Slashdot Mirror
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)"
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
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
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.
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.
HPR people have been scaling up solids (using AP&rubber - basicly the same stuff the shuttle boosters use) for over a decade now - big AP rockets are not that unusual these days and have been flown to at least 100k ft (20 miles) - they are just expensive to build (propellent can cost several $1000).
100kft is a magic number - at that point the FAA loses juristiction (we fly the smaller stuff with FAA waivers) and you have to apply to a different part of the federal govt. - the paper work is pretty intimidating - it's designed to stop people dropping dangerous things on other countrys and causing international incidents.
Building amateur liquid propellent motors is hard - you have to get the fuel and oxidiser into the combustion chamber - that means a pressure higher than the chamber pressure - either a turbo pump - or a pressure system of some kind (for example gaseous O2 as an oxidiser at a high pressure, or an inert gas say N2 at pressure pushing a liquid say LOX or kerosene) pressure systems mean more weight.
One system we have been flying with recently is a hybrid based system - a liquid oxidiser with a solid fuel (basicly the combustion chamber's wall burn). It turns out that nitrous oxide (yes laughing gas) is a room-temp cryogenic liquid that self-pressurizes at above chamber pressure - this means it self-pumps and can be throttled. Paint ball tanks make great light-weight pressure vessels and nitrous is available at your local speed shop, flights are cheap. It does have some downsides - it burns so efficiently that rockets make no smoke and are hard to track, it's also hard to light (of course it gets real cold when it expands).