Canadian X-Prize Entry Gearing Up

lommer writes "The Globe and Mail has a piece up about the Canadian Da Vinci team which is making a bid for the X-prize. The team has finalized a launch location (Kindersley, Saskatchewan) and will announce a launch date this month. Meanwhile, Burt Rutan and Co. over at Scaled Composites appear to be back on track with a succesful test flight on March 11 after their December crash. One has to wonder, with launch dates being set, will some projects step up and attempt a flight without being fully ready for it?"

Comments

Blast off thong

[morcheeba]

I've got to give them credit for creative funding!

Carmack

[stratjakt]

Carmack should just strap someone into his space ship, and plow em into the side of a mountain or explode them off the pad or whatever.

End this spaceman nonsense once and for all, and get back to work finishing Doom 3.

Re:Carmack

[__aagctu1952]

Couldn't Carmack just rocket jump someone into space? :D

Re:Carmack

[thebatlab]

Holy crapoly. Insightful? Mods sniffing glue again or what? It's funny. Laugh. Don't take it as a life altering statement. "Dude, that idea is so...what's the word....oh sweet there it is in the dropdown man....in..sight..ful. Sweet man. *sniiiiffff*"

Of course!

[Midnight Ryder]

One has to wonder, with launch dates being set, will some projects step up and attempt a flight without being fully ready for it?

Of course - this sort of venture always comes with risk, and one of 'em is pushing your timetable up because the other guy looks like he's about to win. Given what happens when you screw up with space flight, I'd expect to see a fatality or two occur in the next couple o' years.

And one should keep in mind: It's all fun and games until someone gets killed. Then it's a SPORT! :-)

Re:Don't worry too much

[AKAImBatman]

True. His primary competition is from Armadillo. Armadillo could probably launch tomorrow, and maybe even be lucky enough to complete the flight. But they're taking the wise course, and getting the bugs worked out of their system first. :-)

The answer is obvious

[nizo]

with launch dates being set, will some projects step up and attempt a flight without being fully ready for it?
Only once.....

Launching from Saskatchewan?

[capz loc]

I understand the impracticalities of leaving Canada to launch, but it is my understanding that the reasons that NASA has headquarters in the south of the U.S. (Florida and Texas) is that the rotation of the earth, especially close to the equator, has significant velocity that the shuttles use as a "boost."

Re:Launching from Saskatchewan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but this is the beauty of the XPrize. You aren't required to reach orbit, just a certain altitude.

Hence, launching anywhere works!

Re:Launching from Saskatchewan?

[saskboy]

Although you may have said that tongue in cheek, a great many /. readers might take you at your word. 2 cities of over 200K people is hardly an area devoid of population. It is only the northern half of the province that is covered with lakes and trees that is really deviod of all but a few hundred or thousand humans.

This won't be the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Canadians have put something in space. A guy called Gerald Bull used to routinely shoot things 100 km up. If he hadn't been murdered, probably by a spy, he probably would have put a satellite in orbit.

I'm suprised that no one has made a movie about him. The following link is definately worth a look:

www.astronautix.com/articles/abroject.htm

Re:This won't be the first time

[Chairboy]

Evidence suggests that he was murdered by Isreali secret police because, and I'm not making this up, he was building a super gun in Iraq that could shell Isreal at will.

The motto of this story? Consider the source of your R&D funding, it may come back to haunt you.

Re:Don't worry too much

[peacefinder]

I've been paying more attention to Scaled than to Armadillo, so any comparison I make of their relative capabilities should be taken with some salt. That said, it looks to me that Scaled is currently closer than Armadillo. Their 20km is about 19.99km higher than Armadillo, so it's nothing to sneeze at.

Scaled has flown their vehicle under power, and to supersonic speeds. Apparently all non-propulsion systems are fully flight-qualified. They have ground-tested their rocket for the full duration necessary for an X-Prize flight, and fired it in flight for a short duration. The initial supersonic flight of SS1 appears to have been a complete success, except for the scrape they got on landing. That damage is now repaired, and they have flown again since, albeit unpowered. They're not nearly as open about what they're doing as Armadillo, though. They may well have taken another flight or two and not announced it yet. It wouldn't surprise me much if they actually accomplish a 100km flight before announcing that they're ready to fly for the prize.

Armadillo, on the other hand, does not yet have reliably relighting engines, which is kind of a big deal for them. (Or they didn't have 'em a couple weeks ago, anyway.) Given that their vehicle design makes this a life-safety issue, I expect they're gonna need many tests to validate their operation before they do a manned flight over 50 feet. Once they're ready to do that, they will still need to do enough test flights to ensure they understand the vehicle enough to try for the prize.

I think Armadillo's got an excellent shot at making a 100km flight, but I don't think they're going to beat Scaled. It's too bad about their previous fuel difficulties; that cost them a lot of time, and it looks to me that the delay may have cost them the prize.

Re:To far North for Intra Orbit Trajectory...

[gordguide]

Good flying weather; clear cloudless skys, most sunshine hours in North America (1), and a little less atmosphere the closer you get to the poles, gives a nice, wide launch window.

Same reason why 80,000 US pilots trained there in WWII, and many NATO nations train there now.

(1) Note; there are a few places with comparable or perhaps a bit more sunshine over 12 months, due to less sun in winter as you go further north. For the summer months, with even longer days, it's way more than anywhere in N America.

Re:The question is the risk worth it?

[peacefinder]

Quite simply, existing growth of energy and raw material apprears unlikely to continue without utilization of non-terrestrial materials.

Well, sure. Population growth can't continue indefinitely without running short of raw materials. (And room.)

But what raw materials are we talking about here? If I'm not mistaken, the only materials available in abundance in near space are metals, and we're pretty well set for them. Our future resource shortages are more likely to be along the lines of fresh water than iron ingots.

Given the energy expenditure involved in extracting additional raw materials and bringing them safely to Earth, it seems to me that the same energy would be better spent recycling the contents of our landfills, cleaning up watersheds, and slowing population growth.

(Besides, who said indefinite growth is even desireable? If we end up in a position where population pressure is forcing migration up the gravity well, a few rockets ain't gonna cut the mustard anyway.)

It's not that I'm not a space enthusiast; I am. I hope humanity does colonize off-planet one day. But I don't see how space is a necessary or sufficient component for positive-sum approaches.