Slashdot Mirror
Wanna Buy a Reusable Rocket for 19k USD?
Anonymous Coward writes with story from the Mainchi Daily News: "'Earlier this month,
Hokkaido University started putting its Camui rockets on the open market. Camui rockets are true rockets, being 1.6 meters long, flying at 300 meters per second and parachuting slowly to the ground after reaching heights of up to 1 kilometer.' The Camui use a mixture of fixed fuel acrylic and liquid oxygen."
"Not recommended for use near airports or presidential motorcades."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This seems much more of a WMD than the Iraqi aluminum tubes. When does the bombing start?
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Camui rocket fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Camui rocket (a 300m/s w/1km altitude max) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Titan IV running 150m/s, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Camui, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, the guidance system will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even GPS is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Camuis, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Camui that has run faster than its Boeing counterpart, despite the Camui's faster propellant architecture. My hobby kit model rocket with helicopter nose cose runs faster than this 300m/s rocket at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Camui is a superior machine.
Camui addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Camui over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Can anybody buy his/her own rocket and launch it from the backyard?
l ?tid=137
With so much airtraffic is not a danger?
Can be this technology used for making weapons? I remember the article of someone building cruise missiles: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/12/09/205252.shtm
Seems very nice, but I would not like a plane shot down because a rich kid was playing with one of this toys.
No, Not really.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
a km? I made a solid fuel estes when I was in Jr. High that would go to 3000ft (more or less a km) and it required none of that other crap. It was about a meter tall, had three stages, and used three solid fuel engines that, all combined, cost about ten bucks.
Why is this a story? Someone deisgned and constructed an overpriced, hard to use, liquid fuel rocket that can be outperformed by a twenty year old Estes and is offering copies of it for sale, but no one has been stupid enough to buy one yet. This is news?
19k big firework that you need some liquid oxygen to launch. Hm... Sounds like a bargain, what's the catch?
The Bush administration has found evidence of a massive WMD missile facility in your backyard.
or else!
Is there a section for a cat or do you strap it externally? Do they provide a tiny helmet?
there's some pics here. and a cnn story here.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
I Googled for "Camui rockets", to see if the whole "1 km" deal was true. From what I read, this article was taken from an AP article, which originally read:
"The Camui-50P rocket was developed by a team from Hokkaido University and can fly as high as one kilometer (0.6 mile) within three seconds after take off"
Dunno if that means "that's as high as it gets" or "that's how high it can get within that short amount of time"; for $19,000, though, let's hope it's the second one...at 300 meters per second. A little over 3 seconds worth of blast. Hey, lasts longer than me, honey.
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
I have hybrid engine models (acrylic / NO2) that are larger and go higher. Heck, I had refillable solid engine models that were considerably more powerful -- though with new regulations, getting the refills has become too much of a hassle. I don't see anything to this that wasn't available in dozens, if not hundreds, of High Power Rocketry models available ten years ago. Standing next to me at the moment (in two pieces, because it's too tall to be assembled indoors) is a 11' tall model on 5.5" tubing (at base, step down to 4" at top). Hybrid engine in the "L" range. It's made half a dozen flights on hybrid power, and a couple before that with solids. Easily clears a mile. Next to it is a LOC Magnum, a standard kit available for nearly a decade, with what has to be a good twenty flights to better than a kilometer on a "J" class hybrid. What makes these any less "true rockets?"
One kilometer?? DEBI was a real rocket. [pictures] About 30 feet long, two stage solid fuel. With 40 G's acceleration it reached mach 10 in a little under 30 seconds (below 40km altitude) and sailed to a apogee of about 800km. Since the rocket had a ballistic trajectory we needed clearance through the pentagon to circumvent the anti-ballistic missle treaty.
Even little baby Loki Dart's will reach 50km on a good day.