Ugandan Seeks To Build Backyard Space Shuttle

An anonymous reader writes "Who says that only big, militaristic states are capable of manned space flight? The BBC reports on an attempt by Chris Nsamba to build what he hopes would be the first crewed spacecraft designed and built in Africa. Not that Nsamba, the Ugandan founder of the self-styled African Space Research Program, doesn't have any good role models. NASA's first African American flight director, Kwatsi Alibaruho, traces his roots to Uganda." Hopefully the press will help Nsamba's cause. I sincerely hope he makes it into space one day.

Comments

Re:simulating zero gravity

[a_nonamiss]

No. Completely different. Not even similar. What he's talking about is a wind tunnel that's turned up on its side, so that it's blowing upward rather than sideways. This way, people "float" around. It's nothing like a zero-G simulator. It's a skydiving simulator. NASA's vomit comet actually takes people up in in the body of a jet, and then goes into a calculated free-fall for a few seconds so that the plane, the pocket of air inside the plane and the people inside are all falling at the same rate, opposite the acceleration of gravity. This is what happens when a spacecraft is in orbit around Earth, except they can fall almost indefinitely because they fall at the same rate as the curvature of the earth.