Rocket-Powered 21-Foot Long X-Wing Actually Flies

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that some crazy California enthusiasts have built a 21-foot long model of an X-Wing. While this might be impressive in its own right, this model actually flies. Powered by four solid-fuel rocket engines the group has high hopes for their launch next week. Let's hope the built-in R2 unit makes it out ok.

Comments

I am going to take a guess

[darkmayo]

and that this x-wing will end up as a recreation of Porkins last flight.

Re:I am going to take a guess

[kd5ujz]

How about the homeless build their own damn house? Why do people with jobs, and houses, have to support every one that does not.

Re:I am going to take a guess

[Daniel Dvorkin]

This is what happens when people with too much money and creativity decide to do something completely useless. How about they strip off the rockets and find a way to make a house for homeless people?

So why are you anonymously trolling on Slashdot instead of out there feeding the poor, curing cancer, or rescuing lost puppies?

Re:I am going to take a guess

[disasm]

We are called to serve with humility, not arrogance. By coming on a public board and making a rant about not helping the homeless, you only hurt yourself. Be humble, and serve those that need your service. It isn't your position to attack others for not being as much of a humanitarian as you. If you brag about your own works they will burn as straw, but if you humbly serve wanting nothing in return they will be eternal.

Re:I am going to take a guess

[Chris Burke]

How about they strip off the rockets and find a way to make a house for homeless people?

I say why strip off the rockets?

Re:I am going to take a guess

[Cecil]

Did a rocket model enthusiast shit on your face recently?

One can only hope so.

Re:I am going to take a guess

[slater86]

last time I heard, many great discoveries/inventions were through people doing random hobbies that others thought were either stupid or useless( davinci and his concept we now know as a helicopter, anyone). Whilst I don't think these guys are going to revolutionize aircraft design as we know it a one in a million chance says the accidentally could.

in other words, your comment has no point to it and you should probably go and do something that will benefit someone instead of ranting.

Re:I am going to take a guess

[ultranova]

How about the homeless build their own damn house? Why do people with jobs, and houses, have to support every one that does not.

Because a society without such safety nets will accumulate large amounts of disenfranchised people who have nothing to lose but their chains, and the choices at that point are brutal oppression to keep them down or a bloody revolution. And once the homeless are under the iron heel, what's stopping those higher up in the social ladder than yourself from putting you under it too ?

I, for one, prefer to live in a relatively peaceful and free society. And the only way to achieve those qualities simultaneously is to have social justice, at least enough that people have more to lose than gain by making trouble. Humans are predators, and a hungry predator is a dangerous predator, especially if it also hates your guts for the perceived injustice of being hungry and homeless while you have a job and house and refuse to share any of your resources.

"Every man for himself" might seem good on paper, but it's good to remember that when Social Darwinism rules, "cutthroat competition" stops being a metaphor.

Re:I am going to take a guess

[insertwackynamehere]

mod parent up, this isn't offtopic

With enough thrust....

[John Hasler]

...even an X-wing can fly.

Re:With enough thrust....

[flaming error]

If I weld four rockets to it, I wonder if my '67 Impala could fly...

Re:With enough thrust....

[Carnildo]

You'd probably wind up embedded halfway up a cliff in Arizona after you miss a turn. Do you have a bumper sticker saying "How's my driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT"?

Re:With enough thrust....

[An ominous Cow art]

Cut the chatter, Red 414242.

Except that

[$RANDOMLUSER]

X-wings aren't aerodynamical (i.e. not enough lift) - they're meant for zero atmosphere - in which case they wouldn't need wings.

Re:Except that

[Nyago]

I always assumed the wings were for mounting weapons.

Re:Except that

[Gregb05]

The wings were for mounting weapons and maneuverability. There's no atmosphere to push on, but the engines are mounted such that it could turn pretty easily.

Plus it looks kinda neat.

Re:Except that

[Billosaur]

Except that we have seen them fly in an atmosphere (Yavin, Hoth, Dagobah, etc.). You could chalk that up to having sufficient thrust to overcoming the need for wings, but even if the wings weren't actually aerodynamic, they would still be affected by aerodynamic forces. Even a sheet of plywood can fly, just not far and not well.

Re:Except that

[meringuoid]

they wouldn't need wings

That's why they don't have wings. They have S-foils.

And anyway, X-wings are quite capable of atmospheric flight. Just as long as you aren't damn fool enough to land one in a swamp; you'd never get it out.

Re:Except that

[Billosaur]

Always with you it cannot be done...

Re:Except that

[meringuoid]

My impression from the movies was that they have some form of anti-gravity for taxiing, which could also make up for lack of lift during atmospheric flight.

Ah. That explains a lot.

'Hmm. Disconnected in the rough landing the main cable to the antigravity device was. No wonder it is, that get this ship out of the swamp he cannot. Reconnect it I will, before to lift it through Force powers I attempt. Impressed will young Skywalker be, and respectful!'

Re:Except that

[WrongMonkey]

To sell more toys.

Re:Except that

[dpilot]

Keep in mind that the X-wing fighters did classical banked-turns in the dogfights in and around the Death Stars. Not only do you need wings for a banked turn, you need an atmosphere.

If you assume that the major motive force is all from the main engine(s) you realize that in a turn the engines will be firing essentially away from the center-point of the turn. In other words, the thrust in an atmospheric banked turn is almost (almost because of "forward" thrust) 90 degrees off of a turn in a vacuum. Beyond that, with "advanced technology" it should be readily feasible to have thrusts that would at least black out the pilot, if not turn him into jelly. I guess that's what "inertial dampers" (Star Trek, not Star Wars, I know) are for.

The easy explanation for atmospheric-style banked turns was that the Death Star actually had some atmosphere around it, kept in place by artificial gravity fields. The really odd thing about that is that you would then expect it to be laid out like an onion, with the floor of each deck toward the center, whereas the floors of at least the hangar decks were perpendicular to the surface. That would mean secondary artificial gravity expressly for the purpose of holding a local exterior atmosphere. The other reason to have an exterior atmosphere would be for Tad and Bink, or whoever the heck those two guys were, to scrape and paint the exterior hull plating.

The even easier explanation was that Star Wars isn't science fiction, it's a swashbuckler. Scientific accuracy need not apply, especially if it conflicts with ordinary expectations of the viewers. Since most viewers don't have or haven't reasoned out such implications of spaceflight, atmospheric flight expectations rule. (Notice that I haven't even gotten into orbital dynamics, yet.)

Re:Except that

[jedidiah]

You guys need to turn in your fan club id cards and your back issues of Bantha Tracks.

The X-Wing doesn't "fly". It hovers. It uses the same hover/propulsion mechanism as a landspeeder or a speeder bike when it's in an atmosphere. It's like the USS Enterprise (any of them, CVN-56 included). It doesn't need to be aerodynamic to "fly". It needs to not burn up in the atmosphere when it's moving through it.

It's rather like the space shuttle actually...

Re:Except that

[Chris Burke]

What makes you think Yoda was averse to a little swamp dive? That little sucker could live on any remote and abandoned planet in the galaxy, and he chose a swamp planet, because he loves swamps so much. Well, that and it's a great excuse for not cleaning up his hovel. Any place not waist-deep in muck is considered clean on Degobah.

Re:Except that

[dpilot]

You can train as a bush pilot all you want, but when circumstances change significantly, that training may not be valid. Putting bush pilots into spacecraft with no extra training makes a good movie, but it's even less realistic than putting a frequently-drunk crop-duster played by Randy Quaid into the cockpit of an F16.

As for being constrained, you're right. But remember that in an atmospheric banked turn, much of the centripetal force is supplied by the wings acting against the atmosphere. In space, there ain't no such thing - all centripetal force is supplied by yaw and the main engines. A tight turn in space simply won't look like a tight turn in an atmosphere, in fact it will look WRONG to our conventional sensibilities.

Then again, there's the ultimate argument - it was just a movie, a swashbuckler. Not only that, the first movie was done on a shoestring, and somehow I doubt there was anyone on the payroll to square anything with scientific accuracy.

Re:Except that

[PlatyPaul]

Sorta-right, sorta-wrong. The wings are there because they're S-foils, a term which crops up mostly in the video games (most notably in X-Wing, where you had to press a button to open or close them for combat or hyperspace travel respectively). Since the wings were there, it made sense to mount the weaponry in a distributed setup.

Re:Except that

[idontgno]

I'm pretty sure we've seen X-Wing fighters do atmospheric maneuvering.

Sheesh, we've seen X-Wing fighters do atmospheric maneuvers in hard vacuum. And face it, that's just silly.

That's why I prefer the other "X-Foil" spaceship in pop SF TV canon. At least Babylon 5 came up with apparently realistic physics for spacecraft movement and a feasible rational for the X-style "wings": maximizing rotational moment available from the thrust of the engines for maximum slew rate.

Hmmm... I've got a fever, and the only prescription, is a flying scale model of a Starfury Thunderbolt. Yah. Definitely.

Re:Except that

[Anonymous Coward]

When 900 years old you are, minimize flatulence you will not.

Re:Except that

[Max Littlemore]

You could chalk that up to having sufficient thrust to overcoming the need for wings, but even if the wings weren't actually aerodynamic, they would still be affected by aerodynamic forces.

The X-Wing doesn't fly in atmospheres whilst in the X configuration, as any rookie starpilot straight out of training knows. To fly in an atmosphere, the X-Wing must first close it's wings, creating two wings out of the usual four and allowing atmospheric flight.

Unlike Earth aircraft, which only have a curved upper surface, X-Wings have curved surfaces both above and below the wing when in the closed position, allowing for extended inverted flight.

Such are the wonders of the subtle distortion in the laws of physics when one travels to a galaxy far, far away.

Does it fly?

[tulmad]

I keep seeing this story in various places. They all say "this model actually flies." The thing is, afaict, it's only ever "flown" in simulation. I don't mean to be mean, but you can't really say an aircraft flies until it actually gets up off the ground.

Re:Does it fly?

[ch-chuck]

I used to hang out with model airplane enthusiasts and after watching flying snoopy doghouses, flying witches on brooms, flying lawn mowers, flying pizza pans, carpets, flags, picnic baskets, etc, people would just say, "You can make a brick fly if you put a big enough engine on it".

Re:Does it fly?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

"The Vogon ships hung in the air in exactly the same way that bricks don't"

Re:Does it fly?

[cthulu_mt]

Does it run Linux?
Will it blend?

Re:Does it fly?

[2short]

The builders of this have not called it an "aircraft". It is a rocket. I see little reason to doubt that it will get off the ground in some fashion, as building it obviously required quite a bit more technical sophistication than the simple thrust to weight comparison need to ensure liftoff. One of the builders quite straightforwardly rates structural failure during flight "likely".

Don't worry about being mean by suggesting that this is some overly geeky guys presenting their geeky thing as more than it is. You don't come across as mean making such a suggestion, just foolish. This is some extremely geeky guys, utterly reveling in the awesome geekery of this wicked cool thing they built.

"Actually Flies" ?

[MDMurphy]

The headline is the same from Gizmodo. It's really an X-wing model he PLANS to fly. Check back next week for the success or failure.

Good thing for R2

[Billosaur]

Even with the aluminum rods, however, there's the possibility of structural damage. We asked Andy about how he expected the flight to go: "it's likely we will have a structural failure in the wings, but we are hoping it will hold."

"R2, that stabilizer has broken free again... see if you can't lock it down...

While I applaud the effort, I have a bad feeling about this. If one of the four solid rocket motors fails to ignite or ignites early/late, you're going to have a 22 foot (or more) long pile of scrap wood and aluminum.

Re:Good thing for R2

[jmdc]

The actual quote is "R2, that stabilizer's broken loose again ..."

Re:Good thing for R2

[veganboyjosh]

The actual quote is "I've got a bad feeling about this..."

Re:Good thing for R2

[ILongForDarkness]

I wonder if they will try to "rail" launch it? The rails will guide if for the first 10 ft or so, giving all engines time to kick in. One would presume with a project this size, there is a bunch of amateur rocketeers in the mix to pick apart the launch. Either it flies which would be pretty cool, or it blows up, or crashes into the ground. Either way a pretty cool You-Tube video (I'm hoping for the fire ball, more entertaining :)

Strap enough propellant on!

[codepunk]

Hey if you strap enough propellant on a pig it will fly. Nice work but the word "flies" is a real stretch
of the imagination.

Re:Strap enough propellant on!

[grassy_knoll]

I'd pay money to see that.

Especially if there was a BBQ afterwords ( during? ).

Re:Strap enough propellant on!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a little airborne, it's still good, it's still good!

Won't this attract unwanted imperial attention?

[EvilSpudBoy]

All we need is for the empire to think there is a rebel base here, and they will send the death star to blow up Earth. In which case that thing better fly and it better have one hell of a pilot.

Update

[Diginosis]

"We are greatly saddened today when we learned that while testing the rocket powered X-Wing fighter, a rocket powered bionic arm developed by the US military came out of nowhere and punched a hole through the engine compartment. Jek Porkins Jr., the pilot of the craft was quoted as last saying, 'NO, I'm all ri-- Aah!' as the plane plummeted to an unknown location."

-X-Wing fighter engineering staff

this will end badly.

[Lumpy]

From my extensive model rocketry background getting multiple rockets to fire all at once is incredibly hard. getting 4 of them to fire at once spread out that far apart will be a nightmare. clustered together one misfire or late fire will not affect the trajectory too much, that far apart it will affect the trajectory dramatically, one not firing on one side will spin it out of control as soon as it leaves the launch rod. one late firing will turn it really hard at the end of the burn.

I hope they are completely ok with it pinwheeling out of control along the ground as the chances of that happening are higher than most suspect.

Re:this will end badly.

[fmobus]

well, you could have some sort of release mechanism holding the plane, so that it just releases the plane when all four rockets have ignited. For example, have someone with a trigger mechanism observe the ignition and release the plane as soon as all rockets are on.

Of course, you'd have to build a structure strong enough to support the force of multiple rockets, but that's beyond me. And you'd still have to consider one rocket ending sooner than others. Nothing is perfect.

Re:this will end badly.

[advocate_one]

I would expect there to be an even greater likelihood of one motor burning out before the others...

swamp landing

[icebones]

Fromm the ammount of wood they used, I wonder if this one might actually float if it landed in a swamp

Re:They're building a rocket plane

[east coast]

Of course they're not having sex. That goes without saying. After all, they're Star Wars geeks.

But does it have

[MeditationSensation]

laser weapons that make sound in the vacuum of space?

Ob.

[pushing-robot]

Perry Bible Fellowship

Daddy! I WANT and Oompa-Loompa!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yes, Veruca dearest! But.. Daddy is about to earn his Darwin prize.

What engines will it fly on?

[Overzeetop]

I presume they'll be using Aerotech, but I'm curious what impulse level they're planning. At the take off weight, this is going to need some serious thrust. I'm not a high-power guy but a casual BAR (born-again rocketeer); I build and fly black-powder based models with my 5 year old, and just got my first composite mid-power kit airborne last week. Back in my day, mid/high power didn't even exist, as far as I know - the Estes D was the "big one". Those are little engines nowadays.

As for those asking "Why?" the answer is simple - because they can. Model rocketry is fun, and a bit of a show-off hobby (like many others). I don't have the spare change to go out and drop 4 figures on a big rocket, and then several hundred per flight on the propulsion. All depends on your priorities and what makes your nipples hard.

I hope it flies well and has a safe recovery. It's neat to see the hobby get some legs; it's one of those applied-science areas that kids can get involved in that's also a lot of fun.

Referenced for the younger /.'ers

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Porkin's last battle

Re:The more interesting question...

[Strudleman]

Wow, you act like you might know something. Of course it could be gas. Maybe you should take something for that verbal diarrhea you seem to have. Of course you could simply be retarded. Are you sure you're not a retard? Maybe just another moron talking out of his ass again like he knows a thing or three? I bet it's a bit of everything. You should take something for that. Perhaps a loaded .357 ingested orally will do the trick!

Since I'm feeling generous, let me take some time to educate you. Flying high powered rockets is legal in this country. It won't get you arrested or fined or thrown in Gitmo (Where the hell'd you get that? Oh, probably more gas.) It doesn't make you a terrorist or an activist or a radical islamist or any kind of -ist. Provided you follow the laws, file the proper paperwork and notices with the proper government agencies, it's perfectly legal.

Now, ready, aim, fire!

Who What Where

[SaksRussel]

The X-Wing fighter will be launched (weather permitting) on Sat. October 6 at Plaster City, CA near El Centro. The rocket will be powered by 4 "M" class solid rocket motors. Each year Tripoli San Diego and DART rocket clubs hold their annual 4-day event called Plaster Blaster. This year it is titled Plaster Wars in honor of the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie. Andy Woerner of What's Up Hobbies usually builds a wild and outrageous project for the event. With this years theme, he decided to build the X-Wing fighter. Another group is bringing a 9-10' (estimated from the picture) Y-Wing fighter and other attendees are encouraged to bring other Star Wars inspired rockets. If you are in or near southern California and want to come see this, visit plasterblaster.com for information, directions and saftey notices. There is no cost to come and watch. If you would like to launch your own rockets (A-M class), there is a flyers fee to cover the cost of permits and porta-potties. Several vendors will also be on site for all of your rocket buying impulses. You must have a certification card to buy H class and above propellent kits. This is really a fun event for all ages and the price is right. Chances are good that local news teams will be on hand to cover the event. Tech: Getting all of the motors to light is one of Andy's specialties and I've never seen him fail in it. It could happen, but the chances are small. There is no guidance system on hobby rockets as it is against the law. The X-Wing will be launched a fair distance from the flight line for safety and announcements will be made well in advance of the launch so everybody will pay attention. I have never seen anybody injured at a rocket launch in over 5 years that I have been back in the hobby. It is very safe.

Ugh.... don't bother with this.

[heinousjay]

Goatse

Re:Ugh.... don't bother with this.

[DMUTPeregrine]

That may be one of the only times that site is, in any way, on topic.