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X-Prize Progress Update
savuporo writes "The X-Prize organization has released a summary document (PDF), detailing the recent progress and immediate plans of 13 different competing teams, of those who have publicised information of significant hardware development (there are a total of 27 officially listed competitors from seven nations by now). Some details: quite a few teams are expecting to do full-scale or subscale powered flight tests soon, some as early as January 2004. Burt Rutan can still be considered as leading the pack, but others are not too far behind, and the winner is far from certain. Armadillo Aerospace states that some US teams are hindered more by regulatory hassles, than technical issues. Speaking of Armadillo, the team has just released a very special video, commemorating tomorrow's 100th anniversary of powered flight."
TEAM: SCALED COMPOSITES
WEBSITE: WWW.SCALED.COM
TEAM LEADER: BURT RUTAN
It is expected that the next six to nine months will involve a number of rocket powered flights of SpaceShipOne, with each flight involving a longer and longer burn of the hybrid engine. The first flight may be limited to a short 15- second burn, with later flights demonstrating the full 60+ second burn time bringing SpaceShipOne from 50,000 feet eventually to an altitude of 328,000 feet (62 miles...space!).
TEAM: ARMADILLO AEROSPACE
WEBSITE: WWW.ARMADILLOAEROSPACE.COM
TEAM LEADER: JOHN CARMAC
Immediately after completion of the engine test program, Armadillo will be testing a full scale boilerplate X PRIZE vehicle with a captive hover test at their 100-acre test facility, followed by some low altitude hover tests to 3,000 ft. With these tests completed, it's their intent to do some additional low altitude launches within the "amateur" classification (and they continue to work with FAA AST for a burn time waiver). The next phase of successively higher altitude tests and ultimately manned X PRIZE flights will be dependent on what the team calls its biggest challenge: the launch license application and accompanying environmental review. Technically, Armadillo claims they will be ready to fly X PRIZE missions well before the end of the year, but Team members are fond of referring to the Wernher von Braun quote: "We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." Challenges included, this Dallas based group of bicycle repair mechanics is relishing the prospect of an exciting 2004.
TEAM: STARCHASER INDUSTRIES
WEBSITE: WWW.STARCHASER.CO.UK
TEAM LEADER: STEVE BENNETT
With the Thunderstar and its new engines now in production, Starchaser plans to fly in 2004. The team has also announced that it will make its propulsion system available for sale to other X PRIZE contestants on a commercial basis.
TEAM: CANADIAN ARROW
WEBSITE: WWW.CANADIANARROW.COM
TEAM LEADER: GEOFF SHEERIN
Next steps for the team will include continued testing of the engine to prepare it for actual flight onboard the first Canadian Arrow spacecraft that is scheduled for launch next year. When successful, the Arrow will make Canada the fourth nation to put humans into space.
TEAM: DA VINCI PROJECT
WEBSITE: WWW.DAVINCIPROJECT.COM
TEAM LEADER: BRIAN FEENEY
Da Vinci Project celebrated the 100th anniversary of powered flight with a Technical conference and press evening on December 16th & 17th. Early in 2004 da Vinci Project hopes to receive its license to launch from the Canadian Government and begin a sequence of test flights culminating in an series of flights to win the X PRIZE.
TEAM: PABLO DE LEON & ASSOCIATES
WEBSITE: WWW.PABLODELEON.COM
TEAM LEADER: PABLO DE LEON
During 2004 we will concentrate in launch test of at least two half scale vehicles and in launch operations. Several hybrid static firing tests will also be performed. Construction of a full scale capsule will begin in July 2004. This capsule will be used for training, simulation and to study mating/demating techniques.
TEAM: HIGH ALTITUDE RESEARCH CORP. (HARC)
WEBSITE: WWW.HARCSPACE.COM
TEAM LEADER: TIM PICKENS
HARC will continue progressing toward full scale launches while keeping safety first. Hardware design and testing will continue into 2004 with a launch of the Liberator Escape Tower and Capsule in the 1st half of 2004. HARC is planning for a summer launch of the "Little Joe" version of the Liberator to an altitude of approximately 40 kilometers. The first full scale launch is planned for late summer and will be followed by another launch in the fall. The two X PRIZE competition flights will take place in late 2004, and there are already astronaut candidates pitching in to help move the Team toward that goal.
T
Armadillo Videos
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The Toronto Star had a recent human-interest story A do-it-yourself shot at the final frontier about Brian Feeney behind the Da Vinci team project.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It really makes one wonder where we would be if Goddard had restrictions on fuel sources and flight space
Not to diminish Goddards achievements, but in terms of who-influenced-whom, he was more on a side-track of space explocation. Both Wernher von Braun and Sergej Korolov had most of their roots elsewhere. And of course, the military behind them, paving the road...
However, given his difficulties of getting hold of something relatively benign like hydrogen peroxide, I'm not liking Carmack's odds of getting the requisite quantities of plutonium :-)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Engineering prowess?
The shuttle is a horrible design, its the epitome of form over function. This is primarily because it was insisted that the shuttle be able to glide back to earth. Thus its design is poorly suited to reentry and it also must carry heavy mass penalties such as wings and landing gear that eat into its available payload. And perhaps most damaging of all to the overall design are the cockpit windows, which aside from serving almost no function at all, create numerous difficulties during re-entry. To avoid having the glass melt, the shuttle must take on a very high angle of attack on re-entry - akin to doing a belly flop off a diving board as opposed to diving head first. The shuttle glides about as well as a cinder block and its reusable main engines ( a technological breakthrough at the time) are actually more costly than nonreusable engines that were available. The choice of liquid hydrogen as a fuel is equally as ridiculous as hydrogen is one of the most difficult substances to store and did anyone mention expensive?
Space flight must be reliable, cost effective and practical. The space shuttle has failed miserably in all of these aspects. To NASA's credit they devloped a vehicle that posed many design challenges, but close to a 1 in 50 failure rate is far from reliable. Its sad that NASA cares more about wowing the public with wings and cockpit glass than it does about producing measureable results.
NASA originally told congress that the shuttle would be so cheap and reliable it could fly 100 times a year, by 2003 we were down to a miserable 4. Why? Because the shuttle requires so much maintenence and inspection to maintain any sort of reliability.
As i end this rant i just want to say that a better design would have saved the lives of both the Challenger and Columbia crews. Buraucracy killed them but a better design would have saved them.
We have a good working relationship with AST, the division of the FAA that handles launch license, and we are one of only three companies (along with Scaled and XCOR) currently in the RLV launch license process. We have found all the people there helpful and eager to work with us. There is a lot of paperwork to be done, but we are working through it, and do not see a problem satisfying them. Things like calculating and minimizing expected third party casualty rates are obviously necessary and sensible.
The environmental aspects are less rational, with no analytical sense of scale.
Still, I'm only mildly concerned about the regulatory side of things. I think it will work out. None of our work is held up by any of this, so the worst case is that we have a vehicle built and tested repeatedly at the 200,000 lb-sec waivered impulse limit, with no launch license to allow us to fill the tank the rest of the way up. If that happens, THEN we get peeved about the situation, but continue flight testing with what we can.
Let me repeat: In no way have we been hampered by regulatory burden. Yet. We have been VERY hampered by commercial companies being too worried about liability exposure to work with us - peroxide companies, filament winders, and parachute companies have all caused us significant problems.
The supply issue with 90% peroxide basically cost us almost the entire year of flight testing. We spent the last six months developing a propellant combination that could conveniently replace the 90% peroxide based on widely available chemicals instead of the ultra-specialized propulsion grade. We are in the final optimizing and scale up phase of that. Instead of being irate about it, I try to look on the bright side - it is lots cheaper, easer to handle, and even a bit higher performance.
There are lots of problems still to be worked, but everything is coming along fine. We are behind schedule and somewhat over budget, but no worse off than any other project I have ever worked on...
John Carmack
You should check the armadillo site more often, they haven't worked on the hovering for the last two years. The current ship is a fully functional rocket capable of getting into space with a crew pod and full flight electronics.