1 Amateur Rocket Crashes, Another Explodes

prostoalex writes "A 23-foot-long space rocket carrying 3 dummies exploded in the Pacific Northwest after reaching about 200 feet. The team was competing for Ansari X Prize, offering $10 million to the team that successfully completes a low-budget private space rocket capable of carrying men into space. Google News offers more perspectives into the event, the team is saying the rocket, whose parachute malfunctioned, would have to be rebuilt." And AmiNTT writes "Everygeek's favorite rocketeers over at Armadillo Aerospace have suffered a fairly serious setback over the weekend - the crash of their 48-inch vehicle link in a test hop at their 100 acre test field. Of course there is video and pictures - 2 3... This setback should keep them from flying for about five weeks, but will give them a chance to make some design changes. I'm sure they will be back better than ever. (Armadillo have shown up on Slashdot many times in the past.)"

Comments

It's a pity that there aren't second and third

[multiplexo]

place categories in the Ansari X-Prize, say a second place that would win 5 million dollars and a third place that would win two. It seems as if there's a lot of cool stuff being developed by the impetus of the prize. I'd hate to see that stop when the prize is awarded.

Quote from the log: "Good thing Doom 3 is selling"

[TigerNut]

The setback isn't too serious in terms of money, but you can't easily recover the five weeks required to replace the long-lead items. But, as already surmised, the experience of building the first 48" vehicle will have been invaluable and I'm sure they'll find (or commit to) a bunch of items to make improvements. One thing they already did better compared to earlier vehicles: Mass (or lack of it). The 48" vehicle was apparently slightly under the design weight, at 1000 pounds.

Good luck to John and the rest of the crew at Armadillo.

Re:"The Right Stuff", part 2?

[mcrbids]

Did anybody else look at that video and immediately remember the montage sequence from The Right Stuff with archival footage of NASA's rockets blowing up?

Wow... am I with you on this one. Remember people... these are ENGINEERS. They are developing something new...

Compare this engineering to software engineering.

1) A software engineer comes up with an idea.

2) A programmer writes a test case of the idea. Often, the programmer is the engineer in step 1.

3) Software is run. Program crashes, bombs, but does something resembling the goals in step 1.

4) Bugs are found, worked out, kinked, etc.

Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the program works as it should....

The ONLY difference between this and aeronautics is that when it crashes, you have to rebuild the rocket. (You have to rebuild the software, too, but that's assumed, automatic and usually done in 10 seconds)

So, I really don't get why the disconnect. It's engineering! Products are seldom viable in the first design attempt, but a basically workable design is tweaked until it's ready.

No different here.

Re:"The Right Stuff", part 2?

[Syre]

I'm concerned about Brian Feeney and his da Vinci Project. Apparently they may be planning to launch with no test flights in order to hit the deadline for the X Prize.

This is extremely risky, and perhaps suicidal. Rockets do, as we've seen, notoriously tend to blow up and otherwise malfunction in their initial testing.

NASA got it right because they tested over and over again and had a big budget to do so.

With the deadline fast approaching, it seems that some teams, like Feeney's, will be tempted to cut corners in order to have a chance of winning the X Prize.

Cutting corners and sticking to a timetable is what caused the Challenger disaster. I hope we don't see other lives lost as a result of this X Prize deadline.