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The Step-By-Step DIY Approach To The X-Prize
HobbySpacer writes "According to this article, John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace team is making steady progress towards a X PRIZE rocket vehicle. Playing the tortoise to Burt Rutan's hare , the Texas team just might win the race to 100km altitude. At least if some of the other teams don't get there first."
How long can this take? How hard can it be? There are just a few simple steps:
1) Build spaceship.
2) Fly it up to 100 km.
3) Come back safely.
4) -> 2)
A good afternoon's work, damn slackers..
Trolling is a art,
(From the days when astronomers ground their own mirrors).
"The fastest way to grind a large mirror is to first grind a small mirror, then grind the large mirror."
In other words, some problems are so complex that you can only solve them one at a time.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Mom: That's a spaceship son. Son: Kewl!!! Can I ride in a spaceship one day? Mom: If that's what you want to do, go right ahead! Spaceship: KABOOM! Son: Mommy!... nevermind, I'll be a police man again.
It always makes me laugh when I see this comment about letting the private sector take over space exploration.
How would you feel if for the sake of arguement the eventual winner of the X-Prize were to become the MS of space exploration, with almost total control over who does what in space. The private sector is not about bettering mankind, its about profit and many private sector companies are not averse to using very dubious, and in many cases downright criminal methods to achieve their aims. Suppose they discover valuable caches of materials. Do you think they are going to share them with the rest of the world or make us pay thru the nose ? What will the visa requirements be for landing on Planet Microsoft I wonder ? Suppose you are vacationing on Mars and disaster strikes, what do you reckon the odds would be the highest bidders get the first seats off the planet.
In typical fashion the private sector will not become a serious player in space travel until NASA and the other space agencies have made serious reductions in the cost of entry with lots of tax payer research dollars. The private sector will then demand access and want to cherry pick the most lucrative aspects. Remember, there was a time when Bill Gates was an entreprenuer.
The linux hacker
Rocket technology aiming at supersonic suborbital flights built by privateers using off-the-shelf components? Sounds more like Darwin Awards, especially after you take a look at the level of technology. How do they even know that their rocket is aerodynamically stable? Building robust, real-time control systems to adjust the attitude during flight at a sub-millisecond rate can't be that easy either.
BOO! TERRO
Did the article totally ignore the whole "the X-Prize contenders must repeat their success within 2 weeks by using the same vehicle?" aspect, which in my opinion isn't exactly a minor point.
A one-off launch is one thing, but to return the craft to service within 14 days is something else entirely.
Not trying to nitpick, but how many truly positive monumental advances in the human condition were made by a government entity? Mass production? The Industrial Revolution? The cure for Polio?
To paraphrase the parent post:
The Government sector is not about bettering mankind, its about power and many public sector bureaucrats are not averse to using very dubious, and in many cases downright criminal methods to achieve their aims.
A benevolent Gov't may sponser and fund the private sector if the advances are in the interest of the Gov't. Remember that just 100 years ago, every government on this earth knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Horseless carriages and the Aeroplane were nothing more than rich man's toys. The Railroad was all that was needed to tame the wild frontiers, and even that was private enterprise.
If Microsoft tried this, the stratosphere would be on fire by now.
It's neat that people are doing this, but as a booster, Carmack's rocket ranks roughly with a SCUD-B. A SCUD-B can reportedly reach about 78km with a payload of about 1 metric ton.
Armadillo = bunch of ex-games developers who have managed to lift a couple of bits of scaffolding pipe to a couple of thousand feet..... ....
Scaled Composites = bunch of aero engineers with 20 years plus experience, including round-the-world flight (Voyager) who have already test flown the actual vehicle to 46,000 ft
Not to put the Armadillo guys down, but like writing software, you need a bit of experience in the field (...stands back in expectation of flames...)
And good for us all that it is.
If you want to get truly screwed find someone that says theyr'e doing for the good of all humanity. Or better yet if you want that kind of space travel you can join the Promise Keepers or the Raelians.
Yes virginia men will go to space to make money and those that are successfull will get obscenely wealthy. The next wave of robber barrons may own planets.
The truly funny thing is that whiny loosers whose only real complaint is that its the other guy being successfull not them, will benefit immensely from the move into space.
If you feel that the people going into space to win the Xprize are morally bankrupt, do it yourself.
Especially if the pilot tries unsucessfully to perform a rocket jump.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
the Texas team just might win the race to 100km altitude. At least if some of the other teams don't get there first.
In other words, they might just capture first place, if someone else doesn't.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Just think, now those nice flight attendants will give their saftey lecture starting with... In case of an emergency your seat can double as an air helmet, suit, flotation and re-entry device... :-D
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
Is getting ALOT of undeserved publicity here.
I have seen his website and the photos of his project and all I can say is that I very unimpressed.
The rocket looks like something out of HG. Wells.
And very unaerodynamic.
My bet is on Ruttan's project.
Carmack I am guessing is getting all this positive press because he's a software programmer unlike Ruttan who has true aerospace credentials.
What people seem to forget is that there is not a linear increase in challenges between air travel and space travel.
;)
The reason is that the energy required to lift an object into or beyond earth orbit is incredible, which is why the Saturn V was almost nothing but a fuel tank (or the Shuttle for that manner).
That plus the materials science necessary to protect said object upon reentry.
The most reliable manned launch platform remains the traditional multistage rockets currently employed by the Russians (and soon the Chinese). These are cheap by aerospace standards but are never going to reach the volume of flights or pricepoint of the airline industry.
The privatization of space requires new methods to escape the earth's pull. I'm actually rather skeptical that any new method can be devised that will reduce the cost enough to make mainstream tourism possible.
Remember, they just retired the Concorde. If we can't even create affordable supersonic travel, what makes you think we can have space tourism?
That's not to say it can't be done cheaper; clearly launching a rocket off of a jet at high altitude is a proven technique (satellites can be launched this way). I also think there is merit to high altitude balloon launch platforms, but it sure sounds risky to launch a rocket near a fragile balloon.
How much cheaper remains to be seen.
But since the X-Prize is for suborbital flights that require little heat shielding and less involved life support, I don't think it in itself is a good metric for the privatization of space. It's "space lite", not really the real deal.
If the challenge were to launch a craft that could dock with the ISS, that's a different story. I know Nasa could use a vehicle like that right now
I don't need to fix lines 0 or 4, because I made a subroutine like this:
0) $maxTrips = number of trips you want to take; $numTrips = 0;
:= new Object();
1) Build spaceship.
2) Fly it up to 100 km.
3) Come back safely.
4) if ($numTrips <= $maxTrips) {$numTrips++; goto 2;}
101) Define "Build spaceship.":
102) ) $numTrips++; # make code confusing
103) ) import store;
105) ) global $spaceship
106) ) for each i in parts:
107) ) ) tell $spaceship to add i
104) ) let parts = store.buy(spaceship parts);
Maybe "$" means global variable, so I don't need the word "global" on line 105. Now, if more Slashdot users post the rest of the subroutines, we'll have that X Prize very soon, after we put the lines in order.
==========
There are two types of people: those who are in the world, and those who aren't.
For the love of sanity, the parent post has to be the stupidest one I've ever read!
"How would you feel if for the sake of arguement the eventual winner of the X-Prize were to become the MS of space exploration, with almost total control over who does what in space."
What you're describing, of course is NASA, an agency founded to beat the USSR and establish a monopoly on all space activity. Guess what? NASA succeeded! The only thing it failed to do is die gracefully when it accomplished its mission.
"What will the visa requirements be for landing on Planet Microsoft I wonder ?"
One hell of a lot less stringent than the process of getting into the Astronaut Corps. Americans have been paying billions a year for this elitist little club to play with food in space. When do we get to go? For 40 years, NASA has not reduced the price of manned space access by one blue cent, not that you could buy a ticket at any price. Dennis Tito tried. NASA laughed him off. So he went to the only place that believes in private space enterprise - Russia! And guess which agency fought him tooth and nail every step of the way? NASA!
Don't kid yourself. NASA has no incentive to make manned space flight cheap because that would weaken the barriers to competition - making their political mandate to control the space frontier that much less defensible.
If you want a visa to anywhere else in the universe, you'd better hope the private sector wins this battle against runaway bureaucracy. Just like a century ago, when you would have done well to place your transportation bets on greedy bastards like Henry Ford or the Wright Brothers.
The Concorde went out of service because it had to compete with other flights that did the same thing, except slower and cheaper. So the 100-km-reaching manned vessels could retire the orbit-reaching manned vessels, because they do the same thing, except lower and cheaper.
Today we can no longer reach the moon but we can send more people into space (as ISS shows). Soon we may not be able to reach ISS, but even more people will reach space (by passing 100 km).
It might have a low probability of happening, but the X-Prize could finish manned orbits.
==========
There are two types of people: those who are in the world, and those who aren't.
What the X-Prize and the whole low-cost access to space race need is an M$-class war chest. If Bill Gates and Co. started spending their research billions on the development of space technologies, rather than on selling the next pathetic version of Windows, we'll have a permament moon base in five years. Now, imagine if the other infotechnology companies started spending their billions, too.
Unless we see massive leaps in nanotechnology (or perhaps psychokinietic research), information technology isn't going to lead us anywhere but The Matrix, a dystopian, jack-me-in future.
Insightful, aint it?
Obviously, if your time machine works properly, the order should be:
1) Send humans back in time, and have them return safely.
2) Don't kill or have sex with your ancestors.
3) Resolve causation paradoxes
4) Master physics to manipulate time as degree of freedom
5) Build time-travel capsule
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Forget reusable, nuclear rockets, space elevators; although all of these tricks work, and will help and doubtless will be used, but they are one-time tricks and the trick that has the biggest effect is simply to launch, and launch a lot. Economies of scale.
Now, NASA cannot and will not be allowed to launch a lot. NASA takes a small(ish), relatively constant chunk of the American tax each year, and launches some stuff with that. There's a limit to what they can do with the money they have; which they reached about 2 decades ago. NASA as a government department cannot sensibly take a profit, and has built the wrong rockets for making money with anyway. That means that, unlike a business, they won't grow exponentially. Even if NASA were to be given more money, they still can't grow manned space flight- it would be a flat one-time increase. Only continuous growth works, and NASA can't do it.
That means that they will only launch a fixed number of rockets per year, and hence the economies of scale cannot be utilised more than they are at the moment. Since economies of scale are the most powerful way of reducing the costs of spaceflight, this means that NASA cannot take us to space; it can only take a lucky few chosen by a bunch of bureaucrats to be termed 'elite'.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"What kind of sucky meme is this? We're coming off Soviet Russia and this is the best we can come up with? Is just the fact that it's from a Matt Groening cartoon enough now? Soviet Russia was at least funny the first couple times, this is just stupid.
I find it odd to call Rutan the Hare? He has designed many airplanes over the years from small but very cool homebuilts: the VariEze, Long Eze, and the Quickie. He got out of that because of the lawyers. He also built the first plane to fly non-stop around the world with out refueling. He is without a doubt very good at what he does, make flying machines. Rutan has already built stuff that flys into space. Look on his page www.scaled.com they help design and build the Pegasus. I am sure that John Carmack himself does not think that Rutan is rushing his program unwisely. My money is on the Rutan team. If they can get the stability issues solved quickly they have a good chance to win. No matter what they will have a good craft that can do the job.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=e xact&Acronym=DIY&Find=Find
:P
next time, Do It Yourself
"the Texas team just might win the race to 100km altitude. At least if some of the other teams don't get there first." .. Isn't that what a competition is? If I don't win, somebody else will?
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
where's the news here? Um, no new info at all.
Its a puff piece basically saying only that "John Carmack is trying to build a spaceship"
We already knew that.
This space available.
Paul Allen, the second largest MS stockholder and founder of MS is the major funder of Rutan's space plane. This one is considered the best candidate to win the X-prize.
So the 100-km-reaching manned vessels could retire the orbit-reaching manned vessels, because they do the same thing, except lower and cheaper.
If it's not reaching orbit, it's not doing the same thing.
The Concorde wasn't replaced by a plane flying three-forths of the way from New York to Paris. Nor will heavy space launch systems be replaced by the new '100-km' class of vessels.
"Ten years later, this country---the original advoceas of the peaceful colonisation of space---decide to build giant space weapons. Strictly for defense, of course. One of their space flights blows up, killing---among others---a female teacher.
Their space weapon shield proves to be impractical, and so they change the focus of their research... developing a weapon capable of causing large disturbances in the heart of the sun... disturbances large enough to wipe out the planets closest to her.
They hold the world hostage to their threat to reduce Earth to a cinder. A conflict isn't settled to their satisfaction. Many buttons are pushed.
A hundred million years afterward, a blue-green fungus appears spontaneously on one of Jupiter's moons. It dies out within a week.
And that's it for life in this solar system."
--The Judge, Cerebus: Church and State pp. 1207--8, by Dave Sim
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca