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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."
The best part of the story is that the team got $500K in funding from Golden Palace.com, who is promoting the launch by saying that they'll enjoy playing casino games in suborbital flight.
Ha.
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.
I can't explain why. Maybe it's the hip, urban office they have, gambling site sponsorship, proprietary fuel source, overall secrecy and hot-air balloon assist that all merge together to fill me with confidence.
"It's going to be one hell of a ride", Feeney said
Yeah, I'll bet.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
The idea is not for the $10M to pay for the cost of it with some left over, but to offset the costs of the R&D.
The main idea was that once the R&D was done, there would be one or several methods of reaching space that have relatively inexpensive launch costs. This, so the idea went, would lead to someone actually coming up with commercial applications for them.
Actually, some of the teams that probably won't win could turn a profit before the ones that stand a chance of winning because they're not focusing on just R&D, but also commercial ideas and are using their contendership in the X-Prize as advertisement.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
The reason everyone launches from near the equator is because they can use the Earth's rotation to give them a speed boost on the way to orbit. These are suborbital flights, so it doesn't matter where they launch from.
In fact, from a recovery standpoint, you might want to launch from one of the poles -- that way, the craft will land near the launch point.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Looking at those photos on the site I am reminded of that 70's movie ( or mebee early 80's- I was young) with Andy Griffith as a junk yard proprietor who makes a rocket and- no shit- uses a cement mixing truck hopper as the "capsule". While I admire their pluck, there is NO WAY in hell I am going to get inside that thing. Good luck to them though. It's at the very very least a spectacular way to leave the Earth, whether for a short time OR eternity.
http://www.canadianarrow.com/
(I saw their spacecraft during the Hamilton airshow - resembled a V-2 with windows.
My rights don't need management.
TFA says that the DaVinci group is planning on using a hybrid rocket engine, using nitrous oxide as the oxidizer (as Rutan's SpaceShipOne does) but using something other than synthetic rubber as the fuel. That does make a little bit of sense, as after Rutan's group settled on their rocket engine design, there has been some spectacular research out of Stanford using paraffin (in the American sense of the word) as hybrid rocket fuel. Paraffin has the nice property that it as it gets hot it turns from a solid into a very free-flowing liquid -- which lets it burn very quickly (something that rubber-burning hybrid motors have a hard time with -- the Rutan engine has four separate channels through the fuel to allow it to burn quickly, this leads to the possibility of blowing chunks of propellant.)
Unfortunately, though, the DaVinci website says that their ship will use Kerosene/LOX as the propellant and oxidizer. They have pictures of the engines, including some test firings, on the web site.
You just don't change engine technology at this point in the project.
The only possibilities are that these people are 1) insane or 2) scam artists. It's too bad, it would be spectacularly great if they were on the up-and-up...but...it doesn't appear that they are.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Change your sentence prefix "Ay"s to postfix "Eh"s. Geez.
Besides, you're repeating a silly notion that many people have about helium-based lighter than air aircraft: that they can "pop". It takes a pretty darn large leak (i.e., a cut several feet long) to deflate a helium craft of this size in a relevant amount of time.
Yes, I... I've heard good things about the mud. Lots of people talking about the mud...
I was around back then and the rocket that couldn't fly was the Atlas, not the Redstone, which was (slightly more) proven. Specifically, the Atlas I "Big Joe" had a number of mishaps, many of which took place in full view of the 7 original astronauts.
The Mercury-Redstone launches did have their problems. Mercury-Redstone 1 had a very short liftoff, rising 4 or 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) before settling back on its fins, while the escape tower launched-without its attached capsule. On a manned mission, the tower was supposed to carry an astronaut to safety if the flight were aborted. But Redstone was a more proven vehicle. Unfortunately, it could not attain orbit with a Mercury capsule payload which is why it was used for the suborbital flights (Freedom 7 - Alan Shepard and Liberty Bell 7 - Virgil "Gus" Grissom). Glen's Freedom 7 used an Atlas booster.
Canadians are great at making robot arms. this particular group doesn't look viable to me.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
I happen to both work for the company that makes the Canadarm and also volunteer for the da Vinci project. I'll admit the philosophies of my day job and night job are very different. Both are viable modes of operation in the space industry.
The -only- problem with da Vinci over the year that I've been involved has been money. Now that we have some money, hopefully enough, the problem has suddenly become 'time'. Burt's team has set a tough schedule for us, but it's certainly not a foregone conclusion. We've done -tonnes- of design on this rocket, and now we have to take on a sort of skunkworks mentality to get it done. Contrary to what I've been reading today, we will be doing lots of component/subsystem level testing. The amount of integrated end-to-end testing will likely be limited simply due to time. This does NOT mean that the rocket will be fundamentally unsafe. There will be no launch unless it's determined that the pilot has a very high chance of survival.
With our design, there are very few inescapable scenarios. Our engine technology change was made long ago in part due to the added safety (I don't know why it hasn't been added to the website). Failure and loss of the vehicle may be likely (makes it more exciting to tune in on launch day), but there will only be an outside chance of anything morbid.
It's dangerous for this new industry to become obcessed with doing things like the rest of the space industry. Space projects cost a billion dollars because of paperwork and analysis, not because of hardware and software. At my day job, nothing is done unless there is essentially -no- credible chance of failure (loss of crew or loss of vehicle). Anything which could become a hazard to that extent has triply (or more) redundant systems (4 ways to drive the arm joints, etc.)
If my night job (da Vinci) took on that mentality, nothing would get done, and all we'd have is a pile of paper and empty toner cartridges. Take away some of the requirement for -complete- safety, and all of a sudden more gets done.
Anyway, I'm optimistic that we'll get things together pretty soon. We've got some high-profile tests on the books in the coming months. Should be exciting.
Beckham has a reputation for missing penalty shots at goal by skying the ball high into the air, so someone has a sense of humour.
... the auction website said the successful bidder was "goldenpalacecasino." That appears to be an online casino."M .20040722.wbeck0722/BNStory/Sports/
z eupdate_040805.html
"A collector has paid more than $45,000 for the ball David Beckham booted high into the crowd during England's [national soccer team] penalty shootout loss to Portugal in the European Championship quarter-finals
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
Golden Palace are the new sponsors of what is now called the "Golden Palace.com Space Program powered by the da Vinci Project."
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/davinci_xpri