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Canadian Team To Launch X-Prize Attempt Oct. 2
FreeHeel writes "A second team of rocketeers competing for the $10 million Ansari X Prize, a contest for privately funded suborbital space flight, has officially announced the first launch date for its manned rocket. The da Vinci Project, led by Brian Feeney of Toronto, Ontario, said Thursday the group plans to loft its Wild Fire Mark VI spacecraft on Oct. 2, just days after the planned launch of another X Prize contender, the U.S-based SpaceShipOne. The balloon-launched Wild Fire event will be followed by a second launch within two weeks to snag the X Prize purse, according to the plan."
"Since then, the effort has found a new title sponsor, the online casino firm Golden Palace.com, which has pushed the effort forward. In honor of that, the da Vinci Project has been renamed the Golden Palace.com Space Program powered by the da Vinci Project."
That is about the worst name for a space mission that I have every head.
They've been showing pictures of the project on Space (the Canadian equivalent of Sc-Fi Channel) for months, and I've always gotten the impression that there's gonna be a lot of wreckage strewn over the Alberta countryside.
Considering that it's launcing from Saskatchewan, not Alberta I rather doubt it
Hey Goofball, it's Eh, not ay.
Sheesh, I don't mind the mockery, at least get it right. All the pirates and Sailors are coming for your ass now.
Considering that it's launcing from Saskatchewan, not Alberta I rather doubt it
Well, Kindersley is close to the border with Alberta...
For people who *don't* know the historical significance and have to look it up, click here.
Salvage 1. It was 1979.
They're sending their team leader as pilot. And his family is apprehensive, but supportive.
Yes, I... I've heard good things about the mud. Lots of people talking about the mud...
> Look at the sucess rate for super high altitude dirigible flights with respect to circumnavigation
Oy, where to start!
1) This is not a super high altitude dirigible
2) It is not circumnavigating the earth
I think that ends that right there...
> winds exceeding a couple miles per hour
That's only relevant for, as you put it, "super high altitude dirigibles", because they have to be built so thin. The atmosphere, where Wild Fire is released (24.4 km) is hundreds of times more dense than the atmosphere at the altitude that the record setters go up to (40+km).
> since the big bomb strapped to the balloon is a much bigger concern
Wild Fire is a LOX/Kerosene rocket designed with a pretty impressive "simulate the heck out of everything first!" methodology. SpaceShipOne is an N2O/Polybutadiene hybrid rocket. While both involve pressurization (since neither use a turbopump), the pressurized substance in SpaceShipOne is much larger, and is the oxidizer itself (as opposed to a relatively small helium tank in the case of Wild Fire). Furthermore, with a gaseous oxidizer, the explosion would be a lot more violent. So, if I have to call one a "big bomb", I'd call SpaceShipOne the "big bomb".
In general, I really like Wild Fire a lot better. Higher starting altitude, a much higher ISP engine, and a very good design methodology.
Yes, I... I've heard good things about the mud. Lots of people talking about the mud...
During lunch time I took the subway and bus to their worksite in the former Downviews AFB in Toronto. The craft itself is now black with GoldenPalace.com logos but they say once a few more layers of thermal shielding are put on they will repaint it will all of their sponsor's logos and the Canadian flag. So its going to look like a NASCAR racer.
They still need to join two pieces of the body and it appeared that the interior where the rocket engine and fuel tanks and pipes would be mounted is completely empty. Also I'm pretty sure that some interior parts of the craft beneath the thermal shielding are made out of wood.
However they seemed confident so I wish them all the best.
From the article:
If they paid a hypothetical $30 per hour for the volunteer labour, the total cost would still be only $8.5 million. Further, the article doesn't mention whether or not those are Canadian dollars--if they are, then you can cut another 25% or so off the cited prices. Even paying a fair price for labour, the da Vinci effort would seem to cost a third to a half the amount of SpaceShipOne.To be fair, we are all still waiting to see if it flies.
~Idarubicin
October 4th, 1957 , Russia launches Sputnick 1 , the first man made earth orbiting satellite .
Note to Mods: When I post mirrors, it's a best guess. I don't know for certain whether or not the site will go down!
Polybutadiene is not "plastic". More accurately, it is rubber (one of the first synthetic elastomers; natural rubber is polyisoprene).
Hybrid rocket motors are *simpler* than bipropellant rockets. That makes them less prone to *failure*, but it doesn't make their failures less catastrophic. The facts of the pressure in the tanks and the chemistry remain the same. N2O makes up the vast majority of the propellant mass in SpaceShipOne. I can't find exact stats on how much it's pressurized to, but it's not uncommon to find N2O rockets with pressures up to 50 atmospheres at launch (steadily decreasing thereafter). In short, the vast majority of the oxidizer is *incredibly pressurized*, and is *gasseous*. That's a perfect recipe for, should failure occur, *catastrophic failure*. If the nitrous tank were to rupture, it would easily slice open the polybutadiene. The notably increased surface area in the polybutadiene would dramatically increase the combustion rate (damaging it more), etc. In short, it would be a catastrophic failure.
In case you're not familiar, surface area is everything with solid fuels. You can select your thrust over time by the pattern that you cut into the center of the solid rocket booster (circle, star, etc). The reason that solid rocket boosters tend to fail catastrophicly is because when they're ruptured, their surface area increases, and the explosion takes off exponentially (as described above). While hybrid rocket motors don't have the oxidizer mixed in, the situation we're describing is a rupture of the oxidizer tank - and since the oxidizer is a pressurized gas, it will be all over the solid fuel and ready to combust.
On the other hand, getting a fast conflagration from LOX and kerosene isn't that simple. Have you ever tried to get a conflagration from gasoline? It's not that simple. You need proper mixing ratios and fine particle size of the gasoline. The same holds true here. The LOX won't vaporize instantly (unlike the N2O, which is already gaseous). The kerosene will vaporize even more slowly. It's not that likely to form a major conflagration before the capsule was ejected and out of range; and, unlike using a solid fuel, the explosion of a liquid/liquid biprop rocket tends to *disperse* the fuel and oxidizer, *slowing* the reaction.
Yes, I... I've heard good things about the mud. Lots of people talking about the mud...
What makes me think that they didn't just use something off the shelf?
s t_story.jsp?id=news/04213top.xml), " The supersonic design skill is largely borrowed from reading the "Datacom" Air Force compendium of aerodynamic information, from experienced consultants, and from CFD programs."
This:
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/faq.htm
They sure make it sound like they wrote a simulator, and simply plugged in values to it from the CFD analysis. Nothing as advanced as Wild Fire is doing, which involves being able to have direct feedback from parameter changes into the design model with reoptimization.
According to an article (http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_aw
So, it would seem that some of their CFD stuff is stock, and some is custom made. And the simulator is custom made.
Yes, I... I've heard good things about the mud. Lots of people talking about the mud...
> and I'd call that a hell of a lot more dangerous than any N2O one.
... is an explosive
You would, now would you? Care to explain why LOX, which is generally minimally pressurized and would require vaporization before rapid conflagration would be a risk, would be more dangerous than already gasseous (i.e., as soon as it leaves the tank and its pressure drops) and highly pressurized N2O?
> especially not in comparison to LOX
What are you talking about? LOX tanks are generally unpressurized if you use a turbopump, and at far lower pressures than 50atm when pressurized (with, say, helium).
> but at a much lower pressure than before, when the motor was running as it should
Not at all. SpaceShipOne has a burn time of over a minute. The tank would be ripped apart in milliseconds if it ruptured. While the gas would expand in all directions, there's no question that there would be far, far, far more oxidizer available for combustion across the freshly-increased-surface area of the torn-up polybutadiene.
> A major problem with hybrids is their low burn rate even at the correct pressure
As I mentioned, it is completely proportional to surface area. Are you going to deny this? Or are you going to deny that an explosion of the N2O tank would dramatically increase the polybutadiene's surface area? What, exactly, is your argument against runaway detonation of solid fuels in an oxidizer-rich environment?
Are you unfamiliar, for example, with hybrid rocket explosions? Despite the fact that hybrids are used notably less, they don't have the safety record pancae illusion that a lot of people imagine. Both NASA and Amroc have had case ruptures on their hybrids that would have destroyed manned vehicles - and they weren't even using an pressurized oxidizer that is gasseous essentially instantly apon leaving the tank, like N2O (Amroc, for example, was using H2O2). Part of the hybrid safety illusion comes from the fact that they're less dangerous than *solid* rocket engines. Yes, that's true, but solid rocket engines are little more than controlled fireworks, so that doesn't say much.
> LOX and kerosene
As I stated, *only when mixed properly*. As I'm being forced to repeat from my last post, *only when the kerosene is reduced to a fine particle size and the LOX is vaporized and warmed*. The first is difficult to accomplish even in controlled conditions (it's a major part of LOX/Kerosene engine design!), and the latter takes time (which, in airborne flight where anything that leaks moves away from the craft quickly, isn't an option). And you completely ignored the fact that any conflagration will disperse such tiny particles far, far more effectively than it would the much more massive polybutadiene chunks.
Here, let me keep going, because it gets worse, and you apparently are unfamiliar with these fuels.
LOX is cryogenic, and kept below -183C. Kerosene's freezing point is -73C. When they touch, the kerosene freezes into solid, less flammable chunks, preventing it from having the low surface area and high volatility needed for a conflagration or detonation (it doesn't even burn slowly that well when frozen).
The general failure mode of a LOX/Kerosene rocket in the air (which Wild Fire would be during its entire burn) is a cloud of flame that trails the rocket. Catastrophic LOX/Kerosene failures are incredibly rare, even in testing.
The only serious risk modes in LOX/Kerosene rockets are due to highly effective injectors with ignition failure. Such injectors end up producing heated LOX droplets (starting to vaporize on the outside) surrounded by a coating of kerosene. Such a mixture is like dynamite if the nozzle doesn't ignite; however, this is again only a real risk for rockets on the ground, where it can accumulate, as the mixture gets blown away when in atmospheric flight.
Yes, I... I've heard good things about the mud. Lots of people talking about the mud...