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Romanian Team Entering X-Prize competition

Posted by timothy on from the enter-away dept.

cripkd writes "Although two days passed already I am proud to announce that a Romanian team launched a sub-orbital unmanned flight. Demonstrator 2 is a prototype to the actual shuttle they will enter in the X-Prize competition, build with 30,000 USD, pocket money, as they say, compared to the other projects. The project's home site is here and an article about the launch can be found here. PS. And it's all ecological as they produce oxygen and water vapours :)"

5 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Certainly nice to see a spirit of competition! by PreDefined · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Even with Scaled Composites minor mishap, they still look to be so far in the lead that a lot of people wouldn't even bother.

    Cheers to this new attempt by the Romanian team.

  2. Be wary - the legend of "In Romania..." by mccalli · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I know someone working inside a fairly well-known news site, and I commented to him about the large number of utterly unbelievable "In Romania..." stories, such as man marries cow, or man believes he is the reincarnation of Dracula (reincarnation of the undead?).

    He replied that most of them were just made up. Many were filed by a reporter living in Austria, and he thought it sounded close enough to be believable but obscure enough that no-one could ever check any references. "In Romania..." stuff just happens. Allegedly. Certainly in some circles, it's just press shorthand for a fluff story that may be completely made up.

    Not saying that's the case here - I still need to read it. Just a general warning regarding stories about Romania - crank up the scepticism level just a bit.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  3. disposable rockets by xlyz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    even if they don't win, 30k $ per launch it's a very interesting price point.

    in term of business potential I won't disrespect them at all

  4. "Ecologic" monopropellant ---NOT! by mschaffer · · Score: 1, Interesting

    These guys did not study chemistry very well. On the "tests" page, they describe their "monopropellant fuel" as a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and ethylic alcohol (another name for ethanol). When this mixture burns, you will get CO2 and traces of CO in the exhaust in addition to the H2O and some O2, O, and O3 (depending on the flame temperature). They will also, depending on the flame temperature at the exit of the engine, produce some NOx from oxidizing some of the nitrogen from the air.

    This type of fuel has been around for a while and I would not consider this ecological. I also hope they have put some additives into the mixture to help stabalize the hydrogen peroxide to keep it from decomposing into water and oxygen.

  5. Re:NOT environmentally sound! by jackbird · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This issue will only really be solved when we have cheap energy (probably fusion) for electrolysis (which is very inefficient, comparatively). Until then, carbon sequestration sounds like a great idea, and it can be done in a large factory for producing hydrogen from natural gas.

    What about catalyzed processes like this, that don't require huge infrastructure changes or tanks of H2 in the trunk?