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20,000 Show up for X-Prize Expo
Zacharski writes to tell us that the X-Prize Cup Expo was held Sunday in Las Cruces New Mexico in front of about 20,000 people. John Carmack was there with his team from Armadillo Aerospace. From the article: "Armadillo Aerospace got their rocket-powered, vertical takeoff, vertical landing vehicle off the ground. Blasting off into the sky then hovering for a few seconds, the craft began lowering itself to the ground - but tipped over on touchdown. The wet ground due to overnight rain was the cause, although the craft appeared undamaged in the fall. An internal hose was punctured, however, causing subsequent flights to be scrubbed." The expo also ended with quite a bang when Starchaser's Churchill Mk2 rocket engine blew up.
Here's some flight videos taken in preparation for the XPrize cup (not footage from the event, but some final runs taken the week before)
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http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/H
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I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, there hasn't been anyone influential enough that has been pushing the concept since Bull's assasination. These days, science moves forward only when people who are passionate about a certain area pour their soul into it. The other thing is that as hard as rocketry is, we've had lots of experience with it and we have almost none with the kind of artillery that Bull wanted to build. Bull was a brilliant guy (he had earned his PhD @ 23 years old), and his guns were quite complex. We're talking multiple charges detonating along the length of several kilometers of the barrel, and he also used rocket sabots that would ignite at high altidude to give the projectile the last little boost.
For more information on the remarkable story of Bull and his supergun, check wikipedia:
Gerald Bull: Biography
Project HARP: Bull's earlier work for the US gov't.
Project Babylon: Bull's work for saddam hussein that eventually got him killed by the Mossad
To my knowledge, I think that the ESA was working on something along this line using a 4 km long mag-lev track.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS_Phoenix
Good idea if you ask me. Lob your hardware into orbit using this, then (if you want to man said hardware) send up your astronauts on a R7 and dock with it. Shame that I haven't realy heard that much about it.
Drove down from Albuquerque with several friends. We got some decent pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/killbox/
SpaceShipOne didn't even come close to what Shepard did.
SpaceShipOne went straight up and down, 367k feet. It peaked at mach 3 and reentry topped at around 5g's. Maximum reentry temperature was around 200F.
Shepard's flight was 612k feet, and 302 miles downrange. It peaked at mach 7.7, and on reentry he experienced nearly 12g's. Maximum reentry temperature was around 2000F.
Peroxide doesn't help you learn about LOX - they're completely different in almost every respect. LOX is cryogenic, peroxide is not. LOX is stable, peroxide (as sold) is a stabilized metastable compound with various catalyst risks. They require different kinds of tanks made of different kinds of materials. They burn in different kinds of engines. In short, they're about as dissimilar as oxidizers get in rocketry.
:) My only gripe is with those who think that Carmack is about to rocket off to deep space ;)
;) Now, the germans used peroxide-driven turbopumps (which Russia continues to this day, even in Soyuz - in fact, peroxide contamination caused the catastrophic Soyuz failure in 2002 that killed a soldier on the ground), but even those were problematic (as in regular explosions) for a very long time. A couple failed private projects have used peroxide as a main propellant since, but that's about it, as far as I can dig up.
:) Anyways, I do wish Carmack the best. My only worry is that I hope he doesn't inadvertently kill himself or someone else in the process of experimenting. I'd trust someone like Rutan not to kill anyone on the ground (in the air, now, that's a different story ;) ); however, some of the test incidents at Armadillo have been a bit concerning.
They only switched propellant formulations once
They tried no less than various peroxide monoprop concentrations; peroxide and liquid catalyst, of various types; peroxide and various fuels (they did some degree of work or another with each of ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, furural alcohol, kerosene, and acetone); peroxide, fuel and liquid catalyst/hyperglolic (i.e., triprop); LOX and various fuels; etc. And they were looking at a whole lot more, in the middle of all of their work - I mean, *radical* scrap-the-project-and-start-over changes, such as considering burning lithium aluminum hydride (which Carmack strangely considered because he liked the performance numbers of alane (aluminum hydride), which is an utterly different chemical; John, just because it has the words "aluminum" and "hydride" doesn't mean it's bonded similarly!).
they're just a bunch of guys having fun and learning
Which I have no problem with
ISP isn't bad - he's hitting 200 with LOX. Thats not any worse than Rutan had
From April, I'm seing 188. By May, they were down to *178*. By Aug, they were up to 194. In Sept, their tests lost "a lot of ISP".
Astronautix.com reports 250 ISP for SS1. Remember, now, that the effects of ISP don't scale linearly, but geometrically.
after he figured out that peroxide sucks
Which the Germans figured out during the late 1930s/early 1940s, and the Americans and Russians in the late 1940s/early 1950s, and the British in the 1950s/1960s as far as rockets to lift you off the ground were concerned
Relatively low strength peroxide is still occasionally used on small maneuvering rockets, where performance isn't important and not enough fuel goes by to cause signficant catalyst poisoning problems, but even for that it's not usually used. This is how a lot of early US spacecraft maneuvered. We also used it on some training craft.
All of this is, of course, not counting amateurs who don't read/care for the history books and are building garage rockets for fun
But this Rottweiler not only is snarling and frothing at the mouth; it also went to Harvard.
More than the mishaps and explosions, the exciting thing about it all to me was the wide variety of people there. There were realtors selling land near the soon-to-be New Mexico Spaceport, and the Up Aerospace people who're going to inaugurate it. Carmack, Peter Diamandis, Rick Tumlinson and that bunch were all hanging out amongst everybod. There were many kids, many local residents at the event.
And though they've done it before for air-show crowds, this was the first time I'd seen the XCOR EZ-Rocket in action; truly awe-inspiring to see how easily it could maneuver. The loud rocket engines as it buzzed the crowd a few times didn't hurt the experience!
Anyway, not as exciting as if there'd been some real suborbital flights, but it looks like in just a couple of years that'll be a reality. Exciting times!
Energy: time to change the picture.