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A Grand Day Out For British Rocketman
Instine writes "Salford University, in the UK, is showing an article suggesting that Britain's biggest ever rocket has been unveiled, by an academic planning a space tourism offering by 2013. 'Nova 2 qualifies as the biggest rocket ever created and flown from the UK mainland,' says Steve Bennett, Head of Salford's Space Technology Laboratory
The current offering is said to amount to 20 minutes 'flight' and 3-4 mins floating. I'm not sure how much, but I'd pay for that."
It might the biggest but it's not the best, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwIhEDq6tdY
I suspect that the average tourist is fatter than the average astronaut
.
How many kids does it take to reach escape velocity??
The FUSE Grommet, you forgot to light the fuse!!!
Not necessarily. You can launch from anywhere, it just costs you more to accelerate (slightly less starting speed than at the equator) and possibly more to get into the orbit you want.
Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome is further north than most of the UK and they certainly launch lots of stuff from there - though they prefer Baikonur, its politically more difficult....
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Bennett went on to say that he is not the man they think he is at home, and that he will be burning up his fuse up there alone.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Quoth TFA: "Steve Bennett who heads up the University's Space Technology Laboratory, will be presenting his 58ft Nova 2 rocket at the University and will discuss how his company, Starchaser Industries plans to launch it in September 2009 with the help of school pupils from across the UK."
There is something so British about that statement. I almost expected the guy to say, "well, I knocked it up in my garden shed at weekends with a friend of mine who is a keen amateur astronomer. We thought of getting some of the local schoolchildren to help out which would be good for their Scout's badges."
I miss the old country sometimes even if we are often portrayed as a nation of lovable middle-class eccentrics.
bang goes my karma... again...
At the risk of being overly pedantic the tube train usually refers to the London underground rail system. Salford is up-north (next to Manchester) and not on the underground. Apart from driving (M60) you could use the Manchester tram system, British Rail, the Manchester Ship canal, or various buses.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Nova 2 qualifies as the biggest rocket ever created and flown from the UK mainland
It's because Britain used to have a rocket program in the 50s and 60s. All the launches of the large rockets were done from Woomera in the Australian outback. The biggest of these was Blue Streak developed as an ICBM. There are some pictures here
Excellent point.
My main problem with nearly every space tourism idea that I've seen floated is that they all want to offer you a few minutes of zero g, and charge the price of a new car, or more.
Maybe if I had a Bill Gates caliber bank account, I'd consider it. But for an average person, 4 minutes of ANYTHING, no matter how cool, just isn't worth the kind of money they're wanting to charge. Even if they throw in a smokin' hot hooker to be your seat-mate.
They need some sort of a "space hotel" to make it worthwhile. If they can't get the costs down, and it seems likely that they won't be able to, then they need to offer a substantial amount of time in space before any of these plans begin to look enticing.
As nice as this is to see, it is shocking how far behind we are. I'm at Leicester University, and the pinnacle of British commercial rocket techology (A Skylark, a small payload sounding rocket) sits in the middle of our foyer. Meanwhile, the French with a similar sized population and a similar sized economy (and coming from a similar state of total-fucked-upness after the war) have a commercially successful 20t launcher flying regularly.
Tory fanboys perpetually bleat that what Thatcher did to our heavy industry was a necessary evil - but it wasn't necessary for the frogs and they were in as bad a state as we were in the 1970s. We voluntarily gave up our capacity to engage in any project on a larger scale than a new shopping mall.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
You could use British Rail, but it'll cost you as much to get to Manchester as it does to get you into space.
Its only government money that goes to ESA. That has to be used for robotic/satellite missions. Boring sods that they are! If the private sector puts up the cash (Richard Branson for one) then anyone can have a go at manned flight.
But, being British, we're happier working in sheds and old WWII hangers with bits of old bathtub and wire. If our government tried to run a manned space program today, it would be the biggest waste of space, time and money in all human history.
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
This is the same guy who ran Starchaser Industries, claimed all sorts of records and pissed off a lot of amateur rocket people in Britain. He crops up every couple of years with another "NEW AND EXCITING DEVELOPMENT IN ROCKETRY". Never produced anything.
Well, air travel used to be restricted to the very well-off, too. Remember the phrase "jet set"? For that matter, there was a time when cars were basically toys for rich eccentrics. If rich people are willing to pay a bunch of money for a few minutes of thrill ride, that's great; they're essentially funding the R&D that will eventually bring the cost down to where the rest of us can afford it.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I dunno, it seems there are lots of people, like former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who are willing to pay "the price of a car" for 4 minutes of fun.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
NO, they are emphatically ***NOT*** the same people.
The Reliant Robin Space Shuttle was built by the UK Rocketmen, led by Damian Hall. Both groups are based near Manchester, UK Rocketmen in Stalybridge, Starchaser near Salford, but that's the only significant link.
I know this, because I spent a week in France last year getting drunk with Damian and a bunch of other miscellaneous rocketry nutters (including ex-Starchaser folks). Great fun :)
A little known, slightly less ambitious project (more reasonable, really),
whose announcement was plagiarized by John F. Kennedy:
It is our goal... goal... goal... (echo)
Before the decade is out... out... out...
To send a carrier pigeon to West Staines and return him safely to Slough.
Having read more about this man and his previous 'efforts' to break altitude records that had already been broken and to showcase part of a cement mixer as a space capsule... I feel that Wallace and Gromit are a more serious prospect for commercial space flight in this country.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
True, at least you'd get a seat if you were going into space.