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World's Largest Amateur Rocket Prepares For Second Attempt
Plammox writes "Last year, non-profit, volunteer-based Copenhagen Suborbitals failed at launching what they call the world's largest amateur rocket, because of a frozen LOX-valve. This year, the sea launch platform 'Sputnik' has become self-propelled, eliminating the need for their home-built submarine(!). Sputnik is on its way into the Baltic Sea right now and a launch attempt is expected on Friday. However, one of the founders warns that even if ignition should occur, it might very well look like this."
as big as my wallet at this moment.
Read radical news here
Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of the Sputnik program (and every subsequent Soviet space vehicle until 1965), started out designing amateur gliders in his backyard when he was a teenager. I suspect many a great aerospace engineer started out as an amateur aircraft or rocket designer.
Today's amateur is the man who takes us to Mars tomorrow.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So there's a self-propelled missile launcher headed toward the USSR?
If you ignore the fact it looks like a coffin, this could make a good single-seat escape pod for future space stations or vehicles.
What size warhead could this thing carry? Many rogue states probably are eyeing this eagerly.
that's not what she said.
Wow! Submitter is so talented at finding essentially unrelated Youtube videos. Kudos to you!
Love Missile F1-11 ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
If you want to follow them live on the map, go to marinetraffic.com and type in "sputnik" as vessel. It should appear as "Sputnik" [DK] Cargo.
PS: The launch is dependent on local weather conditions, but they hope to make an attempt on Friday. In the mean time, they're based in the port of Nexø on the island of Bornholm (dubbed "Spaceport Nexø" or SPN by the crew).
Looks to be a wild ride - where can I sign up for a flight?
On a more serious note, I'm slightly worried about the apparent lack of an escape system in case something goes wrong during the powered stage of the accent. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok, Soyuz and Shenzhou spacecrafts have all used some form of escape system as have pretty much all planned spacecrafts as far as I can tell. The only spacecrafts that have flown without any escape systems was the Voskhod and, ahem, the US Space Shuttle. The former was a jury rigged Vostok capsule designed to grab headlines, the later.. well, lets just say that if it had been equipped with a escape system there would be seven astronauts back in '86 that would not have died.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Why would you want to launch from a sea platform that's rocking around in the waves? Why not launch from land somewhere? If he has enough money to build a sea platform, a submarine, and a rocket, then he has enough money to buy land on an island somewhere that has no FAA and no rules about what you can and can't launch out of your back yard. Anyone have insight?
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
That site is one of the most poorly put together I have seen for a long time. The content is fascinating but the technical side of the website is horrible
...it appears to be held together in part by duct tape.
http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/contentgfx/tycho02_850.jpg
What can't you do with duct tape?
Uh, I don't think I would want to fly into orbit with a company that isn't even capable of proofreading their own website. Seriously, almost every page has a handful of typos on it! If you want people to trust their lives with you, a good first step is to not appear extremely sloppy.
This is how it can go horribly wrong: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E089FnwgUc
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
I worked on the American Rocket Company's proof of concept hybrid launch vehicle in 1989, which went under various names in the press, but the working name in house was Single Engine Test One (SET-1).
SET-1 failed on the pad at VAFB, also due to a frozen LOX valve. There's a good account of the Oct 1989 vehicle accident attached to the Original Post here. I'll summarize from my experience.
All of the engine testing took place at Edwards AFB, where the humidity was approx 10% on average. At Vandenburg, humidity was more like 100% during cryo fill/drain operations in the mornings. I suspect that similar condensation and freezing problems affected the Copenhagen Sputnik valve.
After two days of dry-run fill/drain ops, there was a nice casing of ice around the 4" gate valve that separated the He-pressurized LOX tank from the polybutadeine rubber fuel cast into the combustion chamber, so it only opened about 10% of full -- just enough to ignite the engine but not enough to produce any effective thrust.
The LOX valve failure was listed as the "cause," but it was only the proximate cause, and could have been predicted and/or mitigated. But a number of other contributing factors (human error, subcontractor interference from competing companies, and design shortcomings) led to the thrust vector control fuel, 60% hydrogen peroxide, pooling in the flame bucket and catching fire. As a result, the outside of the vehicle caught fire, and eventually the whole thing became a burning mess on the pad, sending a huge black cloud of smoke over Santa Maria, CA.
The proof of concept failure was the direct cause of the failure of the AMROC startup. I joined in Feb 1989 when the staff was about 50. By the time of (company President and chief inspirational figure) George Koopman's death in July, the staff was four times as large. By the end of the year, the company was only 25 people, and closed its doors a year or so later, selling its IP to Westinghouse, which then transferred it to SpaceDev. So some of the work we performed did prove useful, eventually. And we succeeded in proving that hybrid rockets were "safer" than solid -- during SET-1 development, some Rocketdyne folks down the road at EAFB dropped a solid rocket section from a crane. The resulting explosion killed 2 people iirc. The SET-1 accident caused only $2000 of minor damage to the pad at Edwards.
I was a young engineer just out of college. It was an awesome experience to work at a startup like that, and I have dozens of entertaining stories to tell as a result, and learned many lessons I used regularly over the next two decades. I'll never forget it.
I can see the fnords!
To quote Ford Fairlane,
"it looks like a dick... only smaller..."
Stone
Their homepage says the expected launch day is Thursday. Even the source cited for the launch happening on Friday says it is planned to happen on Thursday. So, where did the summary get Friday from?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
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