has some good photos and video of the launch, both from the ground and from the rocket.

-Jeff

Ky Michealson (and others)

[StefanJ]

Some insight:

I'm a rocketry hobbyist. I fly up to H power models. Not very ambitious, but I'm part of the rocket nerd community.

Ky is a real guy. A competent fellow who, while sometimes a bit of a self-promoter, is very competent and not a nut-job dreamer. Ky and his wife are regulars at HP and experimental rocketry launches. They sell a line of heavy-duty parachutes and other recovery gear.

I have full confidence in Ky and his team.

As for those other guys:

The Oregon RocketGuy strikes me as an earnest, overconfident not-quite-a-nut. I think he's backed off from his "first flight will have me in it, tests cost too much!", which is a good thing for all involved. I hope he can pull it off.

The British X-prize hopeful, Bennet -- I forget his first name -- is a pretentious con-artist. The rockets he launches are nothing special. You can see dozens like it at a typical LDRS event. He claims that these are test flights, to test recovery gear etc., but they're really just large model rocket launches. Watching the videos of him at work is embarassing.

Example: A year or two back, one of the cable channels had a segment on one of his test launches. After setting up the rocket on the beach, he and a helper walked to their launch bunker (a hole in the sand), spooling out the launch leads as they went. It turned out that the leads were too short. They couldn't reach the foxhole. Duh?

When the time for launch came, we see Bennet instruct his helper on how to press the launch button on the second launch controller, and to be sure to do so at exactly the same time he pressed the button on his controller.

SECOND launch controller? Because the model had multiple motors, right? But model rocketeers with any experience know how to hook up multiple igniters in parallel, eliminating the nasty problem of buttons pushed out of synch.