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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."
The expected failure rate on that system they're supposed to wheel out in a few years is going to be high. They won't have tested it, 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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Then, there's the thrill factor. You've gone into space. Twice. And you've the technology to go there again. But it's too expensive to go it alone. So you start advertising for N'Sync musicians interested in a visit to Low Earth Orbit.
(After which, you tell him the music is carp, read him some Vogon poetry, and throw him out of the airlock. After which, he has 30 seconds to be rescued by a shoe.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If he's only shooting for 15,000 feet, why not just build a modern day ME163 rocket fighter? I seem to recall that it could fly at around 30,000 feet, and there was an improved B version that had enough fuel for 15 minutes of flying time.
If they just fixed the whole nasty "randomly exploding" problem it was prone to, it could be fun.
I don't know much about the lil rocket, but didn't the Russians also build a version? Anyone know anything about that?
As technology advances, it becomes tougher for the small-scale individual to do pretty much _anything_ themselves. I'm really psyched that this guy is trying.
When airplanes were new, anybody could build a decent one that would compete with at least the low-range commercial ones. Same with computers, cars, operating systems (but then, hey, look at Linux now!). I guess what I'm trying to say is that no matter how may people call this dude a fool, I think he's doing something really cool =:-)
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Play Six Pack Man. I
Seems as if he only had one leg.
Turns out he was a ME163 pilot and lost the leg to a young man flying a Spitfire who managed to hit him and blow his leg off in the process, but not quite take his Komet out of the sky.
My elderly friend said getting shot with the 50 calibre through the upper leg knocked him unconcious.
So consider what ensued: You wake up in agony, only to look down and see that one of your legs no longer belongs to you. You then notice you're piloting a heavily damaged airplane. You further surmise that your airplane has no fuel (Komet's shot their wad and coasted back to earth) and no landing gear (Komet's landed on a sort of skid). Now get the damned plane back on the ground to a dead stick landing without finishing off either the plane or yourself.
Radical dude, radical!
Is it fascism yet?
One problem is that Carmack's H202 suppliers demanded that he sign papers saying that he wouldn't concentrate the H202 any further, IIRC.
You've got to hand it to Carmack, he takes things seriously.
One of Carmack's biggest problems now is where to launch his rocket, as the parachute descent could end anywhere within a few dozen mile radius, and it's hard to secure that large an area. He's seriously considering going to a powered landing just so he can land it at a particular place.
The X-Prize is seriously hard. I'd be surprised if anybody actually makes it by the specified cut-off time of Jan 1 2005.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.