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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.
i mean, come on .. we've got pics of the crowds, a dummy rocket, and a rocket failure.
where are the pics of the armadillo test flight? this is more interesting than the failures!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
...it spells "DOOM!" ...or sometimes Quake... there's a much funnier joke in there somewhere...I think
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)
o me/News?news_id=310
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/H
-everphilski-
I'm glad no one was killed, but these failures should help to remind us that rocketry is really quite dangerous. If we had a responsible government, there would be more regulation to protect the public from these experiments.
Here's a picture
I read
Right now it is all about exposure for the alternative space community.
Starting next year there will be actual competitions (hopefully). But this year you prettymuch had XCOR (a airplane retrofitted with a rocket engine), Armadillo (vertical takeoff rocket) for functinal vehicles that flew. The rest of the companies had pieces. Wouldn't be much of a competition to be had. Next year there will be races (rocket racing league).
-everphilski-
I have seen evidence that commercial beats government. But SpaceShipOne is not it. They acheived what NASA and the soviets acheived over 3 decades ago.
Given that the rockets used by NASA are designed by third party commercial contractors, how come they aren't heavily in this game?
There's a surprise ... pretty much an every time occurance for them.
I'm surprised nobody has tried to follow up on Gerald Bull's idea of a Super Gun to launch things into orbit.
It would be relatively cheap and I have to think it's going to be a bit simpler than building a rocket.
You do run into the problem of being limited on what you can launch. Not only is size limited, but whatever you're firing into orbit is going to have to deal with some pretty serious acceleration issues.
Still, it would be cool to see someone follow up on his work to see if it's doable.
There's also the heat issue ... the reason things re-entering the atmosphere get hot is because orbital velocities and atmopspheric friction don't go well together.
20,000 people sounds impressive until you learn that more than that came to Las Cruces to see the worlds largest enchilada.
http://www.twefie.com/
It's in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Here is the best test flight of all, IMO. Full ignition was not achieved. However, termainal velocity was achieved. P.S. Does anyone else wonder if this is the state of this contest?
Drove down from Albuquerque with several friends. We got some decent pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/killbox/
> This is the kind of stuff that would take NASA 20 years to do
What, get a rocket to blow up? And another to lift off a few feet and then tip over? NASA can do that too.
> Shit, we can't even go to the moon if we wanted to.
Sure you can. It's a question of money. A lot of people would like to pay less taxes rathern than more. It's a question of priorities. Talk to your congressman about that.
> All the tooling for the saturn rockets was DESTROYED.
An urban legend that just won't die. Some facilities were converted for new uses (e.g. STS). No, NASA engineers do not randomly go whacking equipment with axes. Some equipment can rust if there is no program (= money) to store it properly. Some equipment just gets old and no longer relevant (room-size computers with less computing power than your cell phone, electronic equipment for which nobody manufactures the required vacuum tubes, etc.)
A rednecky "the government is big and bad and can never do anything right" paranoia game is a fun game to play. Lets you work up to a nice adrenaline rush. Feel like a big man when you get to look down your nose at others. But don't actually believe it when it matters.
I wish ppl would get past this crap.
Shit, we can't even go to the moon if we wanted to.All the tooling for the saturn rockets was DESTROYED. What a fucking great idea, eh? I don't say this much, but hooray for the private sector.So NASA could not do it in 20 years, eh? In under a decade, NASA got man onto the moon. And that was 40 years ago. Now, ask how many of these companies today could do that? Even today, few. And 40 years ago? Absolutely none. In fact, ask any of these companies to put 50 tonnes into space in under 5 years. How many? none. They are going through the exact work that NASA (and their quasi private contractors) did back in the 60's. That is they are putting together Engineering teams with some small RD teams. NASA has always done large amounts of R&D on the cutting edge. How many of the current x-prize teams are doing any? Absolutely none. They are all doing engineering (big difference).
BTW, Just as the current group of X-prizes stand on NASA's broad shoulders, NASA also stands on other giants shoulders. In particular, Russia, WWII germanany, and even the Chinese did HUGE amounts of research, that NASA used. Even getting into space was more cooperative than not; Canada, Original Europe (England, France, etc), and Japan have contributed directly and indirectly to NASA's effort.
Blame NASA for that?? Not even close. This is the fault of politicians. Nixon started us down the shuttle path. Interestingly, NASA wanted to build a craft along the lines of Rutans approach, but Nixons ppl killed it. They did not like the up front price. Once the shuttle was flying, Reagan had the saturn line killed. When funding was sought to preserve the info, they felt that it was not needed. We have learned the hard way that that kind of info is difficult to get back. BTW. if you think that Private enterprise does a better job on that, well then ask Boeing. Boeing would love to extend the 747 and make some major changes. But they can not. Why? because they do not have many of their core blue prints. The 747 was designed on paper in the 70s. And yet, they do not have the info either. Right now, the vast majority of the 747 depends on skilled craftsman, just as the Saturn did.
BTW, if you think that I say the above because I am opposed to the X-prize or something like that,
Oh Yeah, I am a fan of x-prize, but I also value NASA for what it normally does. Sadly, it has died over the last 5-6 years. I am hopeful that griffin can bring it back to what it should be; a front-edge R&D team that pushes the envelope that private enterprise can not and will not do. O'Keefe was an absolute disaster. Goldin was not bad, but allowed politics to take hold. In addition, he should have pushed outwards more than he did, esp. towards the end.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Carmack will admit he isn't a rocket scientist. He will also tell you peroxide was a great learning experiance because it gives you quick turnaround time. He was able to experiment with more configurations while working with peroxide than he can with LOX. It was a good learning experiance. They are sold on LOX now. (they only switched propellant formulations once).
:)
Remember - they aren't chasing after a prize, they are a bunch of guys having fun and learning.
His Isp isnt that bad - he's hitting 200 with lox. That's not any worse than Rutan had. And he's working with throatless, a throated vehicle will get anywhere from 20-40% gain in performance.
Again, you can't compare Carmack to Rutan. Rutan is a business man who set out to win a prize with venture capital. Carmack is developing this with friends as a learning experiance. And he's not doing too shabby, especially after he figured out that peroxide sucks
-everphilski-