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Amateur Rocket to Carry Ham Radio Payload to Space
n1ywb writes "An amateur rocket team this month will attempt to send a 21-foot-tall rocket carrying a ham radio avionics package into the fringes of space. The launch by the Civilian Space Xploration Team (CSXT) could occur as early as Monday, May 17. Some 20 months ago, the last CSXT try to reach space ended some three seconds after launch when the rocket's engine exploded. Avionics Team Leader Eric Knight, KB1EHE, says CSXT has since rebounded from that devastating blow with a newer, bigger vehicle. In terms of Amateur Radio, the GoFast rocket will transmit telemetry on the 33-cm amateur band and Amateur TV at 2.4 GHz using a high-quality color camera. The avionics also incorporate multiple global positioning system (GPS) systems to record the vehicle's precise location and flight path, redundant data acquisition and storage systems, and a variety of data sensors. Plans call for the solid-fuel rocket to zip upward from the desert floor and reach a speed of more than 4000 MPH in about 9 seconds. The suborbital vehicle will attain an altitude of 100 km or 62 statute miles--high enough to be considered 'space'--linger there for a couple of minutes then arc back to Earth some 26 miles down range. The whole thing will take somewhat less than a half-hour. If successful it would mark the first amateur rocket launch into space."
Imagine the rocket needed to take these three guys up there and back.
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I wonder if they'll do a webcast of the TV signal for those of us out of range/without HAM equipment.
"Hey, it blew up!"
"Guess we better build a bigger one."
Sounds like management at my company...
Does that model rocket come with an airbag?
;)
Honestly this is rather interesting. I've heard about the problems of establishing a GPS lock after a 25G sustained force- and that it's near impossible. Pulling it off is quite a feat.
I don't understand why they are returning to earth so soon, however- shouldn't a parachute (which arguably wouldn't provide much slowdown with ~1000 molecules/cm3) delay the reentry more than 1/2 hour? Unless they are expecting to lawn dart
Here's to their success
...that with all of the technology available nowadays we'd put something more advanced tham HAM radio into space. This is like using a submarine to deliver pizza.
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they just HAD to use that 'X', didn't they?
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I think most people don't realize the this is the FIRST non- governmental private ametuer vehicle to reach space. That by itselt is a VERY important milestone. I wish them well. !!
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
It's amazing that the department of homeland insecurity would let ordinary people launch a homemade missile...
Ha! Maybe so, but after BIGCO turns all our computers into useless purchasing appliances, the only cool hobby left will be ham radio.
This post brought to you by an "old geezer".
What?
I don't know if there is any real scientific value to this flight or not. But shooting a hobbists rocket into space is just cool. These folks are following in the footsteps of Goddard and the rest of the rocket pioneers. Not a bad path at all, they might even find something new. I hope they have fun, and everything works.
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I thought were sure to create even extra terrestrial enemies if were gonna start spamming space for crisake
...to get my license ;)
:)
On that note, hams and electronics geeks in the midwest should note that it's time for Dayton Hamvention this weekend!
Holy shit, this is cool even if it's very suborbital. I wonder how many years it'll be until the amsat launches are truly amateur-done
The amateur anti-missle defense club will try to shoot it down.
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I realize that Ham radio seems passe' to the "basement full of Linux boxes" people, but its cool and this project, while rather unlikely to completely succeed would be cool to listen in on. For those of us who go outside, Ham is a great source of communication, as many people live where cell phone towers don't and many of the really cool places are not where cell phone towers are.
Why is the /. crowd so anti-amateur radio?
/. can still talk about how great pac-man was (with a straight face), and yet totally trash Amateur Radio.
It's like, the original geekdom, and while a LOT of the geezers out there are boring as shit to talk to, there's a LOT of cool stuff going on.
Tons of digital modes, (interfacing comps with radios), satellite coms, EME, meteor bounce.
Really, it's just confusing to me that as a group,
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PS: That award offer will have been outstanding for a decade come a year from this coming fall.
PPS: Does anyone know why the CATS prize had (and Ansari X-Prize has) time limits?
Seastead this.
that someone nerdier than you is doing this.
My Dad is an Extra licensed Ham, and there ain't no bigger nerd in the world than a Ham.
But apart from the joke value it would be real fun if they succeeded. Not truly important but nice to know that space exploration has become so "easy" that individuals can put a payload up there without needing a superpower to fund the project.
Good luck.
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've chased an Estes rocket launched with 2D's in stages nearly 1 mile before it came back to earth, and I don't believe it got over 3500Feet (damn air currents).
;)
I cant imagine what a 62 mile arc would give it
Ah, but what the public doesn't know is that the government is also testing the Star Wars Alpha Module on May 17th.
Looks to me like the CSXT will earn the honors of having the first vessel destroyed in space combat.
What a bunch of damn whiners. These are folks that are basically doing the Slashdot thing (learning, exploring, trying). Yes it amateur radio, but it is telemetry data and full motion color video. Hurray for them trying!
Yes, linger. The vertical velocity of the rocket decreases to 0 at the top of its trajectory and then accelerates downward due to gravity, therefore the rocket will spend a longer time at the top than at any other point in its journey (besides the ground...). Thus linger is the appropriate term.
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
Didn't you get the press release? They need to achieve an altitude of at least 50 miles in order for the broadcast to be heard over the interference of your local powerline broadband provider. Space has nothing to do with it.
In all seriousness I wonder what the impacts on a mission like this would be? Yet something else to consider in our BPL debate. Queue up the hams (I'm one of them) and the "broadband at any cost to the rest of the world" arguments!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
After several launches and recoveries, I thought it would be a good idea to launch my hamster, Insomnia. When I found him, he looked like an overcooked waffle.
I dont think I realized until just then the implications of removing the parachute to create the hamsters "quarters".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Actually the site says they intend for the recovery to be parachuteless, they decided to see what the effect of such a tall rocket would be if it impacted Lindon, Utah at several thousand miles per hour. Darl McBride will be waiting at the landing site with a target strapped to his forhead to aid in the experiment.
It would be great if someone could get an amateur rocket to put a satellite into orbit in October 2007 to celebrate the anniversary. At this rate, it might even be possible.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
APRS: Automatic Position Reporting System. It's a great way to use a ham radio to connect two devices together, especially for telemetry data.
I don't know about CATS, but the X-prize (before Ansari stepped up) was funded by insurance -- basically, the X Prize foundation found an insurance company willing to gamble that no one would be successful and the prize wouldn't be awarded. The time limit was necessary before the insurers would assume the risk.
Now there is a guy who's fed up with being a HAM radio operator.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Check out Edge of Space Sciences and Arizona Near Space Research for some good examples.
Balloons are a great opportunity to experience the engineering challenges of launching, tracking, and communicating with a payload under harsh conditions without the risk of things blowing up.
I haven't built my own yet, but telemetry encoders (site down at the moment, freaking DSL) I've designed have flown on a couple of flights, and I've got a K-size cylinder of helium in the garage begging to be put to use, so it's probably only a matter of time.
Jim Henson clearly owns the IP to space pork, I'm sure his estate's attorneys will be contacting these Ham Rocketeers soon
Bear in mind that the launch site is far away from populated areas on purpose. Over there in the deep desert, that presents a survival issue for anyone who comes unprepared. There is no city infrastructure that most people are used to - it's a wilderness. If you wander off and get lost and stuck, you may survive for days but not be discovered for weeks. That's why you should take this seriously.
Cell phones do not work out there. It's well over an hour's drive from the nearest cell site. Amateur Radio and satellite phones are the only reliable communications out there. If you don't have those, don't wander away from the paved roads and the launch site.
So if I haven't scared you away yet, here's some info that hopefully will help you survive out there. Remember that in the desert, bring your own drinking water - and lots of it. I have a web page about the Black Rock Desert. I have a page with a minimal camping checklist. Even if you're planning to stay in a motel, bring enough camping gear to survive overnight and wait for a rescue if you get stuck. (Overnight temperatures are usually in the 20's and 30's this time of year.) But don't go wandering off where no one knows to look for you. And lastly, see our page about "How to avoid needing a rescue at Black Rock", which we wrote after participating in many rescues of stranded people out there.
I'm going to be out there with the Stratofox Aerospace Tracking & Recovery Team. We consider it an enormous privilege that CSXT has invited us to assist at their launch.
Actually Ham radio has been using TV, GPS data mapping, Packet and TCI/IP for many years.
Packet is like the Ham equivalent of the internet with its own email system, file downloads and chat all via the computer and over radio. I was doing IM on packet long before there was IM for the internet.
With the APRS system, people all over the world can trace the exact position of the rocket via GPS over radio in real time via a GUI with map overlays. It can also help locate the payload when it returns. Something a bug or hamster would have a hard time doing.....unless it was connected to Richard Gere.
Ham radio may sound kinda dorky but a lot of internet tech has come from hams and visa-versa.
A good primer can be found here:
http://www.choisser.com/packet/part01.html
Please keep in mind that Amateurs have primary use of much of the 2.4GHz spectrum.
Amateurs have co-secondary use of channels 1-6, and no use of 7-11. They have primary use of a portion of the spectrum used by channel 1, so they can interfere with ISL use on that channel (and 2,3,4 actually), but probably not with unmoded 802.11b equipment (A filter that cuts out the high end, or better yet a mod that lowers the "carrier frequency*" a bit.) Now this still lets hams transmit at much higher power on channels 1-6 than part 15 users, but they still have to accept interference, respond to complaints of interference, and also can't allow commercial or encrypted traffic to be transmitted over their system. And, hams must transmit their license id periodically and prominently; this lets you find the cretin that transmits 100 Watts through their dipole.
* 802.11b is a spread spectrum technology so there isn't a carrier frequency per say, but actually a set of frequencies per channel, some of which are above the frequency allocation for primary use for hams even on channel 1.
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But you've got the right point that this launch is especially significant in that there was no government funding for development or operations. So if it succeeds (as we all hope it will) then it'll be the first suborbital space launch without funding from any government in the history of the world.
Let's go make history!
The reason for this is because an orbit is where your rate of escape from the Earth equals your rate of fall. So anything which is in orbit effectively falls in an endless circle around the world.
This is true of any object in space - larger objects have stronger gravity which increases the rate of fall, requiring faster speeds to orbit them. i.e the Earth takes a year to orbit the Sun, by definition, but covers enormous distance in that time. But orbits can be slower around smaller objects like Mars or the Moon.
So even in orbit you haven't escaped gravity. You'd have to go about 25,000 mph to escape the Earth's gravity, which would just put you in orbit around the Sun. So gravity is always a factor.
Anyway, back to the subject of the CSXT launch... The press release said that CSXT's rocket will go 4000 mph, better than any previous amateur launch. So since that's less than 17,000 mph, it's a suborbital launch and it will fall back to the ground. It'll land less than 30 miles away from the launch site.
I'll be part of the search team who goes to retrieve it.