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Starchaser Plans Test Drop
cwalkden writes "Everybody's favourite amateur rocketman, Steve Bennett
has
unveiled his new space capsule that he hopes will get him one step closer to the edge of space. This one is due to undergo a test descent (with Steve inside) in Arizona. Earlier versions of Steve's capsules included one made with a cement mixer and some old joysticks." Our previous story was in 2001.
Why do I have the sudden longing to watch a McGyver re-run?
I earnestly wanted to share in this man's interest, but that "free underwear vouchers" ad in the right hand column got me......distracted. Figleaves.com baby.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
The article says He will have an extra parachute strapped to his back and a large knife inside the capsule - just in case he has to get out in a hurry. This sure sounds like Jackass II or Fear Factor on steroids to me :))
I think that was the name... anyone else remember that TV series with the home-made rocket where the capsule was made out of a cement truck's mixer?
I think their logo was a vulture... the whole idea was they made money by salvaging space junk (or something like that, I was a kid).
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
This one is due to undergo a test descent (with Steve inside) in Arizona.
i got dibs on his stereo and leather jacket.
why run from Vincenzo?
Sweet! Nothing inspires confidence in your homemade spacecraft like listing the garage-sale parts it was built from. I'm betting he's got a few toilet paper tubes in there somewhere too, most likely as part of the exhaust system.
Dude, you're gettin' blown up!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The article says that his rocket resembles a cement mixer, not that it actually was a cement mixer.
"But other rocket experts are worried, not least because the Thunderbird capsule resembles a converted cement mixer, containing sheets of hardboard and a few computer joysticks."
cpeterso
From http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ewm/newsletter/e wm302.html (near the bottom):
IMAGINE THE SPACE SHUTTLE BEING CARRIED by a team of men through the streets of New York. Well Hyde rocket man Steve Bennett had to have his team of assistants carry his rocket Starchaser 3a through the streets of Manchester. It had been on show at the Fab cafe theme bar, Portland St, and should have been taken to Salford University for a lecture, but the lorry booked to carry it was delayed, so it had to be transported using leg and shoulder power! Salford University lecturer Steve hopes to make it big through his rocket-building hobby-turned-business, and predicts a glowing future for space travel. Who knows, maybe in a few years time we'll be blasting off in one of Steve's rockets from Ringway to Mars on a late booking.
Anyway, he's been a local minor celebrity for years now, all the best to him.
No, I don't want a free iPod
I understand there is still one seat available in the three seater craft for a trip into space - cost £500,000 - any takers - not sure if the return trip is extra.
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Unfortunately most things of this nature (such as the RSA challenges) aren't nearly enough to cover the costs of actually implimenting the solution. They are nice subsidies though...
The High Power rocketry community is fairly amused by Bennet.
A lot of his early tests, some of which were filmed for an X Prize documentary, appeared to be flights of a big model rocket, powered by commercially available rocket motors.
Nothing wrong with that, but you can't really learn anything of value by doing this that would be applicable in making a rocket capable of boosting a capsule to office.
I would be more impressed to see Bennet testing liquid fuel rocket motors. Amatuers on this side of the pond (e.g., the Pacific Rocket Society) have been doing this for YEARS without coming up with a "man rated" motor.
Stefan
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I wonder if he made the capsule out of tate and lyle sugar...
oh and good one about the centrifuge training, yet more lies from possibly the worst ambassador to the UK amateur rocketry community, with his lies and relentless media whoring damaging the hard work put in by many groups such as Mars and Aspire Space.
"Once Nova is launched Steve and his team will develop a three-seater craft in a bid to win the $10millionprize, which is being offered to the first non-governmental organisation to launch a pilot and two passengers into space twice."
Hot damn!! Anyone have a link to the organization that is offering this prize?
Anyone one interested in going to space?
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cou
If ever I had the preminision to see it coming... this would be it.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Don't be silly... I'm sure the BBC is used to crazy triaffic
Critics are already calling it the "bye, bye, Bennett mission".
I wish him all the luck in the world
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cou
Yes, they can. No noticable slowdown at all.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
USA (Cheuters) "Abu Kabashi a.k.a. Steve Bennett, a secret Iraqi agent, launched himself in a kamikaze against USA. The missile hit the White House, killing two bodyguards and an unidentified woman. It was carrying a homemade anthrax warhead, but Mr. President George Walker Bush saved his life due a high alcohol level.
In other news, CmdrTamaco announces that a dupe of the April Fool's day, making provoking anguish among various Slashdot readers."
I SUPPORT MY TROOPS AND MY PRESIDENT SON!
I thought you were talking about the Steve Bennett of fame!
That's evolution for ya! ;) j/k
I hope he succeeds. This will be one giant leap for commercial space flight.. I can't wait to see that pearly blue from orbit!
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Glad to see russia is back in the space game
Combined with his obvious propensity to make false statements (e.g. saying he was sponsored by NASA) I think we can only hope he wins the Darwin award with style, if he actually launches.
No, he's simply going to make an "impact".
Seriously though, I think that his idea is a hit. Simply Smashing.
Oops, I think I hear the pun police comming...
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I assume he could be, but up to now I hadn't even heard of him. I thought everybody's favorite was Brian Walker.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
And I am going to have a big knife just in case the parachute tangles.
I hope he secures the knife well in the cockpit. After all, we wouldn't want it to suddenly fly loose and cause him bodily harm or even death.
That was a sequel where they went to Anarctica to get some ice or something. It was tough to top going to space (the moon?) but it was something.
He confirmed that it was his intention for the Nova capsule to be launched on a 3,050-metre (10,000-ft) shake-down mission by a cluster of commercially available rocket motors all strapped together.
:)
Estes stock is going to shoot through the roof with this news! Pun intended
BBC's site is already under big load with that war stuff now with slashdot I don't know if there severs can take it.
/.'ers...
Yeah, good thinking. You better mirror the story for them here on Slashdot... Those little independent newspaper sites don't stand a chance against the onslaught of
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Give him a Darwin award now, while he's still alive to enjoy it!
Dot Com Boom:
Step 1: Build Website
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Profit!
Upcoming Space Boom:
Step 1: Build Homemade Rocket
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Death!
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Darwin Awards...
Guys like this prove that the awards don't descriminate for even rocket scientists.
What signature defines me as a person?
Nope, nothing of value, save giving Bennet the adventure of the life time, and moving it from the theoretical "Yeah, it probably might work," to "Jesus the bastisge did it".
Which I think is what he's actually after. Innovation is cool, but this guy is going into space, and I probably won't.
Sounds like a darwin award is coming.
I can imagine him saying:
"no planning, no testing, I put my life on the line because I believe in my product."
Not the way to get investment $$.
So I expect a gang of squirrels to beat him up if they can get past the Gaurdian Angels in charge of security :)
(That was an allusion to Trigger Happy TV, the only British show worth watching outside of Junkyard Wars.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Nothing wrong with that, but you can't really learn anything of value by doing this that would be applicable in making a rocket capable of boosting a capsule to office.
And GNU and FSF wanted to use a micro-kernel for what would be their operatings system: the Hurd.
Linux does things the old-fashioned way and here we are today. With something that works.
Sorry, that should have been "boosting a capsule to ORBIT." Not office. A huge cluster of big model rocket motors might be enough to lob the capsule into the side of an office building, however.
Solid fuel won't get any reasonably sized manned capsule into orbit. Suborbital, maybe.
[M(f)+M(0) / M(0)] = e^(Vd/Vex)
Obviously you've never taken a look at their support page (can't remember the address) which features such gems as their network diagram (it crosses the Atlantic to include their New York data centers) and the shift rota (full 24 hour on site support).
I think they'll be ok.
I'm obssesed or this looks like a penis?
/ _1 407210_benn300.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1405000/images
A rocket or a pennis adoration sect?
Apply the PATRIOT act at full speed, damn penis lovers terrorists!
And is just as ugly as that guys rockets, and crashes just as often, and...
Step 2 is to let someone else pay you $20 Million pilot the craft. Mod parent up!
You know, it strikes me that if the amount of effort expended on Linux had been split between FreeBSD and the Hurd, the Hurd would be closer, and we wouldn't need Linux. Of course, it didn't work out that way, partly due to the existence of another license (if it wasn't the GPL, it would have been something else, so this is not an anti-GPL rant) and that's just how the cookie crumbles. I really do think microkernel is the way to go, and I also do agree that linux is very good in spite of a legacy architecture.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Where was the boom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
You've got to hand it to Steve, he's been told by countless critics that if he tries to launch into space he'll die trying but he presses on regardless.
I truly hope he does make it and proove the critics wrong! Good luck to him, he's one of a dying (no pun intended) breed of true pioneers!
Hey, a used sock and some duct tape kept the Apollo 13 crew breathing for a few days.
Nice guy. Too bad he's dooming himself to a hopeless death by crashing in a firey, ill-conceived life's dream of his.
Not a bad way to go really!
I suggest you read Slashdot
Solid fuel won't get any reasonably sized manned capsule into orbit. Suborbital, maybe.
He's only aiming for sub-orbit (that's all the X-prize requires, and what he claimed in the article).
The problem is that he's trying to do it with model rocket engines that Were Not Specced For That. It would be like me trying to build a rocket using D engines that could hit Detroit from Chicago. It doesn't matter how many I'm going to tape together - it won't work. Saying how beautifully my latest duct-tape contraption lofted a brick to a thousand feet won't bring me closer to that goal, and that's about how Bennet's test flights compare to his stated plans.
He claims to have a more appropraite engine design in mid-stage development, but hasn't shown any evidence of such a thing (and his associates say things like "that? oh yes, we hope to build something like that some day").
He reminds me an awful lot of my boss from a small startup a few years back - operating in his own little reality, with everyone just looking at him funny when he makes his grand pronouncements.
Amateurs and small startups _can_ make useful contributions. Bennet just isn't one of them.
offered to the first non-governmental organisation to launch a pilot and two passengers into space twice
I'm sure this guy's group could do it - just so long as they don't want it to be the same pilot and passengers.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Take the bass line out
No, you don't have to
Bounce wit it
It's the hard knock life for us
It's the hard knock life (yeahhh) for us
Instead of treated we get tricked
Instead of kisses we get kicked
It's the hard knock life
I don't know how to be
No crib on MTV
God only knows
Got my mini me in the GP
See how it goes, evil's all that I see
You ask me my name d to the rizzo, e to the vizzo,
I to the lizzo, I'm a crazy mother f***er
Y'all knew that
Austin caught me in the first act, it's all backwards
What's with that
So I'll make a prophecy from the dog to the mini me
Give me an Escalade ah 2 way bling bling on eBay
domino mother fuckers
Yeah
Stick dat in your pipe and smoke it
Uh-huh
This is for all my homies in Brouge
uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh
Ah, krystal, my Moto, couple of bee hotches
Why not
I gotta bust a move
Drop and bust a groove
Feelin' fine
Got an evil crew
Goldmember too
Lick my nine
Til' then I'll _____ on my ______
____________________ I'm calling __________
That's all
For shizzle my nizzle y'all
This is a shout out to Hoover,
God MC, you all know him
That's Jay Z
I met him
Well I saw him in a restaurant
Stick dat in your blunt and smoke it
Yeah, I said blunt
1) Linux predates FreeBSD, so the BSD hackers who went on to work on FreeBSD should've quit BSD and moved over to Linux instead. ;)
2) It remains to be seen if the message passing overhead of the microkernel can be made small enough to rival the throughput/latency balance of a quality monolithic kernel. That's sort of Linus' challenge to the microkernel community. Having said that, Linux is becoming more of an evolved blend of mono- and micro- architectures. Modules, user-mode Linux, user filesystems, etc. tend to blur the line between the two.
-l
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By the way, anybody know where that aphorism come from? I think I saw it first in "Blue Mars", but I don't know whether it's original.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Ha ha ha...urk! That was so funny I nearly swallowed my tongue.
there once was a man-made rocket
that was built with funds out of pocket
three were shot into space
and vanished without trace
the hatch they forgot to lock it
Michael.
Linux : Mac
BTW, in Soviet Russia, the space program builds YOU, and that's the way it ought to be.
Steve Bennett isn't my favorite Amateur Rocketman -- John Carmack is!
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
Either you meant to say "Atlantic", or you are predicting that Steve will reach mars.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
as you say that is how the cookie crumbles. Linux had a better PR department and chances are good that when the hurd gets over the hump it will have even more free software ready to use it. But 10+ years after linux's debut it still has some issues.
Yes, but the X Price is given for a repeatable short suborbital journey, it just has to make it into space.
Also, he IS testing liqud fuel rockets. Maybe you should look at his homepage sometime.
http://www.starchaser.co.uk/
while this is 'just' a manned drop test, the actual launch will get him not higher than 30k feet. That's not a space flight. However, I wish him all the best, for despite al the back seat criticising goin on, he's the one with a dream. just hope he'll be successful, and some big money guys starts dreaming like him, give him lots of money to go boldly where no private company has gone before. If we have to wait for the NASA people we'll be earthbound till eternity. they lost their vision, Steve's got THE RIGHT STUFF
Support page Its got load diagrams, too.
You cant divide by zero! (note the bold below :)
siri
=-=-
a=1, b=1
a=b
a*a=a*b
a^2=ab
a^2-b^2=ab-b^2
(a+b)(a-b)=b(a-b)
(a+b)=b
1+1=1
2=1
=-=-=
No, the parents point is that there was no question of whether it would work, others have "tested" similar rockets lot's of times.
This guy is not going into space. This guy is getting as much publicity as possible for planning to go into space. He's showing the press impressive looking "test launches" using rockets well known both to work, and to be incapable of lifting a person into space.
Legally and technically, you are right that linux preceedes freeBSD. Practically, FreeBSD is a direct decendant of BSD, which was first by a long margin. Many hackers (The real ones) had access to BSD code for years before linux was even a gleam in Linus' eyes.
Right, which is why I made my little bitch comment about the BSD guys switching to Linux. Irony is not a metal. :)
-l
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AI: 1.
Theodore Logan: 0.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Also, he IS testing liqud fuel rockets. Maybe you should look at his homepage sometime.
No photos in the non-flash version of his site.
He fed the columnist in this article a line of vapour that his design team quickly downplayed. Until he actually demonstrates a liquid-fuel rocket, he doesn't have one.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved.
-- Darwin
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