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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."
Sure it'll be nice to have disneyland-in-space.
However I just can't ignore the incredible amount of resources this 'fun' is going to cost. The amount of fules neccesary for one trip is just rediculous (don't give that clean fuel / hydrogen crap as it takes oil / elctrolysis to get the hydrogen in the first place).
And they want to make things like this a tourist attraction?
Sjeesh
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Me thinks thats not gonna be very safe
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
So if I get in, do I get adamantium claws?
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
the ones who do cut corners are likely not te be able to collect their price... they can offcourse imediately apply for darwin award nomination :-)
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Let's hope that the X-Prize foundations 'end of 2004' deadline doesn't inspire people to cut corners on safety.
Unless Lance Bass really gets to go this time. Then, let's not.
This is a potentially dangerous endeavor for Carmack, as he is used to releasing games with bugs, and patching them down the road. You can't do that in space. To quote Khan, "It's very cold in space..."
Jeez, you guys are so damn pessimistic. You're missing the whole point. Some teams will spend more than $10 million, the prize, to compete in this project. The objective is to find a cheap and easy way to get to space! Such a fantastic goal! And you all keep whining about safety.
Grow some balls.
If this is cheap enough, maybe they can bring extra cargo aboard the rocket, so maybe 10+ years in the future, little kids will be buying "Satellite Kits". Build your own sattelite and bring it aboard the Canadian Arrow or Armadillo! Only $100 per kilogram! Take pictures of the moon! Take pictures of Earth from orbit! Get Your Kit Today! I can't wait. Mmmm... my own satellite... Hopefully!
Yeah, when columbus set sail the wrong way round the world, he made sure he took every safety precaution.
Safety is very important, but when it reaches a certain point its ridiculous. Attitudes like that will confine us to $10,000/pound low orbit flights for the next 500 years.
How about Pamela Anderson? Zero-G boobs already primed and ready for test flight! Plus she's probably the best-known Canadian world-wide ... I'd suuuuure like to be the guy auditioning all those wannabe asstronauts if she walked in the room.
I'd dim the lights just a touch and in she walks... beautiful delicious Canadian flesh, right there in front of me! The strapless evening-wear would probably burst at that point, and I'd jump her then and there in front of all the lesser dudes on the committee. Oooohh. Powerrrr.
somebody slap me
coffee. i need coffee
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.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
What fun it would be to get involved with such a project. Unfortunately for me, I have not the intellect to contribute in any useful way (other than getting lunch and coffee).
But it certainly looks like a blast (pun intended).
I think Pam lost a lot of her sex appeal when she contracted a DEADLY, CONTAGIOUS VIRUS.
In her (immune system's) defense, as one late show commentator said, "If you are married to Tommy Lee and all you walk away with is Hepatitis-C, you did O.K.!"
Rad bod or not, I like my liver more than PamAn.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
"Let's hope that the X-Prize foundations 'end of 2004' deadline doesn't inspire people to cut corners on safety."
...) 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.
Some might, but the seriouse competitors won't (Canadian Arrow is serious, at least with PR and blowing someone up in space, well
Look a monkey!
The rocket motor is a reproduction V2 engine, capable of 57,000 lbs of thrust, burning a mixture of alcohol and liquid oxygen.
This is the first time I hear of alcohol being used to launch a rocket to space.
The Canadian web site says that an upswing in space tourism will force down the cost of space travel. They use, as an example, the growth of the PC industry and the diminishing cost of hardware. I would love to do it, but I do not see the general public rushing to get launched into space as easily as they walk into Best Buy to get a PC to play Wolfenstein. Also, when I hear the term 'tourism' I think of places to go, different things to do, etc. Other than the trip itself, what is there to do? (Like driving all the way to Wallyworld and not being able to get inside.)
hella cool and all. But they're of course giving preference to people with some related knowledge or experience... /. crew (lazy bastards that we are...)
Oh, and they have to be physically fit too. That cuts out most of the
Oh, and it may cost the successful applicant a few thousand dollars.
Here's a story about it on CBC.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Wow... it's simply an updated V2. I think that's a brilliant idea. Those rockets hit the edge of space almost 60 years ago, so the technology is certainly easy to attain today. Plus, that design is probably more bug-free than something fresh off the drawing boards today.
$5 million
Um. Yup. A drop in the ocean compared to the cost of a single launch, never mind a whole programme. The US space shuttle costs ~$400 million a launch. The whole programme costs the ~$4Billion per year. The ISS is expect to cost ~$100 billion.
'not gonna be very safe'
for whom ? The passengers or investors?
IMHO this will make the DOT-COM bubble look like loose change.
Sheesh. Some people never learn! :)
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Firestar, Rogue Star, Lode Star, and Falling Stars.
Central part of plot is a corporation developing aircraft that can fly into orbit, at commercially viable cost. Good hard sci-fi reads!
$8.95/mo web hosting
No.
The fuel cost is very, very low actually; less than $10/lb of payload.
I worked out that if I was to go into space, I'd have to spend about as much fuel putting me there, as my car burns in a year. But unlike my car I ain't doing this every week or even every year. The number of people going into space for the forseeable future is only a few thousand; the number of cars out there are incredibly high, in the hundreds of millions, so the relative environmental impact of rocketry is quite, quite negligible.
And there are plenty of space technologies that have a positive environmental impact. Would the ozone layer hole have been found without satellites? I actually believe that overall, space will have a very significant net positive environmental impact.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Here's a news story about it. (Which was in my submission yesterday. Whine, whine :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
... that the job application requires a non-refundable $75 fee?
Here's some pictures at the X Prize site which I included in my submission. (I even had a link to the Rocket Guy, ah well.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The Canadian Arrow X-Prize team is taking applications for its X Prize attempt.
Huh? The Arrow may have been an advanced jet, but it wouldn't be able to fly in space for the X Prize.
2002-11-12 18:05:20 Canadian X Prize Contenders seeking Civilian Astro (articles,space) (rejected)
A full three days ago even!
from all these years developing Doom and Quake?
Rickety experimental space-craft *always* wind up deserting the occupant on an alien planet infested with demons and high powered weapons.
For the pilots sake, I hope he makes sure to equip every craft with atleast a chainsaw.
Not gonna happen. Ever. The cost of fuel would make
flight to space impossible.
because you can't be a nerd and not know. Can't you at least google or just try guessing at a URL before showing off your incredible ignorance?
0xfeedface
I didn't know that Carmack's Armadillo was a GPL rocket downloadable from sourceforge. Clicking on the Armadillo link sends me to sourceforge.net, not an obvious rocket-associated page, thus I assume the "rocket" is a game similation. Sim-space-tourism?
Or is it merely a plugin for The Sims?
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Why was this requirement added?
Because the X-prize foundation was never able to raise the full ten million themselves. What they did instead was use the funds they had collected and insured themselves to the tune of ten million dollars against the chance of someone winning.
If someone wins in the new time frame, the insurance company gives back the principal and enough additional to total $10M, which will be given to the winner. If not the foundation forks over what's it's already got ('bout $5M, I think) to whoever wrote the policy. Nice simple hedge at roughly even money.
Interesting bet.
Unfortunately, one where the odds are going to get worse and worse the longer a time peroid you specify. I assume the foundation shopped around and found the best deadline they could based on the money they had in hand. Can't imagine how you actually calculate the odds on something like this but my gut tells me they got a pretty good deal
What will be done with the prize money if the deadline passes and no one wins?
It makes Munich Re. or Lloyds or some other company a little bit richer. Unfortunate, I guess, since it'd be nice to have the prize open until someone won, but certainly nothing shady or underhanded. I'm sure the foundation would rather have raised the whole sum directly, but it had stopped looking like that was going to happen, and the lack of full funding was said to be holding back at least one of the major competitors (but not others, which makes the decision more interesting).
This is the first time I hear of alcohol being used to launch a rocket to space.
:)
:)
Surprises me you've never heard of this before, it's actually quite common, I do it myself every now and again, and so do most of my friends, haven't you? See you simply drink and drink and drink and drink until the rocket launches itself...
I recommend Guinness for fuel personally.
The A-4 rocket on which this one is based actually did use alcohol and liquid oxygen for fuel. Alcohol isn't that hard to make, so designing a ballistic missile that uses readily-available (more so than others, I imagine) during a major war was a wise decision. Wernher von Braun was many things, but "idiot" wasn't one of them.
However, the A-4 can't launch anything very heavy into space -- it wasn't designed to be able to. It couldn't even when made into a two-stage rocket for the WAC-Corporal program. One of its descendants finally did, though -- the Jupiter-C rocket, a modified Redstone (itself an A-4 derivative) launched Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) into space in January 1958. But Explorer 1 was not all that massive.
So the Canadian Arrow rocket is just going to end up re-creating Alan Shepard's flight, more or less. Rather just, I think, considering that he was launched by a Redstone missile.
i am a soviet space shuttle
I noticed that they have certain important safety features:
from the web site: The Canadian Arrow is aerodynamically stable throughout the entire flight, and even with loss of active guidance the vehicle would continue on a ballistic trajectory. The first stage carries a range safety device that can be detonated to ensure down range safety.Maybe true, maybe not but whatever it is, The Legend of the Rocket Car is easily one of the funniest storys on the net.
X-Prize is: An American competition, marketed in America for (predominantly) Americans.
Apparently so is Google and Guessing.
0xfeedface
Isnt this pic showing the manned module (propelled by 4 jato-type rockets) disengaging from first stage while still on the ground.
Someone needs to re-explain the whatnots of this proposal to the artist who build this artist's impression... don t we think?
This is my favorite Canadian XPrize entry. Simple and efficient. Have a look.
What on earth do you think he's been doing all this time? Those aren't games- they're training simulators. ;-)
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"than a beer fuelled rocket? I'm beaming with national pride.
So if I get in, do I get adamantium claws?
No, but you do stand to gain either
#1:Stretching powers
#2Invisibility
#3:The ability to set yourself on fire
#4Super strength and freakish orange features.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
/me is puzzled
Maybe I'm not up on my comics. I don't remember the Fantastic Four's origins story, but explain what they had to do with secret Canadian projects with X in their name (such as Weapon X, which gave us the likes of Wolverine and Sabertooth).
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
Boy am I dumb. I bow before your (gparent's) superior comic wisdom.
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
Aside from checking out the incredible views of Earth, I would have thought that there was at least one perfectly obvious activity to try....
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Wow! You've already figured what Bin Laden's death-squads have planned for 2004 - everyone be on the look-out for frentic silent men of arabic appearance wanting astronaut training without the landing lessons!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"