Armadillo Aero One Step Closer To Space

RobertB-DC writes "The folks at Armadillo Aerospace have taken another step toward the X-Prize, dropping their re-entry vehicle from 2000 feet with no major problems noted. As usual, the Armadillo crew documented the event with text, pictures and video, and the story is also covered by Space.com (though without as many cool technical details). It's a bumpy ride, though -- instruments recorded some 10 G's on touchdown."

Comments

What does 10G's have to with bumpiness?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be a very smooth, fast drop.

Something just occurred to me

[carl67lp]

Lately, we've been hearing more and more about the X Prize and the amateur (and not-so-amateur) aerospace engineers taking part.

I suspect that the recent projects are to the government-sponsored space programs as open source software is to commercial software. True, the fundamental ideas /might/ be different, but the goals are the same: Take something that you can't have general access to, make it your own, and make it better. Then contribute that idea to the general public.

In an era when people are becoming more and more concerned with manned space flight, I think projects and contests like this are the only way possible to get humanity into the heavens. Governments will always be under pressure to reduce spending; it will only be with enthusiasts that we make it to our proper place in space.

(This isn't to say, of course, that a non-government-sponsored flight will be the first to Mars. This is simply to say that it will be the space enthusiasts who shed the light on the important facts about space and its wealth of knowledge.)

10 Gs

[Wyatt Earp]

Crash rated seats for military helicopters are rated to take 50G down to 20G so I wouldn't think 10G would be a problem to deal with.

You're absolutely right.

[DaedalusLogic]

Visit www.scaled.com and you'll see who's going to win the X-Prize. Burt Rutan designer of the famous Voyager, the plane that made the first non-stop flight around the world.

This guy has been engineering exceptional aircraft for years. Father of one of the most radical and popular homebuilt aircraft designs ever.

J.C. has an interesting background and obviously the mind of an engineer, but no one is going to catch up with Rutan's design which resembles the X-15 project of the 1960's.

If someone at Scaled Composites is reading... Can I have a job? Yeah, like that will happen...

Re:10 Gs?

[IvyMike]

Wouldn't 10 g's on touchdown cause death by deceleration trauma?

Bah. During the cold war, the air force did studies using a rocket sled, led by Dr. John P. Stapp that showed that 10Gs is nowhere near fatal. From the page:

By riding the decelerator sled himself, Dr. Stapp demonstrated that a human can withstand at least 45 G's in the forward position, with adequate harness. This is the highest known G force voluntarily encountered by a human.

I suppose the "with adequate harness" part can't be stressed enough, but there's nothing automatically fatal about 10Gs.

Dr. Stapp sounds like a pretty unique guy, and his work led to more survivable crashes in both aircraft and automobiles. I'm giving you One last chance to click on his biography, since I really want you to read it. :).

Re:10 Gs?

[ncc74656]

Jet fighter pilots can pull 4-5 G's momentarily before blacking out.

They can go a fair bit higher than that. I saw a show on Discovery Wings not long ago that said Deke Slayton used to pull 9 Gs without a G-suit. (The "without a G-suit" part is a bit extreme, but the "9 Gs" part is kinda on the edge where some people will black out and some won't.) You might want to have a look at this page.

Soyuz = up to 8.1G

[hughk]

According to this report, the Soyuz recent TMA-1 that went off track sustained 8.1G. The crew were unharmed. Normally Soyuz, which makes a hard-landing pulls about 3-4G during descent.

With shock absorbing crash couches and a reclined position, higher vales should be possible. The issue is failed parachute depolyment. Single parachutes may deploy incorrectly or not at all increasing the G load. Normally a cluster of parachutes are used hence the margin needed for error. Without access to the web site, I can't see how many chutes were being used.

Re:10 Gs?

[risacher]

Back in my flying days, I routinely pulled sustained 6.5 G turns without a G-suit or doing the proper Anti-G Straining Manouver. (AGSM) Some people just have a higher resting G-tolerance than others. Some of my classmates reported routinely "graying out" at as little as 4 G. ("Graying out" is where you progressively lose your peripheral vision.) With a proper G-strain (flexing leg and abdominal muscles to force blood up into cranium), pilots can easily do 6-7 G.

I only flew with a G suit once, and it was before I went to flight training (I was a back-seat passenger). We pulled 7 Gs on the sortie. The suit squeezed my legs hard enough that it felt like I would have bruises. I didn't black out.

It does not seem unreasonable at all to me that some trained pilots could pull 9 Gs without a suit.