Canadian Arrow Taking Applications for Astronauts

Christian Nally writes "The Canadian Arrow X-Prize team is taking applications for its X Prize attempt. It's going to be a show down between this group and many others including John Carmack's Armadillo. Let's hope that the X-Prize foundations 'end of 2004' deadline doesn't inspire people to cut corners on safety."

Comments

Space temp

[AlecC]

True. Several recent articles on space telescopes have commented on the dofficulty of getting rid of waste heat. Viewers generally want to be as cold as possible - obviously infra-red, but is seems tha other sensors benefit from being very cold. But the sun heats it, power supplies, actuators an electronics all generate heat. With no convection or conduction to the environment, there is only radiation left to get rid of the heat - and that isn't very efficient at low temps.

Carmack

[halftrack]

"Let's hope that the X-Prize foundations 'end of 2004' deadline doesn't inspire people to cut corners on safety."

Some might, but the seriouse competitors won't (Canadian Arrow is serious, at least with PR and blowing someone up in space, well ...) This goes especially for John Carmack and Armadillo. They've stated that their taking it step by step building small first, then build larger things and IIRC their not registered for the $10.000.000 X-Prize contest.

Re:Does anyone else find it fishy...

[ergo98]

And that it's $95 CDN, or $75 US? (at current exchange rates $75 US is about $118 CDN). That could be explained away by saying that it cost more to process non-Canadian applications, however they don't differentiate by nationality, but simply by currency.

Another poster mentioned that they say secure server but it's not, and he is correct: The link they give is to a completely plaintext, totally insecure link. Some moron forgot the s (i.e. https://secure.golden.net/cdnastro/online-pilot-ap p.htm when they linked it on their page), and another moron didn't configure the "secure." subdomain to prohibit non-SSL. Tragedy of errors.

I grew up in the town where this project is based, but I have to say that something smells incredibly fishy about this...non-refundable "dream" applications for a pipe-dream? If anyone is actually sending in money, please be aware that I have a really big bridge for sale.

Re:Shoulda had a V2

[karlm]

Umm.. the V2 didn't use regenerative cooling but instead tried to keep a thin film of liquid fuel coating the combustion chamber for evapoative cooling. Sometimes they got hot spots and the film dissapeared in a spot, resulting in cooling loss at the hot spot. They had some problems with burning/melting holes in combustion chambers.

Almost all modern liquid fuel engines use regenerative cooling (a technology developed by amateurs in the US, IRRC).

On the other hand, the V2s used pendular integrating gyroscopic acceleromiters (PIGAs) to shut off the fuel supply once the V2 hit a certain velocity. (One nice thing about PIGAs is you can put a counter on one of the bearings to irectly measure velocity instead of having to integrate acceleration yourself.) PIGAs are still used the US MX ICBMs. A couple of summers ago I worked on some replacement technology, but PIGAs are still the most accurate acceleromiters that can withstand the hundreds of Gs encountered on rentry. (They're also pretty resistant to EMP and radiation degredation from being stored long term near a sphere of plutonium.)

BTW, if you should ever fire electrolytic capicitors out of a 105 mm howitzer, be aware that thier capaitence will go out of spec before they leave the barrel and not get back into spec for a few days afterward.