Slashdot Mirror
X Prize Race Heats Up
evenprime writes "Armadillo Aerospace
have already done a drop test, and
Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites did a
second flight test
of their launch plane/spacecraft combination on July 3. SC haven't posted the results yet, but when they do you will find them
here.
Sadly, PanAero doesn't appear to be doing that well.
Although I like their "Junkyard Wars" technique, it doesn't look
stuffing rockets in the back end of a business jet
will build a legitimate contender."
It's interesting to note that Carmack, with Armadillo Aerospace, is taking more of an Open-Source approach to the X-Prize by participating in mailing lists and discussing various aspects of his designs with others in the rocketry community. While he's not going full-disclosure, he's at least sharing a lot more than Rutan.
I'm cheering for Armadillo.
I'd hardly call rocket engines added to a working design of a plane a "junkyard wars" approach.
More like two reliable systems mated together. Sure, the union isn't inherently reliable, due to unforseen interactions, but the individual components of each certainly are. They may be behind, but it's no reason to scoff at them.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
I can accept that PanAero's ascent plan may well work, but I suspect the standard airframe will have objections to the proposed 70 angle of attack descent. Their team profile on xprize.com makes no mention of how they're going to control the attitude (the conventional control surfaces won't be any use).
I don't think I want to be a passenger in that particular entry. Breaking ground is a pretty severe way of landing, in my opinion.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Runs on OS X, OS9 and Windows. Warning: Harder to fly than MS Flightsim -- of course!
X-Plane, being fairly realistic, even has an FAA rating so it can be used (with a $150.000 motion platform) to log hours towards your Airline Transport Certificate.
Don't do it. It'll void your warranty.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
which significantly reduces the problems of going transsonic. Once you take the lack of air into account, turbulence becomes a lot less of a problem!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I don't mean to demean any of the efforts, and all that cash is an obvious incentive. But, are any of the competitiors building something that isn't dead-end technology?
Consider: Rutan and others plan to boost a more-or-less conventional aircraft to a few times the speed of sound, coast to altitude, and glide back. (You can't just put a bigger firecracker in the back, remember. You need life-support, navigation, communications, and, especially, safe passage through re-entry.)
So, one of them bags the X-Prize, but in the end you still have a vehicle with a maximum velocity of 1500-2500 mph. That's a long way from the 17,000 mph needed to reach and sustain orbit.
Are any X-Prize competitors building something that can be the basis of a realistic orbital vehicle?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Three jet aircraft take off. Two jets at either end of a long piece of knicker elastic. The third jet would have the payload of a space rocket attached by a hook to the middle of the knicker elastic. When all three planes have reached their ceiling. The middle plane flies earthwards, the other two planes fly horizontaly in opposite directions, loading the knicker elastic with the mathematical maximum of energy. When this point is reached, the middle plane releases the space rocket. All the energy stored in the knicker elastic will be transfered to the space rocket. How fast would the space rocket be going before it fired its engine, how much fuel would it need to achieve escape velocity?
I am not a mathematician, nor a materials scientist, so I do not know how much energy can be stored in knicker elastic. But I'm sure that it can be released in an effective way to be able to claim the 'X' prize.
I will not die happy if I never see elephants dance the pas de deux. Or human beings achieve true bird like flight. Or humanity starts the herculean task of putting the earth back the way they found it. Come on lads parties over, lets clean the place up, and put all the trees back. I know a place where there is lots of space, lots of room, its very quiet, very clean, no bugs, and twenty four hours a day sunshine. No earthquakes, no typhoons, hurricanes, very few neighbours.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
... I'd be spending my moolah on propulsion technology research, as opposed to the more high-profile Drive For The X-Prize.
Dense and compact energy sources... hell, fund fusion research for a start... more powerful and efficent ion engines... I don't happen to be a rocket scientist, but you get the idea.
To me, the one who revolutionizes propulsion, will be the first trillionaire in history. Not to mention a true hero to future generations.
The name's Cochrane... Zefram Cochrane... it could be you...
I would like some interplanetary travel (at least!) before I pass from this place. Someone help me out...
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
I believe that Slashdot is the only place where you can hear serious talk about international terrorism and antimatter bombs in the same post.
Ralph Kramden: Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!
The answer to everything lies in 50's sitcoms and domestic violence.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Then get off your ass. There is nothing special about any one person working to get into space. It takes a lot of work and a lot of studying. (Not the school type.)
the parent post should be modded up +5, Great post!
got to love this thought!
oh yeah i wanna fuck some 2 dollar sand niggah bitches!
gotta love this great post! mod up +5
"It takes a lot of work and a lot of studying."
More importantly it also takes cartloads of cash - you can sit and think about propulsion systems until your arse turns blue, but all of it is for nothing if you never actually test one. And that takes cash, a lot of red tape fighting a team of engineers and probably some highly dangerous, restricted chemicals.
Thanks for the info. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Carmack may be "open source", but Rutan is probably the most likely person currently participating in the X-Prize competition. This is the guy that designed, built, and flew the Voyager (the first non-stop around the world plane with no refuelling).
Building a single rocket recovered by parachute is simpler than building two complete aircraft.
I agree that Rutan's approach is more likely to lead to a safe and commercially viable suborbital tourist vehicle. But Carmack's approach still has a fair chance to win the X-Prize first. Carmack is taking a lot of shortcuts that a more advanced design like Rutan's simply can't use.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
There's an important difference between going up-and-down and attaining orbit.
To stay in orbit, you've got to accelerate to orbital velocity. That takes about an order of magnitude more energy than just lifting yourself out of the atmosphere.
Notice how long the shuttle's engines keep burning after it is fifty miles up.
That's part of the answer to the question about reentry heating. The business jet won't be braking from 18,000 miles per hour.
...into the back of a business jet may not work, but stuffing rockets into the back of a surplus Concorde might...
Armadillo and Scaled Composites have quite the financial backing and I think everyone believes that it's just a matter of time before either they succeed or take part in the most expensive darwin award to date. I'm kinda tired of the top news story being W's and Blairs lies and the "war in Iraq" that's supposed to be over yet we're still reportting casulties on both sides.
Everyone dreams of going to space, everyone has looked up in the night sky and thought I wonder what it's really like up there, and everyone at one time growing up pretended they were an astronaut/cosmonaut. I really wish the Ministry of News would declare this newsworthy beyound the nince websites and occassional backpage news blurb.
So who do I call, I'm curious, is there a director of the Ministry of News that declares everything in america newsworthy? Isn't it time that we started focusing on individual efforts for success rather than constantly dwelling on what's gone wrong for the last year? Did the war in Iraq stop these guys? Did september 11th (well legislation limiting their supplies sure didn't help)? Are they terrorists in disguise? NO NO NO NO NO, I want everyone to see that there's hope for the future and not everything is so dark and abismal.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Three jet aircraft take off. Two jets at either end of a long piece of knicker elastic.
Further proof that an already fairly amusing joke can always be made funnier by the use of British words.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Didn't the Germans research a lot of this during WWII? Also some Americans.
it doesn't look stuffing rockets in the back end of a business jet will build a legitimate contender.
But it could simplify live testing. "Sorry, Mr. Gates, but autopilot kicked in and is trying to take us into space. I don't know why."
Table-ized A.I.
Researching fundamentally new forms of energy is expensive, even out of the range of most billionares. Stretching current technology to the limits of human ingenuity, on the other hand, is relatively cheap.
If someone offered ten million for the first demonstration of an energy producing fusion reactor, it's unlikely anybody would be motivated who wasn't working on it already.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The very poorest North Americans are wealthy by Third World standards.
Of course this truth underlies any discussion of poverty and class in North America. But you can't dismiss anyone's poverty based on the fact that there are poorer people elsewhere, living under different circumstances. A laborer living on $1.50 a day in Kenya will take small comfort in the fact that there are people living on $0.75 a day in rural Eritrea. He'll still feel poor.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Bear in mind however that the closest Chuck Yeager came to being killed while testing a plane was in the NF-104, and that's because of the tricky transition from attitude control by thruster to aerodynamic attitude control
Fly by wire may take all the "excitement" out of this transition, so mere humans don't have to worry about it (unless the avionics packs in, of course)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
But Carmack's approach still has a fair chance to win the X-Prize first. Carmack is taking a lot of shortcuts that a more advanced design like Ruth's simply can't use.
Given what I know about Armadillo Aerospace's rocket design, I have some serious concerns whether it will actually work as advertised. I mean, has Armadillo actually started constructing a rocket that can lift three crew members to 62.1 miles altitude, return safely, and do it again within two weeks?? Meanwhile, it appears that Scaled Composites' entry is well on its way to make an attempt at winning the X-Prize probably as early as November of this year!
I believe that the Starchaser team are well-advanced on constructing the Thunderbird rocket that will attempt to win the prize late this year. I think the race will come down to between Scaled Composites and Starchaser for the one to meet the X-Prize criteria.
maybe not open source, but IIRC the Manhattan project did bring a huge number of scientists together who talked fairly freely amongst themselves. What Open Source tries to encourage is come sort of hive activity where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. If it's less, you're in trouble!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"Remember, by launching SpaceShipOne at over 50,000 feet altitude, that right there saves a tremendous amount of propellant needed to fly to the 62.1 mile altitude. It's the same method that allowed the relatively small X-15 with its XLR-99 rocket motor to reach over 354,000 feet, or 67.5 miles into space. "
Why not attach the plane to a high-attitude ballon? Make the going up process as passive as possible[1]. Then cut loose from there and start the engines.
[1] Using the fact that air is denser were you are, and lighter were you want to go.
"Dense and compact energy sources... "
We already have that. It's called the CowboyNeal bean drive. Many a pair of pants have felt it's full effect.
One of the greatest side-effects of the claiming of the X Prize will be something that no one could have predicted just a year ago:
The X Prize will be won while the space shuttle is grounded.
So what, you might ask. Well, it's a big deal. For years, various groups have been trying to persuade NASA to work with, not compete with,
private ventures. And NASA has always given many reasons to refuse, the biggest one being "when was the last time a private company flew a man in space on their own rocket... er, never?" Of course, that's a perfectly legitimate concern.
But when the X-Prize is won while the shuttle is grounded, I think it will send a big message to both NASA and the people in the Administration who hold the purse strings, and we might see some interesting changes in NASA policy, the kind of changes that might speed up the day when every middle class American can enjoy a trip into space for a reasonable price.
Cool, huh?
And it's clear that the X Prize is going to be won soon. Check out
this article, which describes Rutan's plans to fly into space by December.
science is a religion
To the first person who demonstrates an energey producing fusion reactor, I suspect 10 million wouldn't even register compared to the other offers that would come in.
They don't break the ground; the specially designed nose cone crumples. They've run a test at the calculated velocity that they're expecting to have when they hit the ground---with an actual man inside. He said that it wasn't too bad, and the accererometer didn't give readings that sounded too unhealthy. Personally, I think that the most risky part of the landing is the wobbling that they saw in the helicopter drop test, and that's likely to go away if they fall farther. I assume that they hit the terminal velocity in their drop test and that falling farther will just give more time to damp the oscillation, and I hope I'm not wrong. Oh well.
They have launched a fairly large rocket recently, and have onboard video on the site for you to check out. I think the X prize is a great competition, and gives people the chance to "think out of the box", there has to be a cheaper way of getting into space (and back!) than the currently over inflated budget of the national space agencies. (I have worked in the space sectory for quite a few years and seen the absolute waste and paper shuffling of these organisations) Good luck to all the teams, may the best team win!
For more pictures of the vehicle, go here. For an article about the drop test, go here.
But I must note that Scaled Composites will probably fly their vehicle to suborbital altitute before Armadillo does. John Carmack, leader of the Armadillo Aerospace team, posted some comments about his progress and schedule.
Actually, Starchaser's current schedule calls for the Thunderbird launch in late 2004. What you are probably referring to is the Nova rocket, which will be launched this year to a height of 30,000 feet, carrying one man. Check out.Debunking the "59 Deceits"
The X15 needed manouvering jets as it did not have enough air on the control surfaces to maintain stability. The X15 was a plane designed for a rocket and it was still was hard to fly. I suspect Scaled Composites will need some more work. This is a very different plane to Voyager.