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Designing the World's Tiniest Manned Suborbital Vehicle
cylonlover writes, quoting Gizmag: "Generally speaking, companies developing suborbital manned vehicles brag about how much elbow room their spacecraft will provide passengers. They say there will be plenty of room to float around during the weightless portion of the flight, that there will be no fighting for windows, that passengers will comfortably endure the high-g portions of the flight ... and then there's Copenhagen Suborbitals' Tycho Brahe. CS's Tycho Brahe is a one-passenger capsule intended for a purely ballistic flight to a peak altitude approaching 100 miles. The passenger is just along for the ride, with no mechanism to steer or otherwise pilot the capsule."
Looks so small you haven't even got room to put you hands up to cover your eyes, let alone wipe your breakfast off the glass.
One can only hope the canopy is made of Peril Sensitive glass, and you get the option of editing any inflight videos so your friends don't get to see you screaming like a schoolgirl.
I hope they subcontract with Depends, because you know someone's going to need them, especially since the parachute is at the bottom, and the final descent should be sufficiently terrifying that you wouldn't want anything else floating around your screaming mouth.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
One can only hope that the next one will be named "John Gabriel".
It's a coffin for shooting people into the sun.
I think I'd be too caught up with the "human projectile" aspect of the flight to ride this myself. Science!
an average adult male build and a weight of 70 kg (154 lbs)
Americans need not apply. This is "SMART CAR" sized not "SUV" sized.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Sounds like you're just riding a bomb.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
...to quote Gordon Cooper.
"The passenger is just along for the ride, with no mechanism to steer or otherwise pilot the capsule."
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do
I hope the airlines don't read this article because they may replace the airline seats with these tiny capsules to cram more people into an airplane.
Cork rocket!
From the web site, about an unmanned test flight last year:
I think I'll wait until a few more "successful" test flights have been performed.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It looks very much like a drop pod. It could be straight from this ODST ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzkL-vg8MHE.
From TFA:
No mention of how badly beat up the dummy was. it did not give me confidence
Correcting myself: it was Chuck Yeager who called the Mercury program "spam in a can".
.. after the largest crater on the moon.
Looks like these guys are going to drain the world market of imipolex g for their little project.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
My claustrophobia would kill me.
Needs room for some way to soak up the urine that will pool at the bottom there.
So, how does one handle landing with that purely ballistic flight? Wouldn't this just be a crater on impact?
I think this got summed up nicely in Armageddon ...
I'm sure this is slightly more complicated than Wile E Coyote, but it sure as heck sounds like it.
It's not something I'd be willing to do based on the description, but I'm sure someone will.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'll wait for the Iron man suit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
If upon reentry you scream.... "BANSAI!!!!!!!"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Circus cannon. Just add more gunpowder.
Have gnu, will travel.
is suborbital and pretty small.
I think we have already been down this road... and almost every craft has had minimal ability to maneuver around very much after orbital insertion.
I'm having saturday morning flashbacks to seeing the bad guy's flying coffin from Voltron.
Looking at the drawing I can't help but wonder what that "Aero Spike" will feel like as it drives into my skull.
I'm having saturday morning flashbacks to the bad guy's flying coffin from Voltron.
This thing is a brick!
I don't care for underground railways and caving is my idea of Hell. If I'm going to die, I'd rather do it in the open air, thank you. Perhaps irrationally I don't get claustrophobic in sailplanes, which are hardly very big inside. This vehicle has achieved something I thought impossible: it travels through the air and it makes me feel claustrophobic just looking at the picture.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I'd ride it.
Worse. Named after an astronomer who made very accurate observations but whose celestial mechanics were comprehensively wrong (he thought that the sun with all the planets orbited the Earth.) Do you want to travel in a space vehicle named after someone who got space wrong?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I checked the link.... I'm probably not the only Slashdot reader who isn't interested in US comics, amazing as it may seem. I assumed that it was a film of the children's book by Ted Hughes, who I can't stand, and never investigated further.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This rocket resembles the Kaiten suicide torpedo.
And it doesn't help that they've got a diagram of the device with an "aerospike" that looks like a giant fucking nail resting directly above your head and protruding from the end of the missile...err....spacecraft...looking ready to impale you upon your return to Earth!
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
...and soon the DoD will be funding this project as a way to deliver our best trained special forces to anywhere in the world using human ballistic missile technology. Forget the nukes. They're too messy.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Hope the nose is gold/copper plated... it's only fitting for a vehicle named after Tycho Brahe.
I didn't think so. I want a full whirl or I'm not interested.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
With the right range, I'd be happy cooped up in one of these for 30 minutes -- more room than on the tube.
Now Concorde's gone, the 7 hour trip to New York is a right pain. Something like this would let me leave home in the UK at midday, arrive in NY for breakfast and a full day ahead, leave NY at 6PM and be home before 1AM.
Or rather, "S2-35B".
there is a short sci fi story with something like that, but it is illegal, due to all the pollution they give off (or some such). so people go out into the desert to evade authorities, which is part of the thrill i guess.
Is it ok to bellow this as you hurtle towards the earth?
-- Cisk for the Cisk God
The ship can be a pretty minimalistic affair. There are no controls, a little window for you to throw-up all over... the engine only has to be powerful enough to make it to the crash site, which is where you're going anyway... this is ideal for anyone who has ever held a gun in his hands, and thought "I wonder what being a bullet is like..."
The problem with Brahe's interpretation was that it made no sense at all. The Sun, Mercury and Venus orbit the Earth. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbit the Sun in paths which cause them for half the time to be on the other side of the Earth from the Sun. Forget orbital mechanics, this is a simple application of Bill Ockham's shaving appliance.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
To get troops into combat cheap. Just scale up for 250 pound payloads and you're done. Heinlein did something _similar_ in starship troopers.
Reading the comments, is sort of depressing. I thought you guys were nerds!
The guys behind Copenhagen Suborbitals surely are. The main designer, Peter Madsen, is a true tinkerer, he even built a working submarine. In his spare time!
What they aim to do, is to put a man into space, without the backing of a large commercial entity or goverment. Meanwhile, their work is Open Source, and based almost exclusively on private donations. Check our their website for more, including a number of youtube videos.
http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/
These guys can use all the support they can get.
I still don't know and didn't click the link cause I'm not interested.
I'm not entirely sure box revenue has much to do with the popularity of something around these parts.
That's the comment from the Mercury program. There's a reason why John Glenn isn't 6ft tall.
Are the pilots disposable or reusable? Where can you get it refilled?
Remember the Mercury capsules? They were about the size of an oil drum but small on top with the heat shield being wider. The things had windows about 3" X 1.5" if that. And I thought "depends" were part of the astronaut uniform. Can you imagine being up there for a week without a change?
You need to be reclining during acceleration unless it's gentle. After the flight you'd have to take your hemorrhoids out of your shoes.