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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
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.