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Catching Up With The Rocket Guy
Jedi Holocron writes "The full article is at Space.Com and reports on the current status of Brian "Rocket Guy" Walker's home-brew space program. This is the guy who is planning to build a rocket in his backyard, funded by his toy inventions. He's scaled back from an X-Prize launch to a mere 15,000 feet with a sky-diving return. This could be the next ride installed next to Disney's Mission:Space if he has his way!!! All told he's now calling it an amateur rocket, however it doesn't look like the model rockets I remember."
Some people don't give up on their childhood dreams
and that he's building a *rocket*. I'm sure this will inspire a lot of kids to go into science if it works.
I'm also sure it's good for him because he can turn around and make action figures of himself and his rocket!
Anybody in serious contention for winning the x-prize is motivated by far more than the prize itself.
Those who are working on a budget that makes the prize itself impressive do not have a chance.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
He's scaled back from an X-Prize launch to a mere 15,000 feet with a sky-diving return.
Isn't that what a lot of small airfields propose under the name of "parachute jump" for $100, 1-hour training session included for first-timers ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This guy was recently on Invent This! on TechTV.
He talked about some system to distill 50% peroxide into 90%. Didn't Carmack say that wasn't feasible to do in the volume he needed?
Concur.
and if it's anything like the systems that shot down the Iranian airliner "by mistake", it only has to fail once for this rocket guy to skydie.
Count on it to fail at least twice.
Failure number one: Mistaken identity is made, live fire at Rocket Guy.
Failure number two: The fucking thing misses Rocket Guy cleanly and then goes on to take out a 757 minding its own business at 45,000 feet, two states over.
Is it fascism yet?
When choosing a launch location, a very significant factor is the downrange property damage considerations. Since modern rockets tend to be devices that explode on a fairly regular basis, and they do so when travelling at very high speed, there is a very high likelihood of high velocity 'junk' impacting downrange of the launch point.
With that in mind, the ideal launch location is atop a 60,000 foot mountain located on the equator, with little/no population base for a couple thousand miles eastbound of the launch location. There is no such location on earth, so, most launches happen from a 'compromise' location. The us government long ago deemed the safety factor of launching over the ocean was worth more than the cost savings of a high altitude launch location.
Payloads headed to a polar orbit tend to have slightly different dynamics associated, and the initial launch vector is actually somewhat westbound, to offset the rotation of the earth. An ideal location would be a high peak located exactly 'on the pole', where there is no velocity penalty from the earths rotation. Altho the southern polar region does have such locations, the logistics of launching from there turn out to be more expensive than spending a little more on the launch vehicle, and launching it from home. US military payloads destined for a polar orbit tend to depart terra firma from Vandenberg, where the initial westbound vector will indeed take em out over the water again.
In both cases, the potential for downrange impact damage outweighs the cost savings achievable from a high altitude launch location. Conscious decisions were made in selecting launch locations where politics and impact potential outweighed launch efficiencies. Politics said it had to be within the lower 48, impact potential said it had to have a downrange pointed out over the water.
From an engineering perspective, high up in the mountains of Hawaii would be a much more efficient launch location. It has the benefit of altitude, the downrange ocean, and provides every major airport on the west coast as a 'launch abort alternate landing location'. In the real world though, the logistics of transporting all launch hardware out to that location will cost more than the savings incurred, so the point becomes academic. Still, remembering the issues of weight control during the construction of the initial apollo moon landing hardware, cant help but wonder how much more could have been done if the Saturn 5 was launched high atop the mountains of Hawaii. I'm sure that would have increased the available moon orbit throw weight by a few thousand pounds.