Yes, arbitrary in the sense that much of the paperwork is needless. Much of the space qual specs were developed before the major space agencies had launched manned vehicles / and / or were developed during the early years of manned spaceflight. There are many places where they could be relaxed with today's knowledge, and other places where they could be tightened up.
> I think you're taking your anti-NASA hyperbole a little far here.
Not anti NASA. Anti NASA and anti ESA in terms of the paperwork requirements. The level of paperwork is certainly worse for both of those agencies than the Russian requirements.
> Do you have any idea how difficult it is to safely launch a person into space and bring them back again?
Yes, I used to be a payload test engineer on a number of payloads for manned missions to Mir, and had to write the documentation to go with the payloads in question amongst other things. Oh, and I run a small rocket propulsion consultancy as a sideline nowadays, so yes, I also know my delta V from my c*.
> Nevermind. You answered my question in your post.
Good, I'm glad.
> Arbitrary pile of paperwork, indeed.
Yes, arbitrary.
I take it that as well as your expert knowledge on paperwork for manned missions, that you have seen the SpaceX Dragon capsule in the flesh then ?
No, it's a full sized prototype with all internal systems working. Your average tin can on a shelf in Walmart generally doesn't come fitted with seats and working controls, etc.
> tested life support? He clearly says that the life
> support system used is not up to spec and will not fly.
No. Read the article again. It says the life support system has been thoroughly tested. It is just a case of the whole system does not meet the arbitrary pile of paperwork test required for NASA, and the reaction control system and heat shield are not fitted. Both clearly essential for a spaceflight (or one that returns to Earth), but the rest of the vehicle is functional.
If the creator gets the lion share of the money, then I would pay without a second thought.
> So do you apply this line of reasoning to all products you need?
> (e.g. buying a pair of trainers, would you steal them if you think
> the people actually making them only received a few cents per pair).
No, not at all, but the difference is, in most other industries which sell to end users, I do not see companies suing or threatening to sue their everyday customers who go into a shop and want to buy their products, accusing their customers of being criminals when they are not, putting malicious software on their products to deliberately cripple their products, and then consistently lying about their motives, amongst other misdemeanours.
If I went into a sports shop and was accused of being a criminal before even picking up a pair of trainers, I would be pretty annoyed. If I went into a shop and bought a pair of trainers with missing laces, and was told "yes, this is a security measure", then I'd be pretty annoyed.
It makes me very angry that a company like Sony for instance, is allowed to largely escape serious penalty for putting damaging rootkits on their CDs "to protect their IP", yet if any of us as individuals did that, we'd go to jail. Shame really, because that is exactly where Sir Howard Stringer of Sony should be going, along with his cronies at Sony BMG. At least I'm doing my bit. After 3 Sony Vaio laptops, several camcorders and a bunch of Sony AV gear, I will never ever buy Sony on principal, and I have tried to spread the word to many others outside of our community.
Basically, you are missing the point. The music industry started this little war, to protect their declining profit margin in a digital age, and to go for a soft target rather than the more significant source of piracy which is the duplication factories churning out the fake CDs. I used to buy CDs rather than either download or not buy music at all. The music industry then accused us all of being thieves when we were not. They criminalised the innocent. Then I got to learn through friends in the music industry what really goes on. That's the point at which I decided to counter the lies of low lifes like John Kennedy of the IFPI.
> Well, I guess having a sizeable chunk of your expected income stolen will
> cause a certain amount of 'fixation'.
Absolutely, and you say:
> doesn't it seem kinda fair if the creator asks to get paid?
Yes definitely, but having spent the last few weeks working on a music website for a singer who used to have a music career, had a song that went platinum, and then ended up doing painting and decorating because she never saw any of the money, as did the recording studio who were recording her tracks, I think you are being very naiive if you think that the creators actually get paid most of the time. As her horror story showed me, as well as others I know about from being involved, the money does not go to the artistes, it generally goes to corrupt music industry executives who try and blackmail female artistes into sex for career advancement, and who seem to pocket the money only to spend it on shovelling coke up their noses. Seemingly they spread their fun to their lawyers too. So putting your comments in context, i don't think you really understand the nature of the music business.
> I am an IP lawyer, so I may be slightly biased,
Well I guess you're definitely missing out on the fun the music industry lawyers have.
Can you sleep at night with your views? Knowing that the genuine creators are not compensated, but all the middle men, the leeches like the lawyers etc are essentially stealing the money the creators make ?
> I have trouble understanding why so many people seem to condone simply *taking* it...
Simple. If the creator gets the lion share of the money, then I would pay without a second thought. As long as people who do not add value get the majority of the money, and defend their behaviour through suing everyone else, then I will have no part of it, and will actively seek the middlemen's economic demise.
> and then playing the 'Evil industry' card on the rightholders to boot!
> Seems a bit incongruous to me.
Seems you're a bit naiive for a lawyer.
People like John Kennedy and the IFPI and the RIAA are real scum. Instead of developing a credible business model that fairly compensates the artistes, they are more concerned with preserving their own financial gravy train which keeps the artistes under their thumb.
> No, I believe the 'real question' is why did we give up on
> our space program in the first place, really just a few years
> before people started seeing and reaping the commercial
> benefits of satellite technology.
Primarily it was a case that the politicans were too short sighted. The particular individual in government who could not be persuaded by the rocket engineer's very good arguments and demonstration of why this was a growth industry that the UK would do well to be involved with, was a clueless wonder called Quintin Hogg, later to become Lord Chancellor as Lord Hailsham. Given his performance in that role too, I can see how he failed to grasp the intracacies of a few simple graphs showing growth against investment. Hmmm, lines, on sheets of paper. Hard concept for a politician.
I remember speaking to one of the people who presented the case to Hogg, and this, more than 25 years later, made him incredibly angry just to talk about it.
Then there is the US factor. Don't underestimate the power of US financial interests to ask their government to "lean" on the governments of "friendly" nations to drop certain promising technology developments. Special relationship ? My arse.
As I mentioned in another post, as with us being encouraged to buy Skybolt, drop TSR2 etc, dropping Blue Streak was a similar issue. Partly financial, and partly vested interests. And with the demise of Blue Streak, went our only real opporunity for an expandable launch system. Black Arrow, and planned derivatives, were exceptional for their size, but never meant for the same payload capability.
Actually, it was as more than a case of any projects/research not being funded, it was as good as banned.
Sorry, your comments are wrong.
There was, and still is, for instance, an active policy "against" space launch technology in the UK, which has been in place since the days of Blue Streak. Partly due to having 650 or so mainly arts graduates sitting in a large debating chamber and not understanding why we are consistently throwing away technological opportunities, partly due to pressure in the past from our supposed partner the other side of the pond leaning on us to drop launch technology and use theirs (shades of other programmes such as TSR2 and Skybolt), and partly due to an active dislike of space within Whitehall, and a major and irrational dislike against launch technology and manned space.
I have been in space meetings in the UK where government representatives have said do not under any circumstances mention anything to do with manned space. To which my response is to give them the finger. To say they have wasted a generation's talents which could have been used on space technology in the UK would be an understatement. They've wasted at least 2 generations.
The whole HOTOL, and later SKYLON lack of support from the UK government, and lack of participation in FESTIP is yet another example of this myopic, and moronic attitude by some faceless bureaucrats in Whitehall. An attitude that they have passed on down the years.
So yes, banned is an appropriate word for manned involvement in space and the UK government.
> The Americans abandoned the advanced passanger airliner project
> (which was blended-wing) in the late 90s, and there is no obvious
> indication that NASA has done much work on waveriders - some,
> mostly by being beaten to it by a bunch of Scots (and they were
> amateur rocket enthusiasts at that!)
Not all the waverider team were Scots, some us were Welsh (in my case), and English in a few other cases. There were actually a number of amateur rocketry groups in the UK working on practical flight testing of waveriders since the 1960's, most notably STAAR Research and ASTRA (both based in Scotland). The stumbling block on a shoestring budget however, has always been getting the waveriders to sufficiently high speed for the waveriding to occur.
Certainly at lower speeds, the small scale waveriders have been well tested in the UK. But because of the wing planform they either land at fairly high speeds, or if they are heavy, they have fairly poor glide characteristics subsonically.
I think this is a demonstration of how UK schooling standards have declined too. Like you I went to a UK comprehensive school, unlike you, mine was only average, and unlike you, I went through the system prior to GCSE's being introduced, i.e. I did O-levels rather than GCSEs. The difference from what I have seen was considerable, and definitely shows the way there has been a general dumbing down and homogenising to a lower common denominator.
Yes, we did trig at 12. We also studied basic calculus somewhat earlier than it is studied nowadays. The difference in standard between O-levels and GCSE's is considerable.
I think you're right about it being a Western thing. Nowadays, the perniciousness of political correctness and glorifying a culture of lack of respect for others, has eroded education. Now there is a lack of respect, people feel they can get away with behaving in a manner that would previously have been considered anti-social.
It all went wrong when they banned the cane. The cane scared the shit out of us all, and we generally kept in line because we didn't want to get punished. Whether people like it or not. It worked. You had a class of schoolkids who generally behaved because they didn't want to feel pain. Nowadays, with the ridiculous excess of political correctness, they know they can get away with nigh on murder, so the respect has gone, and as a result, so have the educational standards declined.
In the UK, at the larger end of the rocketry scale, generally, one contacts the Civil Aviation Authority for a NOTAM - certainly at the larger UK rocketry launch events, they are all covered by NOTAMS - ranging from 5000 feet to 20,000 feet. Although you can technically fly in most places apart from near airports or urban conurbations, there are often byelaws that prohibit launching, so you may need to check. The other option is to go along to a rocketry launch event in the UK, where the launch site will be arranged in advance.
For more examples of UK non professional launch activities, see websites such as:
Going above an altitude of 24,500 feet in the UK, does require you to contact the CAA and submit documentation and details of your proposed rocket launch in advance.
As another post has pointed out, originally, the likes of Apple and HP were garage start ups. I can deal with it, what's your issue ?
You are lucky if you've never come across "real" engineers who do louse up. There seems to be this arrogance that many have, this air of superiority. That's not only an observation from me (I'm a physicist by background, and yes, I have worked on a number of space missions, I just choose not to have the air of superiority that many in the industry adopt towards the so called "garage tinkerers" - a term that does many a great dis-service), but by friends who are engineers and work in their spare time on what is sneeringly called garage tinkering on rocketry, who are equally sick of the arrogant attitude espoused by engineers who spend more time in front of monitors than actually bending metal.
It's one thing to read books like Rocket Propulsion Elements, or Spacecraft Propulsion Analysis and Design, but it's a totally different exercise to get out there and test, like Armadillo Aerospace are doing.
The one whose claims require significant evidence is you. If these "real" engineers you refer to are so good, what happened to the likes of X-33, the X-30 NASP etc ? Why have Mars missions loused up because of metric/imperial confusion ? Why didn't the release system on missions that failed have a very simple, very low gain transmission system to at least enable mission controllers to know whether heat shields or descent probes separated ? What about the louse up with the first launch of Ariane 5 ? Gosh, that's a lot of discipline and knowledge shown there. Yes, these are a minority rather than a majority, but it shows that stupidity is not a trait for "real" engineers or their acolytes to confer on anyone else.
"Real" real engineering doesn't depend on wearing a suit and working for a large multinational aerospace conglomerate, and being able to run 6DOF sims on supercomputers, it depends on good engineering practice. That is not dependent on the size of the organisation, it could be any size organisation, it could be operating out of a large aerospace production line or a shed. What is important is approach.
You may also benefit from reading up about the early development of rocketry. The early work was carried out frequently by people not quite as knowledgable as you think, but with a more open mind to trying things out, and more an emphasis on testing than pontificating, that's for sure. The level of discipline required then differed little if at all from that employed by many garage level groups today. I take it you have tested hardware yourself, haven't you ? You've been at a launch pad when something unexpected goes wrong and you have to do some hack to get the vehicle in the air ?
Personally, I prefer the build a little, test a little, incremental engineering approach. It works for Armadillo, it works for the group I work with, it works for many other "garage" style groups, and small companies. And the longer some maintain an air of superiority, and that rocket engineering is all so hard and requires big aerospace engineering conglomerates and insecure people with bit attitude problems, the more stupid they will look when the smaller, nimbler groups make monkeys of them.
This attitude of people being "real" engineers, and others being perceived as garage tinkerers is not only arrogant and misguided, it is what holds non governmental spaceflight back.
I've seen supposed "real"engineers, in fact some with degrees from Universities such as Oxford, and supposed space engineering backgrounds, blow up rocket motors through simple and avoidable mistakes. Then again, I've seen non engineers, working without much funding (the supposed garage tinkerers), build comparable rocket motors that quite literally blow the "real" engineers efforts away in terms of reliability and robustness.
The difference, is those without the attitude, and without the government/big business mentality, seem to have a better overall grasp of how the systems go together, not always, but in my experience, generally enough that it is noticeable. There's also another facet those you refer to as garage tinkerers have that I tend to see missing in many "real" engineers in space related disciplines; it's called common sense.
As for your duct tape remark, and your comment on real engineers working out designs. I take it you've never been in one of the older space capsules ? It's always so easy to be an armchair expert when you have the benefit of ignorance to back you up. I would not, if I were you, ever go inside a Vostok or a Soyuz capsule, because if your comments above are anything to go by, you'd have a fit.
When I worked professionally in the space industry on a project in Russia, I was amazed at the simplicity of the early manned space capsules. Technology has moved on sufficiently now, that people such as John Carmack (who is far from a garage tinkerer) could develop a manned capsule to match those, of that I have no doubt.
I can't wait until John Carmack gets something manned flying. It will be like DC-X all over again. All these nay saying supposed "real" engineers suddenly changing their tune and saying "well I thought it would work actually, but I didn't say anything". Yeah right.
Armadillo Aerospace will succeed where others have failed, precisely because they don't have the attitude so prevalent in large aerospace engineering projects.
The rockets on Junkyard Wars were bad because they were built using bits of junk in a Junk Yard.
For reference, I was one of the "experts" from the first UK season of Junkyard Wars (or Scrapheap in the UK), and as well as having worked on several space missions professionally, having 2 physics degrees and having been building and launching HPR rockets for several years, as well as my own bi-props previously, I can assure you that it does not take as much know-how as people may think, certainly not for the type and size of rockets on Junkyard Wars. Anyone with a few clues can build a High Power rocket, that's why you get High Power rocket kits. It doesn't need much intelligence. However trying to build a rocket out of junk will always result in lousy performance unless someone has conveniently left something like a solid rocket motor from a missile in the Junk Yard.
When your raw propulsion materials are a bunch of High Power Rocketry Aerotech I-class and J-class motors, and you have to put them in an airframe made out of something like an old water filter, then the result will always be bad.
Rocket science is not as hard as say something like Quantum Mechanics or Astrophysics (or at least the astrophysics I did for my Ph.D).
With access to some machine tools, a decent sized garage and a bit of practice, a bunch of us built stuff like this without too much difficulty:
Slight correction, Blue Streak was the first stage of the ELDO launcher, not Black Arrow. There was a proposal to mate either Black Arrow or Black Knight atop Blue Streak to form a another, larger, wholly British orbital vehicle - I think it was provisionally called Black Prince, but I could be wrong there.
The first stage of the ELDO launcher (called Europa I think) was definitely Blue Streak though, because I knew/know a couple of guys who worked on it.
Your comments are very accurate (well certainly about Bennett).
I was at Ky's launch a few years back, and the guy is very professional. He's very determined, and I have no doubt he will get a vehicle to space.
As for Bennett, as one of the UK rocketeers who has suffered at the hands of Bennett (and had the misfortune to meet him), I'd say your comments are, if anything, in my opinion, too kind to him. He flies large, very nicely finished high power model rockets. Period. He may claim all sorts of things, but given that a recent launch of his was on a cluster of M1939's when he was making all sorts of wild claims, then it sort of puts it into perspective. His largest vehicle isn't even as large as the some of the larger HPR vehicles such as the U.S. Project 463 - which for someone who seems to attach so much importance to size of his rockets, seems to be a bit amiss:-) Most UK rocketeers are wary of saying too much about him, because he has been known to try to sue people who say things he doesn't like in the UK.
As you say, if he really was what he claims, why is he using the launch controllers he uses ? You have to feel sorry for those who follow him, since they probably have no idea of the accuracy of what he claims.
Eventually, in my opinion, the truth will catch up with him. People are already starting to wise up to him in the UK as this article shows.
I'd say you've got your description very accurately indeed.
As one of those in the UK who has suffered at the results of Bennett's antics, it still amazes me that people actually fall for some of his comments. Having met him, I know exactly what he is like, however, because he has a tendency to try and sue people in the UK, I'll not share my opinions of the man. I think you can guess what I think though:-)
As you say, they're just large high power model rockets, with clusters of motors (a recent one used a cluster of Aerotech M1939's I believe). Even his largest is still smaller than the largest HPR vehicles launched in the U.S. (such as Project 463).
The good thing is though, people are beginning to wise up to him now though.
The flag was attached to the launch tower, _Not_ the rocket.
And as for the wind shear, I videoed the flight all the way up to the point where something went wrong (at around 39,000 feet as I recall), and I still think it could have been the nosecone coming off rather than wind shear.
The condition of the rocket after it came back was far better than I had expected too. It was battered, but for something that had fallen that far, I thought it stood up to the impact very well. Ky builds his rockets strong, that's for sure:-)
Regardless, Ky Michaelson is a really nice guy, and deserves to succeed. Fingers crossed, he will.
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Total Impulse is measured in Newton Seconds - it is the thrust force integrated over the time of burn.
There is also Specific Impulse (measured in Seconds) which is the Total Impulse per unit weight of propellant.
> "arbitrary pile of paperwork test"?
Yes, arbitrary in the sense that much of the paperwork is needless. Much of the space qual specs were developed before the major space agencies had launched manned vehicles / and / or were developed during the early years of manned spaceflight. There are many places where they could be relaxed with today's knowledge, and other places where they could be tightened up.
> I think you're taking your anti-NASA hyperbole a little far here.
Not anti NASA. Anti NASA and anti ESA in terms of the paperwork requirements. The level of paperwork is certainly worse for both of those agencies than the Russian requirements.
> Do you have any idea how difficult it is to safely launch a person into space and bring them back again?
Yes, I used to be a payload test engineer on a number of payloads for manned missions to Mir, and had to write the documentation to go with the payloads in question amongst other things. Oh, and I run a small rocket propulsion consultancy as a sideline nowadays, so yes, I also know my delta V from my c*.
> Nevermind. You answered my question in your post.
Good, I'm glad.
> Arbitrary pile of paperwork, indeed.
Yes, arbitrary.
I take it that as well as your expert knowledge on paperwork for manned missions, that you have seen the SpaceX Dragon capsule in the flesh then ?
> full-sized prototype == big tin can.
No, it's a full sized prototype with all internal systems working. Your average tin can on a shelf in Walmart generally doesn't come fitted with seats and working controls, etc.
> tested life support? He clearly says that the life
> support system used is not up to spec and will not fly.
No. Read the article again. It says the life support system has been thoroughly tested. It is just a case of the whole system does not meet the arbitrary pile of paperwork test required for NASA, and the reaction control system and heat shield are not fitted. Both clearly essential for a spaceflight (or one that returns to Earth), but the rest of the vehicle is functional.
> So do you apply this line of reasoning to all products you need?
> (e.g. buying a pair of trainers, would you steal them if you think
> the people actually making them only received a few cents per pair).
No, not at all, but the difference is, in most other industries which sell to end users, I do not see companies suing or threatening to sue their everyday customers who go into a shop and want to buy their products, accusing their customers of being criminals when they are not, putting malicious software on their products to deliberately cripple their products, and then consistently lying about their motives, amongst other misdemeanours.
If I went into a sports shop and was accused of being a criminal before even picking up a pair of trainers, I would be pretty annoyed. If I went into a shop and bought a pair of trainers with missing laces, and was told "yes, this is a security measure", then I'd be pretty annoyed.
It makes me very angry that a company like Sony for instance, is allowed to largely escape serious penalty for putting damaging rootkits on their CDs "to protect their IP", yet if any of us as individuals did that, we'd go to jail. Shame really, because that is exactly where Sir Howard Stringer of Sony should be going, along with his cronies at Sony BMG. At least I'm doing my bit. After 3 Sony Vaio laptops, several camcorders and a bunch of Sony AV gear, I will never ever buy Sony on principal, and I have tried to spread the word to many others outside of our community.
Basically, you are missing the point. The music industry started this little war, to protect their declining profit margin in a digital age, and to go for a soft target rather than the more significant source of piracy which is the duplication factories churning out the fake CDs. I used to buy CDs rather than either download or not buy music at all. The music industry then accused us all of being thieves when we were not. They criminalised the innocent. Then I got to learn through friends in the music industry what really goes on. That's the point at which I decided to counter the lies of low lifes like John Kennedy of the IFPI.
Absolutely, and you say:
> doesn't it seem kinda fair if the creator asks to get paid?
Yes definitely, but having spent the last few weeks working on a music website for a singer who used to have a music career, had a song that went platinum, and then ended up doing painting and decorating because she never saw any of the money, as did the recording studio who were recording her tracks, I think you are being very naiive if you think that the creators actually get paid most of the time. As her horror story showed me, as well as others I know about from being involved, the money does not go to the artistes, it generally goes to corrupt music industry executives who try and blackmail female artistes into sex for career advancement, and who seem to pocket the money only to spend it on shovelling coke up their noses. Seemingly they spread their fun to their lawyers too. So putting your comments in context, i don't think you really understand the nature of the music business.
> I am an IP lawyer, so I may be slightly biased,
Well I guess you're definitely missing out on the fun the music industry lawyers have.
Can you sleep at night with your views? Knowing that the genuine creators are not compensated, but all the middle men, the leeches like the lawyers etc are essentially stealing the money the creators make ?
> I have trouble understanding why so many people seem to condone simply *taking* it...
Simple. If the creator gets the lion share of the money, then I would pay without a second thought. As long as people who do not add value get the majority of the money, and defend their behaviour through suing everyone else, then I will have no part of it, and will actively seek the middlemen's economic demise.
> and then playing the 'Evil industry' card on the rightholders to boot!
> Seems a bit incongruous to me.
Seems you're a bit naiive for a lawyer.
People like John Kennedy and the IFPI and the RIAA are real scum. Instead of developing a credible business model that fairly compensates the artistes, they are more concerned with preserving their own financial gravy train which keeps the artistes under their thumb.
Primarily it was a case that the politicans were too short sighted. The particular individual in government who could not be persuaded by the rocket engineer's very good arguments and demonstration of why this was a growth industry that the UK would do well to be involved with, was a clueless wonder called Quintin Hogg, later to become Lord Chancellor as Lord Hailsham. Given his performance in that role too, I can see how he failed to grasp the intracacies of a few simple graphs showing growth against investment. Hmmm, lines, on sheets of paper. Hard concept for a politician.
I remember speaking to one of the people who presented the case to Hogg, and this, more than 25 years later, made him incredibly angry just to talk about it.
Then there is the US factor. Don't underestimate the power of US financial interests to ask their government to "lean" on the governments of "friendly" nations to drop certain promising technology developments. Special relationship ? My arse.
As I mentioned in another post, as with us being encouraged to buy Skybolt, drop TSR2 etc, dropping Blue Streak was a similar issue. Partly financial, and partly vested interests. And with the demise of Blue Streak, went our only real opporunity for an expandable launch system. Black Arrow, and planned derivatives, were exceptional for their size, but never meant for the same payload capability.
Sorry, your comments are wrong.
There was, and still is, for instance, an active policy "against" space launch technology in the UK, which has been in place since the days of Blue Streak. Partly due to having 650 or so mainly arts graduates sitting in a large debating chamber and not understanding why we are consistently throwing away technological opportunities, partly due to pressure in the past from our supposed partner the other side of the pond leaning on us to drop launch technology and use theirs (shades of other programmes such as TSR2 and Skybolt), and partly due to an active dislike of space within Whitehall, and a major and irrational dislike against launch technology and manned space.
I have been in space meetings in the UK where government representatives have said do not under any circumstances mention anything to do with manned space. To which my response is to give them the finger. To say they have wasted a generation's talents which could have been used on space technology in the UK would be an understatement. They've wasted at least 2 generations.
The whole HOTOL, and later SKYLON lack of support from the UK government, and lack of participation in FESTIP is yet another example of this myopic, and moronic attitude by some faceless bureaucrats in Whitehall. An attitude that they have passed on down the years.
So yes, banned is an appropriate word for manned involvement in space and the UK government.
> The Americans abandoned the advanced passanger airliner project
> (which was blended-wing) in the late 90s, and there is no obvious
> indication that NASA has done much work on waveriders - some,
> mostly by being beaten to it by a bunch of Scots (and they were
> amateur rocket enthusiasts at that!)
Not all the waverider team were Scots, some us were Welsh (in my case), and English in a few other cases. There were actually a number of amateur rocketry groups in the UK working on practical flight testing of waveriders since the 1960's, most notably STAAR Research and ASTRA (both based in Scotland). The stumbling block on a shoestring budget however, has always been getting the waveriders to sufficiently high speed for the waveriding to occur.
Certainly at lower speeds, the small scale waveriders have been well tested in the UK. But because of the wing planform they either land at fairly high speeds, or if they are heavy, they have fairly poor glide characteristics subsonically.
Yes, we did trig at 12. We also studied basic calculus somewhat earlier than it is studied nowadays. The difference in standard between O-levels and GCSE's is considerable.
I think you're right about it being a Western thing. Nowadays, the perniciousness of political correctness and glorifying a culture of lack of respect for others, has eroded education. Now there is a lack of respect, people feel they can get away with behaving in a manner that would previously have been considered anti-social.
It all went wrong when they banned the cane. The cane scared the shit out of us all, and we generally kept in line because we didn't want to get punished. Whether people like it or not. It worked. You had a class of schoolkids who generally behaved because they didn't want to feel pain. Nowadays, with the ridiculous excess of political correctness, they know they can get away with nigh on murder, so the respect has gone, and as a result, so have the educational standards declined.
For more examples of UK non professional launch activities, see websites such as:
- United Kingdom Rocketry Association (UKRA)
- MARS Advanced Rocketry Society (MARS)
- East Anglia Rocketry Society
Going above an altitude of 24,500 feet in the UK, does require you to contact the CAA and submit documentation and details of your proposed rocket launch in advance.I hope this helps ?
Sorry, I'll try and write in a more correct form next time, or at least use words in a correct context :-)
You are lucky if you've never come across "real" engineers who do louse up. There seems to be this arrogance that many have, this air of superiority. That's not only an observation from me (I'm a physicist by background, and yes, I have worked on a number of space missions, I just choose not to have the air of superiority that many in the industry adopt towards the so called "garage tinkerers" - a term that does many a great dis-service), but by friends who are engineers and work in their spare time on what is sneeringly called garage tinkering on rocketry, who are equally sick of the arrogant attitude espoused by engineers who spend more time in front of monitors than actually bending metal.
It's one thing to read books like Rocket Propulsion Elements, or Spacecraft Propulsion Analysis and Design, but it's a totally different exercise to get out there and test, like Armadillo Aerospace are doing.
The one whose claims require significant evidence is you. If these "real" engineers you refer to are so good, what happened to the likes of X-33, the X-30 NASP etc ? Why have Mars missions loused up because of metric/imperial confusion ? Why didn't the release system on missions that failed have a very simple, very low gain transmission system to at least enable mission controllers to know whether heat shields or descent probes separated ? What about the louse up with the first launch of Ariane 5 ? Gosh, that's a lot of discipline and knowledge shown there. Yes, these are a minority rather than a majority, but it shows that stupidity is not a trait for "real" engineers or their acolytes to confer on anyone else.
"Real" real engineering doesn't depend on wearing a suit and working for a large multinational aerospace conglomerate, and being able to run 6DOF sims on supercomputers, it depends on good engineering practice. That is not dependent on the size of the organisation, it could be any size organisation, it could be operating out of a large aerospace production line or a shed. What is important is approach.
You may also benefit from reading up about the early development of rocketry. The early work was carried out frequently by people not quite as knowledgable as you think, but with a more open mind to trying things out, and more an emphasis on testing than pontificating, that's for sure. The level of discipline required then differed little if at all from that employed by many garage level groups today. I take it you have tested hardware yourself, haven't you ? You've been at a launch pad when something unexpected goes wrong and you have to do some hack to get the vehicle in the air ?
Personally, I prefer the build a little, test a little, incremental engineering approach. It works for Armadillo, it works for the group I work with, it works for many other "garage" style groups, and small companies. And the longer some maintain an air of superiority, and that rocket engineering is all so hard and requires big aerospace engineering conglomerates and insecure people with bit attitude problems, the more stupid they will look when the smaller, nimbler groups make monkeys of them.
Exactly what insightful analysis did you use to come to the conclusion that it is dangerous and should be outlawed ?
I've seen supposed "real"engineers, in fact some with degrees from Universities such as Oxford, and supposed space engineering backgrounds, blow up rocket motors through simple and avoidable mistakes. Then again, I've seen non engineers, working without much funding (the supposed garage tinkerers), build comparable rocket motors that quite literally blow the "real" engineers efforts away in terms of reliability and robustness.
The difference, is those without the attitude, and without the government/big business mentality, seem to have a better overall grasp of how the systems go together, not always, but in my experience, generally enough that it is noticeable. There's also another facet those you refer to as garage tinkerers have that I tend to see missing in many "real" engineers in space related disciplines; it's called common sense.
As for your duct tape remark, and your comment on real engineers working out designs. I take it you've never been in one of the older space capsules ? It's always so easy to be an armchair expert when you have the benefit of ignorance to back you up. I would not, if I were you, ever go inside a Vostok or a Soyuz capsule, because if your comments above are anything to go by, you'd have a fit.
When I worked professionally in the space industry on a project in Russia, I was amazed at the simplicity of the early manned space capsules. Technology has moved on sufficiently now, that people such as John Carmack (who is far from a garage tinkerer) could develop a manned capsule to match those, of that I have no doubt.
I can't wait until John Carmack gets something manned flying. It will be like DC-X all over again. All these nay saying supposed "real" engineers suddenly changing their tune and saying "well I thought it would work actually, but I didn't say anything". Yeah right.
Armadillo Aerospace will succeed where others have failed, precisely because they don't have the attitude so prevalent in large aerospace engineering projects.
For reference, I was one of the "experts" from the first UK season of Junkyard Wars (or Scrapheap in the UK), and as well as having worked on several space missions professionally, having 2 physics degrees and having been building and launching HPR rockets for several years, as well as my own bi-props previously, I can assure you that it does not take as much know-how as people may think, certainly not for the type and size of rockets on Junkyard Wars. Anyone with a few clues can build a High Power rocket, that's why you get High Power rocket kits. It doesn't need much intelligence. However trying to build a rocket out of junk will always result in lousy performance unless someone has conveniently left something like a solid rocket motor from a missile in the Junk Yard.
When your raw propulsion materials are a bunch of High Power Rocketry Aerotech I-class and J-class motors, and you have to put them in an airframe made out of something like an old water filter, then the result will always be bad.
Rocket science is not as hard as say something like Quantum Mechanics or Astrophysics (or at least the astrophysics I did for my Ph.D).
With access to some machine tools, a decent sized garage and a bit of practice, a bunch of us built stuff like this without too much difficulty:
Home brew rocket engine Home brew guidance
Oh yes, and Linux is used for the control systems and telemetry decoding.
The first stage of the ELDO launcher (called Europa I think) was definitely Blue Streak though, because I knew/know a couple of guys who worked on it.
I was at Ky's launch a few years back, and the guy is very professional. He's very determined, and I have no doubt he will get a vehicle to space.
As for Bennett, as one of the UK rocketeers who has suffered at the hands of Bennett (and had the misfortune to meet him), I'd say your comments are, if anything, in my opinion, too kind to him. He flies large, very nicely finished high power model rockets. Period. He may claim all sorts of things, but given that a recent launch of his was on a cluster of M1939's when he was making all sorts of wild claims, then it sort of puts it into perspective. His largest vehicle isn't even as large as the some of the larger HPR vehicles such as the U.S. Project 463 - which for someone who seems to attach so much importance to size of his rockets, seems to be a bit amiss :-) Most UK rocketeers are wary of saying too much about him, because he has been known to try to sue people who say things he doesn't like in the UK.
As you say, if he really was what he claims, why is he using the launch controllers he uses ? You have to feel sorry for those who follow him, since they probably have no idea of the accuracy of what he claims.
Eventually, in my opinion, the truth will catch up with him. People are already starting to wise up to him in the UK as this article shows.
As one of those in the UK who has suffered at the results of Bennett's antics, it still amazes me that people actually fall for some of his comments. Having met him, I know exactly what he is like, however, because he has a tendency to try and sue people in the UK, I'll not share my opinions of the man. I think you can guess what I think though :-)
As you say, they're just large high power model rockets, with clusters of motors (a recent one used a cluster of Aerotech M1939's I believe). Even his largest is still smaller than the largest HPR vehicles launched in the U.S. (such as Project 463).
The good thing is though, people are beginning to wise up to him now though.
We live in hope...
The flag was attached to the launch tower, _Not_ the rocket.
And as for the wind shear, I videoed the flight all the way up to the point where something went wrong (at around 39,000 feet as I recall), and I still think it could have been the nosecone coming off rather than wind shear.
The condition of the rocket after it came back was far better than I had expected too. It was battered, but for something that had fallen that far, I thought it stood up to the impact very well. Ky builds his rockets strong, that's for sure :-)
Regardless, Ky Michaelson is a really nice guy, and deserves to succeed. Fingers crossed, he will.