Slashdot Mirror
Brian Walker (aka Rocket Guy) Fires Back
1) Exotic Fuels
by cybrpnk2
Amateur rockets don't get to space or orbit because they're generally limited to low specific impulse solid fuels. Is there much of a gain in specific impulse to be obtained by further research into hybrid (ie, plastic/nitrous oxide) propellants? How about exotic chemicals (buckyballs, multi-atomic nitrogen, fluorine for example) - any route for amateur utilization of these?
Brian Walker / Rocket Guy: I am using 90% H2o2 because using it as a monopropellant is the safest method of propulsion for my particular rocket. There is no chance of a catastrophic explosion or fire. This alone eliminates about one half of all standard problems that are encountered for any rocket flight.
2) operational testing?
by Nehemiah S
What kind of testing have you done for your design(s)? Wind tunnel tests, computational fluid dynamics, flying scale models, etc? I've also noticed that your design has changed considerably since the first time you were featured on Slashdot, and as an aerospace engineer myself it would be interesting to know what your design criteria were and how you arrived at them.
RG: My design has changed because I do not profess to be an aeronautical engineer of any sort, and as I have proceeded, I have allowed myself to make the necessary changes resulting in a better design. A number of people have a called me on several design concerns, and I listened. As for wind tunnel tests and the like, no. The rocket is near perfect in its shape, and for what I require it to do (go up and down in a relatively stable manner), it is fine.
3) Cowboy hat?
by micromoog
In case something goes wrong, are you planning to take with you a large ten-gallon cowboy hat to wave around on reentry?
RG: No, I'll be wearing a space suit, and a cowboy hat would not be a wise fashion accessory.
4) What about John Carmack's project?
by tswinzig
Have you discussed rocketry with John Carmack and his friends at Armadillo Aerospace? They plan to eventually fly a manned rocket as well.
RG: Met John in Arizona back in April. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for him. We are opposites -- he is very methodical and is a computer genius. I am not. Between my Dyslexia and ADHD, it was a miracle that I made it through school at all. I simply don't have the same mental drive as Mr. Carmack does, so I do things the way that work best for me, and 18 licensed toys have served me well.
5) Funding vs technology
by Andy_R
How much of your project requires technological innovation on your part, and how much is just a question of raising funding to duplicate existing technology that governments have already researched?
RG: 90% of what I am doing is the result of simple refinement from what has been done, time and again, over the past 50 years or so. Remember, I am not trying to orbit the earth. It is a simple elevator ride for 20 minutes.
6) Rocket Industry Efficiency
by Local Loop
Which parts or subsystems did you make, or have made, yourself, that you wish could have been purchased off the shelf for a reasonable price?
Which parts or subsystems do you think are candidates for standardization in the coming personal rocket industry?
RG: I have purchased (and will purchase) a number of components like parachutes, valves and fluid handling components, and the like. There are a great deal of parts that can be used right-off-the-shelf. As for which parts could become standardized for personal rocketry, I am not really in a position to know.
7) What's Next.
by DA_MAN_DA_MYTH
Say you are successful, and I hope you are. What's next? Do you try it again only higher? Also any plans of donating your rocket to the Smithsonian? This would definitely be considered Air & Space history and be worthy for all to view. Or on the other hand after are you looking for monetary gain? Something like pay 12 bucks to see Rocket guy's Rocket?
RG: I want to move on to a commercial launch operation which would allow a "for profit" venture to begin producing money for future development funds. The first step is "Rocket Skydiving" -- simple, catapult launched giant water rockets that can take a load of skydivers to 15,000 feet in under a minute. This would be safer than airplanes. As time progressed, we would introduce bigger and higher flying rockets, which would eventually allow non-skydivers access to 80-100 thousand foot high flights in small winged return vehicles with pilots. I would be happy to donate my capsule to Smithsonian.
8) Engine Work? by Anonymous Coward
Seems like you've done lots of mockups and landscaping, but I haven't seen any work on the actual engine (other than a single picture of it).
Having seen all the trouble with catalyst packs and such that other projects have had, how come you havn't done any test firings yet?
Have you even tested your pneumatic launcher?
RG: My facilities here are big, and I have had to continue to grow and improve things. "Landscaping" here has been minimal, and for the control of dust more than anything else (the Oregon High Desert is a dusty place). I have 15 rocket motors currently, one 2500 pound thrust motor, 6, 135 pound thrust motors (for capsule separation from fuel tank), and 8, 55 pound thrust motors (for capsule stability/guidance).
I don't know what is being referenced by "all the trouble with catalyst packs..." Peroxide reaction engines have been around for years, and follow specific scientific formulas. Some people are trying to make changes to get higher thrust, etc. As for the launcher, yes, it works perfectly. I have done the tests to demonstrate the amount of "push" it can develop. At 40 psi, it delivers 2000 pounds of push, and when the launch sleeves have cleared the launch tubes, there is only about an 8% loss of volume. As for a full test, there is a catch 22. In order to fully test the launching of an 1100 pound payload, I need to have a fully recoverable system on board, or I will destroy whatever is launched. I am in no hurry to do this test, and will do so when I am ready.
9) future of private industry space travel
by crystalplague
I, like a lot of people, are quite skeptical about the success of your project. However, let us assume that you have launched yourself, everything went perfectly, and you are resting safely back on earth.
What do you think this will do to the future of space travel? Do you think this will set a precedent for the private industry to get involved in space travel?
RG: Regardless of people's skepticism, I am pursuing what is (and has been my dream) for my own purposes. I appreciate the importance that so many other's have placed on this effort, but I would still do it if I was alone and no one was watching. However, due to the number of people who have made comments, I do expect my experience to encourage more private participation in the field of private space industry.
10) Had to be asked...
by Dirk Pitt
How does it feel to be the only person in history preselected for the Darwin Award nominations?
RG: I do not recognize any such nomination. To my understanding, the recipients of past Darwin Awards have been stupid people doing stupid things. My project is not a candidate for such. I am not doing this because i am bored and looking for fame and fortune. On launch day, if I've any inkling that I might not survive, I simply won't go.
11) Legal issues? by crow
Have you ran into any legal issues with your rocketry? Have the government had any significant impact (pro or con)?
RG I recently met with the FAA in DC, and they are very supportive, and want to be in a position of actually being able to issue me a launch license. They have been following my efforts for the past several years, and offered to be of any assistance I need to do things legally. I was very impressed and excited by just how receptive and supportive they were.
I recently met with the FAA in DC, and they are very supportive, and want to be in a position of actually being able to issue me a launch license. Anyone else see this coming? A DMV for homebrewed rockets?
"Powers. I have them."
That's why it's called rocket "science". If it were rocket "engineering" the success rate would be much higher.
Have you hugged your Karma Whore today?
That about clears up everything, doesn't it.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
He's not going to die because he's never going to attempt a launch. He'll keep milking the publicity cow and selling his cheesy ass "pantented toys" to unsuspecting surfers who follow the numerous slashdot links to his site.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
Q: In case something goes wrong, are you planning to take with you a large ten-gallon cowboy hat to wave around on reentry?
A from RG: No, I'll be wearing a space suit, and a cowboy hat would not be a wise fashion accessory.
Me thinks he completely missed the clever reference to Dr. Strangelove here. Pitty...
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
"Simple, catapult launched giant water rockets" which you would ride from, say, sea level to 15,000 feet in less than a minute and then jump out of.
Safer than which "airplanes," exactly?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
If slashdot existed at 1903, you would send the same post about Wright brothers right? :)
What the hell, let the guy light his candle, thing will probably fly up 100 feet, flip over, and drive itself into the ground at a good speed. Maybe it'll help convince other people that building manned rocket's should only be done by really smart people with serious engineering expertise and a serious budget.
I admire what he's doing, but reading his answers I'm having second thoughts about my optimism for his success. He simply doesn't answer the first question, and in another say's he's "no genius." Rocket Scientists have that expression about them for a reason, it takes a lot of know how and intelligence to do something like this safely and successfully, just look at how bad the rockets were on junkyard wars...
~ now you know
This has a certain irony in it.
a rocket ship going up a couple dozen miles....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
2) operational testing?
by Nehemiah S
What kind of testing have you done for your design(s)? Wind tunnel tests, computational fluid dynamics, flying scale models, etc? I've also noticed that your design has changed considerably since the first time you were featured on Slashdot, and as an aerospace engineer myself it would be interesting to know what your design criteria were and how you arrived at them.
RG: My design has changed because I do not profess to be an aeronautical engineer of any sort, and as I have proceeded, I have allowed myself to make the necessary changes resulting in a better design. A number of people have a called me on several design concerns, and I listened. As for wind tunnel tests and the like, no. The rocket is near perfect in its shape, and for what I require it to do (go up and down in a relatively stable manner), it is fine.
Very informative, thanks. But i am curious: how can you say it is near perfect if you haven't tested it? Hope you give more info than that in your talk to the AIAA...
Good luck.
neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
who expect this guy to actually have a personality?
:-)
I figured somebody who created all these cool toys, and then decided to build his own rocket would be an intriguing and compelling individual. Not to mention I expected him to get the Strangelove reference and have some humor to add to the responses.
Instead we're left with curt, almost cookie-cutter answers that anybody here could've predicted.
Definitely not one of the better interviews. Why is it kernel-hackers can be so entertaining and the Rocketman and Bruce Campbell come off as such duds?
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
They didn't have any high-level aerospace engineering degrees, did they? Oh yeah, those didn't exist back then...
-/-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Bruce Campbell and the Rocketguy both live wild on the outside. People like that tend to be a little dry on the inside.
On the other hand, a kernel hacker tends to live a pretty dry outside life, but is filled with all sorts of insanity on the inside. (I mean who else would want to kernal hack?) [Just kidding!]
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
a) Oh shoot, I probably shouldn't have made the fuel tank out of silver.
b) ...and my wife always wanted to be a blonde.
c) I'm building a rocket in my backyard. Where in the hell am I supposed to get buckyballs and multi-atomic nitrogen, smart guy?
d) The other half of the standard problems are eliminated by leaving the rocket science to the brain surgeons.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
well, the Wright brothers knew that their chances of death were pretty low, however, this guy...
--sig fault--
"near perfect in its shape"
He just wants to make sure it looks good. Which is completely undersatndable.
Hell, if I was going to die burning in a blaze of fire, I'd like my spaceship to look purty too.
Rocket Guy Fires Back sounds like a gay porno. I'm all for widening slashdot's readership and exploring new journalistic niches, but I think this is going a little too far.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
i would say that he have a "serious" budget...
remember - private industries doing space travel (or, shoot self up and down in rocket in general) costs magnatudes less than certain budget guzzling government organizations.
and don't diss on the man because he is not what you consider smart. many mechanics and car tuners (old days, anyhow) knows a lot about practical knowledge without ever finishing high school.
i think it is much more important that this man is doing something that he really wants to do and puts the dedication and effort behind it. this, i believe, is the smartest thing you can do, because you avoid the "death bed oh i wish i did this and that" syndrom. this action/decision alone is "smarter" than most of the folks out there stuck in their misery ridden lives and keep pushing the things they really wanted to do into tomorrow, and tomorrow again
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Darwinism is concerned with the suitability of creatures to their environment (long-armed creatures are selected when fruit hangs from tall trees, etc).
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The leading theory on what caused the explosion of the Kursk is the H2O2 propellant in a torpedo (NOT a warhead!)
(Here's another link)
...and another.
And dont you TRY AND MAKE HIM.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It has already been proved that this can be done using only the technology that was available in 1960s Russia, so it's not exactly rocket sci^H^H^H^H^H erm... It's not as if there is anything groundbreaking about the science here, as he says in the answer to my question.
His achievement will be in showing that his trip can be done affordably by a private individual, not that it can be done at all.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I see what you are up to.
Nifty.
Stole my idea dammit.
What the heck? If it worked for these guys...
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
...it's so boring to build a personal, private manned rocket. Or to be the first men on the moon, for that matter. Bo-ring! I'd rather be doing something interesting like worshipping a monarch, or spewing cafe-communism drivel from my smelly, Euro-peon mouth hole.
Life insurance won't accept a claim in a case of suicide.
I think it was "Catapult launched water-rockets"
Meaning, he catapolts at a reasonable acceleration that doesn't have blackouts, then using a water rocket to do the rest.
So he's not *quite* that categoriacly nuts.
Gentoo Sucks
314-15-9265
Comments:
60%: some witty remark about how he will die
20%: something about how this interview sucked
15%: mathmatically disproving his statments
5%: posts like this one.
Do you have no grasp of language at all. I thought it was more than obvious he was refering to his rocket as a similey to a catipult for launching parachutests into higher altitudes.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
It was highly concentrated H2O2 that did in the Kursk. Nasty stuff.
Just thought I'd mention it.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Do you have no grasp of language at all. I thought it was more than obvious he was refering to his rocket as a simile to a catapult for launching parachutists into higher altitudes.
sorry about that. need to preview first.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Just look at the first q/a:
Q: Amateur videos don't get me into space or orbit because they're generally limited to low budget toys and props. Is there much of a gain in viewer impulse to be obtained by further research into hybrid (ie, plastic/latex) bodysuits? How about exotic themes (buckyballs, multi-man nitrous fun, man-flouride for example) - any route for amateur utilization of these?
Brian Walker / Rocket Guy: I am using monoxonil-9 because using it as a monolubricant is the safest method of lubrication for my particular rocket. There is no chance of a catastrophic breakout or burning. This alone eliminates about one half of all standard problems that are encountered by a man on my rocket flight.
(I can't believe I'm posting this. If it's modded down, I SO deserve it.)
c-hack.com |
Even the poorly-scripted Cochrane in First Contact seemed to have thought his project through a bit more carefully than Rocket Guy. He also admitted to both being scared shitless to fly in it, and having built it solely for personal gain.
Perhaps the poster who asked about the cowboy hat should instead have asked him if he intended to listen to "Magic Carpet Ride" on the way up.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
To joshsisk and the others who have asked similar questions, I suggest you read Marque_Off's other posts. It's clearly a bot! A very clever bot, and from the posts clearly a bot in development (it's getting better). I just wish I had the talent (and time) to do something this cool, and I hope that some day whoever is behind Marque_Off releases the code under an open license. Way cool, and you go on my "friends" list!
Geeze, imagine what'll happen when a bot earns enough karma to moderate. Hey, if it earns the karma it deserves the opportunity!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Very informative, but completely wrong. "catapult launched giant water rockets" is how Brain Walker describes his proposed design. If he were just using a catapult, it wouldn't be a rocket. Please read the article carefully before you rip it apart.
Sheesh are you guys ever a bunch of boring stay-at-homes. I think this guy is up for an amazing experience, so what if its high risk. Its very high risk to sit in front of a comp monitor and eat hamburgers too, it'll just take longer to kill you. None of you are overweight right? Im sure none of you would allow yourselves to get out of shape or eat a poor diet, but most americans are and do and will die from the resulting health problems. At least this guy is going to do it in style.
Reminds me of when we were at a physics convention and one of the guys (who was not quite at master level) took on a street hustler chess player in a match. Hustler-guy wasn't quite up to winning, though the game looked close. Some businessman comes up to watch, and finds out we're physicists and starts going on about "rocket scientists testing their wits against a guy on the street"... we felt insulted. The NASA and Boeing and Lockheed guys who do rockets are just dumb engineers after all!
The point being, there are lots of much harder things to do in life than building a box that just goes up and down off some fire in its tail. NASA and Boeing and Lockheed people like everybody to think it's really really hard and expensive and requires all those fancy engineering studies, but it really doesn't. Go check out your local hobby store for model rockets, if you don't believe me.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Why do you think a rocket guy would literally be talking about catapults?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
You didn't read it carefully, or didn't bother to read the test plan at all. The plan is to have an actual rocket motor with a reduced fuel load (1/20th load) on the test vehicle. The catapult will provide enough speed (30 mph over 9 ft travel) for initial stability and the motor will propel it to it's peak altitude.
t ml
http://www.rocketguy.com/rocket/032702_status.h
I suggest reading the whole plan before you try to slam someone. The moderators who modded you up ought to do a little research too since their ignorance is leaking out all over the place.
That means that your parachutists are experiencing over 15G on takeoff. Which is well beyond the point at which every human (even top jet pilots) black out.
That's not exactly true. A pilot doing a sustained 15 G loop would probably black out as the blood is pulled to his feet. A pilot doing a sustained 15 G inverted loop would probably red out as the blood is forced into his head.
It's the sustained Gs that cause the problems, not the Gs themselves. Champ car drivers have frequently sustained deceleration forces in excess of 100 Gs during crashes. Even with an energy-absorbing impact barrier in pace (like in this past years Indy 500) the impacts still deliver 40-60 Gs of force. The big difference is that the force in these cases is only experienced for a fraction of a second. A sustained G force of that magnitude would likely be fatal.
Well, the tests the Wright brothers did took place on a flat spot at Kitty Hawk, so since they were going about 30 mph about five feet off the ground, I'd say the safety level is a bit higher.
Still, this guy seems to understand his limitations, he's taking as many precautions as he can realistic take and he doesn't sound like an overzealous lunatic, so I think he stands a good chance of coming out of this alive. He may have to abort his flight, but saying his death is a foregone conclusion is short-sighted.
I, for one, hope that he gets his ride to space.
Virg
I'd say at least half. I saw a quote posted in someone's office around here attributed to Wernher von Braun, something to the effect of, "The object of the rocket business is to make the target area more hazardous than the launch site."
Think about it... better than 90% of the launch vehicle's mass is fuel and oxidizer. The whole thing has to accelerate to several times the speed of sound and maintain a very specific course. There's not a lot of room for things to go wrong, and when things go wrong with several million pounds of volatile chemicals, yeah, fire and explosion are pretty common.
Actually, anybody trying to build a rocket that uses a propulsion mechanism already knows Newtonian mechanics. Following are the three laws of Newtonian mechanics.
1. All objects have inertia; that is, an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by some outside force.
What, like rocket fuel?
2. An object's acceleration is in the same direction as the force exerted on it. The force exerted on that object is equal to the product of its mass and acceleration.
What? Like peroxide molecules shooting from the ass end of a rocket, pushing on the rocket itself? And then, gravity pulling it back to Earth??
3. For every action there MUST be an equal and opposite reaction.
Well, amateur rocket scientists are a little less concerned with this one, as the Earth probably isn't going to budge much for him. Although, as above, the peroxide pushing against the rocket is the critical part.
If anything, this guys needs to learn more advanced physics. Newtonian mechanics are inherently encapsulated in the idea of a rocket. Be nice.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
You gave me an idea for a new extreme sport.
One side of the grounds launches the parachute packs, the other side launches the (hopefully) parachuters. The parachuters then catch the parachute packs in mid "flight", or perhaps in self-guided free-fall, put them on, open them, and then drift back to earth.
If you can't catch a chute, well, they name the new crater after you.
Table-ized A.I.
(* Dead Man Walking! We have a Dead Man Walking here *)
For all we know, he might be suicidal anyhow. Might as well go out in a blaze of glory instead of holding up commuters at bridges.
Not too many mothers can say, "My son died in a rocket accident."
Table-ized A.I.
I really don't want to sound insulting, but being a model rocket hobbyist alone does not qualify you as a rocket scientist except in the most basic sense (if you're also an engineer, my apologies). Contrary to your experience, building a stable rocket frame capable of lifting more than 100 pounds is not only not easy, it's never been done. One of the things you're not dealing with is liquid fuel. To find out how hard it is to stabilize that, do this experiment (which I've done several times). Build a 6 foot frame about 2 inches in diameter. Put as much engine on the tail as you wish, and put an eight ounce weight in the nosecone. make the center two feet of the rocket a plastic tank, and half-fill it with water. Then launch. If your rocket gets more than twenty feet off the ground before it falls 20 degrees off launch vector, you can count yourself one heck of a designer (and I'd love to see your tank design). The other thing you're not used to handling is fragile airframes. A cardboard tube doesn't seem like much, but if you want to try building a rocket where the power-to-stress ratios are the same as a full size launch vehicle, build your next rocket out of drinking straws and construction paper. Also, keep in mind that a model rocket turning twenty degrees off its flight vector will fly in the wrong direction, but a full size rocket doing the same thing will generally collapse from the shear force. This is what makes the ability to design a complex guidance system so difficult. He makes no mention of his methods, but someone who does not have any engineering experience cannot typically design a functional gyrobalancing guidance system. Hell, people who are rocket scientists work on these things for years, and most guidance systems are designed for specific frames, so it's not very easy to "borrow" someone else's design for your own frame.
I wish him all the luck in the world, but not calling in some engineering expertise for review is asking for trouble.
Virg
I think it's ironic that here on Slashdot, that there seems to be so little tolerance or understanding of people who might have different ways of thinking and expressing themselves.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
How did this parent get modereated up? Three of Grabs posts are +4 or more, yet none of them are remotely correct! He didn't read the part about the catapult, (it catapults a water rocket, thus it doesn't need to achieve a very high velocity) and he ignores the simplicity of the design. V2's worked just fine without fancy control systems; it's just plain not necessary if your tragectory is simple.
I agree that math is a fundamentally important part of engineering, but some things work just fine by trial and error.
> When I put together an Estes kit, I don't worry about the construction of the engine, I just buy a $2 engine and plug it in.
This isn't the same by a long shot. When you built your model rocket, where'd you put the fuel tanks? Oh, and how did you stabilize the frame when you filled it with liquid? This guy isn't building a solid rocket booster, so comparing it to your local model rocket will just get you a busted-up pile of rocket debris. Also, as I stated in another post, if you want comparable stress-test ratios build your next model rocket out of drinking straws and construction paper, and let me know how the launch goes.
It's the "detail work" where the engineering knowledge comes in.
Virg
Those questions are terrible. If I were the interviewee, I'd probably send them back with a note like, "uh...get real." Darwin Awards? Dr. Strangelove? Yeah, that's the HARD-HITTING stuff there, guys. Way to go. Next, why don't you lecture us about the state of amateur rocketry in post-Columbine, post-9/11 America?
Not everybody cares about the pop culture to which many of you cling, and indeed some of us actively despise and avoid it whenever possible. You are not cute, hip, or funny.
If that weren't bad enough, now I have to sit and watch a bunch of backseat undergraduate engineers naysaying this highly motivated and dedicated individual who is actually doing something! Hey, well, if you don't think he will make it then cool. You are welcome to try and prove his task impossible by throwing numbers and formulas around that you have a marginal understanding of, but that doesn't make his success any less likely. He may not be an engineer, and I know that the engineer's ego is a large and dangerous creature, but please...he's doing something cool and fascinating and intriguing. You're not. Deal with it in some other way than with judgement values and boringly predictable jealous criticism.
explosion and/or fire? That's kind of scary
"Half of the standard problems" - in design - prevention. Not having half of your rockets explode or burn.
Actually, I bet his real motivation has something to do with a girl.
"If you don't marry me instead of Whats-his-face, I am gonna launch myself up into space in a jittery, untested rocket. I don't even know math, Jenny!"
Table-ized A.I.
...he's too busy to be funny
/. community spent hours tyring to think of an mod up funny ones would be the least of my concerns if I was about to do what he is about to do.
I get the impression that he doesn't care what people think, and has become extremely bored with all the incredulous people saying "what the hell are you thinking", etc. Looks like he found ten minutes to answer the questions--the fact that the
He might have been put off by the dumb questions, and some of the questions would have probably taken hours to answer well.
I was disappointed, too, btw.
Liberty uber alles.
"Think about it... better than 90% of the launch vehicle's mass is fuel and oxidizer."
Not true in this instance. This sucker is a monopropellant rocket-- it uses Hydrogen Peroxide which won't blow up. No volatile chemicals either-- it just reacts with stainless steel producing steam.
The best part is that you can throttle it up or down and stop the engine completely-- something that's very hard to do with solid rocket engines. I hope that he makes it and shows the world the capability that this rather simple technology can provide. Hell, I'd love to power my minivan on the stuff and it can be extracted from seawater!
Best of luck I say!
> ...missiles using similar liquid fuel using only aerodynamic surfaces and relatively simply gyroscopic guidance systems.
Both of your examples are not capable of getting high enough for this guy.
> None of this technology is new or complex by modern standards.
Nor is it very useful for this guy. The guidance systems used by V-2 rockets were (unsurprisingly) designed to stabilize V-2s, and as I said before, simply lifting a design from a different frame usually doesn't work.
> I don't believe I suggested making a full size rocket out of cardboard tubes either I'm fully aware of the fact that as the scale increases so do the stresses on the airframe.
The example I provided was more to illustrate that one of the major problems with big-scale rockets is that the guidance system can't be "good", it has to be "great" because the stress forces from pivoting just a tiny bit out of flight line are sufficient to demolish all but the heaviest designs, something model rockets simply don't suffer from.
> Try taking your tube - filling it with a sponge like material and then adding the water. Not such a great design problem when you think about it.
This one is actually on the books, because a few builders thought that a saturated medium would make for low-splash fuel tanks (when it was proposed, sloshing fuel was a major guidance problem, as most rockets at that time burned kerosene). However, the design failed miserably, for two reasons. First, it was very difficult to get the fuel out of the medium when you needed it to burn (something my experiment doesn't address, but that a liquid-fueled engine must do). Second, When the medium was subjected to the G-forces of launch, it would simply squash down to the bottom of the tank, which caused the top portion of the tank to be only liquid (back to the sloshing fuel problem) and putting severe stress on the bottom of the tank (which caused more than one tank rupture with resultant kaboom). So, it's a good idea, but I must send you back to the drawing board.
Virg
This is just flat out bullshit. Peroxide works as a monopropellant because it has a positive heat of formation: When H2O2 breaks down into H2O and O2, it releases heat. The problem is that, at high concentrations, if the breakdown process starts, it can easily run away. Excessive heat or inappropriate contamination or just bad luck can start the process. It may not techincally be a "fire" but you aren't going to be able to tell the difference if you're sitting on it when it happens.
I don't know what is being referenced by "all the trouble with catalyst packs..." Peroxide reaction engines have been around for years, and follow specific scientific formulas.
Yes, peroxide rockets have been around for years. And in fact there is a well documented problem with the peroxide poisoning the catalyst bed. This isn't an issue if you don't care about reusability (and I doubt he does), but he obviously hasn't done much research if he hasn't at least encountered mention of this issue.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Brian Walker, insane man
Removed from gene pool
With some mouth wash and duct tape.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
"Earth First - We'll strip mine the other planets later."
Ha ha ha! Just where do you live, asshole?
just remember, he didn't come to us to get pestered by questions, we went to him.
And he's not trying to convince anyone else to do it, nor is he claiming he's some kind of genius.
Did you miss the part where he says he doesn't care if others support it or not, he'd do it anyway?
He's just claiming to be a guy who's building a rocket.
|_| -- I do not Sky dive
|_| -- I do not rock climb
With sky diving, the chance of dieing is only 1 in 80 K. Rock climbing is even less dangerous. You are on a cliff with a rope capable of holding a full size van holding you in case you fall. There are 30 million climbers in the U.S., me being one of them. There are usualy only about 10 or less fatalities a year. Rock climbing, statistically, is safer than riding in a car.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I guess it would. I can't imagine taking a load of airplanes to 15,000 feet in under a minute.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
The test rocket was supposed to launch last spring. It looks really cool on its trailer hitched to the back of his SUV. But he doesn't seem to be getting close to flight test.
There's no mention of a guidance system on the test rocket. This is not a good thing.
Was anyone else slightly disturbed by the fact that on his website he occasionally lapses into the habit of referring to himself in the third person? "Brian build rocket! Brian go BOOOOMM!"
Umm, that's because Brian is not the person doing most of the authoring on his website. It's a friend of Brian's that is doing it. Normally, someone does not claim to be the person one is writing about, therefore the third person is appropriate.
Gee, makes sense, huh?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
You'd probably have to at least triple that figure to compensate for wind drag if we were talking pure ballistics. In this case I think the dude was talking about a catapult launched self-propelled water rocket though, where the water was presumably being ejected from the back end at enough pressure to generate upward thrust. The post didn't mention what would be used to generate the pressure, just the propellant.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
> They would have slammed into the ground at 30 MPH with no seatbelt, possibly injuring themselves on such things as the propeller.
That's tough to say, but remember that they crashed several of the gliders they used for testing, at about the same speed, from higher up since they were gliding down off a hill at Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk, and the flight of the motor-driven craft was on flat, level ground. The two things that stand out in my head is that the flyer would not have dug in like a plane these days (5 feet up and 30 mph, it would fall to the ground and skid). Also, the pilot was in the plane prone, and the propellers were behind him, so when he hit, he'd slide forward out of the craft, which would stop before overtaking him, so injury was more likely from impact with the ground than the plane. That all said, it would not have been a pleasant experience, but it's not very likely to have been lethal. It's certainly many degrees safer than being on a home-brewed rocket miles off the ground, by any measure.
Virg
Your design is a step in the right direction, but the original discussion was not how to design these things, and the discussion (with three replies telling me how to build slush cells) has wandered offtopic. The point I made originally was that model rocketeers do not have to deal with the stability issues that large-scale rocketeers do. In real life, slush cells aren't necessary, because fluid tanks with baffles work fine, as long as the guidance system is up to the task. Also in my original discussion was my questioning whether a guidance system designed and built by someone unstudied in engineering would be "up to the task" and I still don't think it will be.
I agree that slush tanks can be built, but that's a different story.
Virg
> Nasa has used a range of unguided sounding rockets using liquid fuel carrying payloads of up to 500lbs up to altitudes of up 200 miles...
"Unguided sounding"?!? I can't even guess what that's supposed to mean. Can you provide some links or something to these designs? I've done the Google search, and ran back through my library as well, and I found not one single device since Goddard's designs back in the Forties that flies unguided. There are plenty of designs for missiles and such that travel ballistically after takeoff, but even those rockets use guidance systems to keep the frame stable as it leaves the pad. By all evidence I could drum up, everything that uses rocket power and liquid fuel to get more than 100 miles up uses some derivative of a gyrobalancing guidance system for launch.
> so don't tell me you can't build an unguided liquid fuel rocket. Try a google search next time you want to make bold declarations of impossibility.
Just as a side note, I never claim impossibility for anything. What I said was, in two parts, it's not feasible to build such a device, and nobody has done it yet. While it may not be impossible, there are better ways to skin this cat, and they all involve active guidance systems.
Virg
Point conceded, although I will close my defense by stating that the Aerobee is a hybrid (liquid and solid fuel) rocket, so when I went digging in my sources for liquid fuel rockets sans guidance I came up dry (pun intended).
Still, I hope this guy is planning on using something a bit more complex than this design, which seems to be only one step better than a big bottle rocket.
Virg
The rope is almost never the problem.... Its the anchors holding the rope to the rock (inc. chocks)... Rock climbing and Skydiving are most certainly more dangerous than riding in a car.
Although the amount of time spent rock climbing or skydiving is almost certainly less then you spend in a car throughout your life.
From the book of risks:
1-in-1,000 chance of death: rock climbing for 25 hours, skiing for 340 hours, driving a car for 2,000 hours, riding a motorcycle for 55 hours, and skydiving for 50 hours.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Anybody who has scratch built model rockets can demonstrate for you how simple empirical tests can be used to insure aerodynamic stability. Any arrow can demonstrate such stability in practice.
An arrow does not have stable flight. If it did, there would be no archery competitions.
The art of fletching is a delicate one. I'm not sure how olympic class archers get their arrows, I suppose they have precisely machined arrows and fletches (feathers) that are cut to the nearest 1/1000th of an inch, and heads that are weighted to the nearest 1/100 of a gram to suit the draw length of an archer. For olympic class archer, the arrow is rocket science.
I'm a boyer and fletcher, making bows and arrows of primitive designs; bows hand carved from Osage and arrow shafts of Port Oxford Cedar. I cut my own fletchings from turkey feathers, but my heads are store bought since I'm not a smith. Unlike olympic class arrows, my arrows are more art than science.
When the arrow leaves the bow, the force is applied to the rear of the arrow. The heavy arrowhead has much more inertia than the rest of the shaft, and thus the shaft bows as it begins to move. As the arrow begins to move, it also has to bend around the side of the arrow (unlike compound hunting and olympic class bows, which are all "center-shot", there is an arrow rest cut into the center of the bow so the arrow is pushed straight through the center in line with the string). If the arrow spine (stiffness) is too high, the arrow pushes off the bow and heads in one direction. If it's too weak, it flexes too much and willows around the bow and heads in the other direction. This is known as "archer's paradox".
Because archer's paradox, the arrow "weaves" it's way to the target as the fletches attempt to straighten the flight of the path. With small fletches, it takes longer to stabilize, but the arrow flies further with less wind resistance. With larger fletches, the flight stabilizes quickly but there is much more drag and more noise (bad for a hunter). The angle you attch the fletches also makes a difference- the more angled, the faster the rotation and more stable the flight, but more drag and less distance.
They have different types of arrows- for pure distance, where accuracy doesn't matter, you see arrows with very small fletches- there's plenty of time for the arrow to correct its flight. For hunting, where shots are taken at less than 20 yards, the fletches are larger and the angle greater. If you try using a 100 yard target arrow with at 10 yards, you'll be off target because the arrow hasn't had time to correct it's flight.
No two arrows are the same. Each is going to have slightly different characteristics, and the challenge of a fletcher is to get the arrow to the same point on the target regardless of the different flight characteristics of the arrow. For "perfect" arrows, there is a good deal of fine tuning because you can't say "this arrow shoots a little high and left, this one shoots a little low". It's an work of art.
For center-shot bows, there is no archer's paradox so you can use much stiffer shafts. There is no weaving from archer's paradox, and the stiff shafts help counter the bending from inertia so you can use much smaller fletches. Still, arrows bought at Wal-Mart aren't going to be good enough for high level competition, you really need the experience of a master fletcher to tune the arrows.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.