For people who had somequestion mark in place of "ram-air parafoils.."
"ram-air parafoils" are nothing but a regular recantgular parachute canopies that are used every day in regular skydiving sports ( ive used one exactly 33 times and its been working like charm:) )
It flies like a regular airplane wing, just that the lifting profile isnt fixed. The wing is "open" in front, and the airflow makes the wing "rigid". Thats the general principle anyways. You steer it with pulling the "brakes" on one or other side of the wing, "brakes" are simply the after left and right parts of the wing, that can be pulled down via "steering ropes".
The one that Starchaser is using is obviously somewhat larger than your average skydiver canopy. Beginners canopies measure up to 240sq ft and are rated for average 80-kg person. So if NOVA capsule weighs 250kg+pilot, the canopy must be at least three-four times larger.
And now some general X-Prize remarks. For anyone who is still not getting it: X-prize is not directly aimed at replacing Soyuzes and Shuttles, so none of the contenders is going to orbit, just a suborbital "hop" to 100km's of altitude. Why 100 ? Because thats where internationally agreed boundaries of space begin at. So X-prize passengers will officially be astronauts, the league up until now open to select few of government employees
X-prize and its followup X-prize Cup ( a "rocket NASCAR" ) are hoped to revolutize the private spaceflight industry.
hint: X-prize has its own messageboards @ http://www.xprize.org/messageboard that could actually use some slashdotting.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/chopper/www/heli_project.html
Carnegie Mellon's autonomous helicopter model. AFAIC, flew with on-board laser mapping system. Of course, development time and budget are of another league, compared to my fellow countryman Risto here. Restecp for such achievements.
Funny that our local news outlets, including./ wannabe minut.ee have never mentioned it
Microwaves (~100GHZ range ) get through the air almost without energy loss, thats what makes Solar Power Satellites concept feasible at all.
I dont remember which, but one Japanese semiconductor corp is planning to put up small sats to beam power to handheld devices via microwave.
Slashdot Mirror
For people who had somequestion mark in place of "ram-air parafoils.."
:) )
"ram-air parafoils" are nothing but a regular recantgular parachute canopies that are used every day in regular skydiving sports ( ive used one exactly 33 times and its been working like charm
It flies like a regular airplane wing, just that the lifting profile isnt fixed. The wing is "open" in front, and the airflow makes the wing "rigid". Thats the general principle anyways. You steer it with pulling the "brakes" on one or other side of the wing, "brakes" are simply the after left and right parts of the wing, that can be pulled down via "steering ropes".
The one that Starchaser is using is obviously somewhat larger than your average skydiver canopy. Beginners canopies measure up to 240sq ft and are rated for average 80-kg person. So if NOVA capsule weighs 250kg+pilot, the canopy must be at least three-four times larger.
And now some general X-Prize remarks. For anyone who is still not getting it: X-prize is not directly aimed at replacing Soyuzes and Shuttles, so none of the contenders is going to orbit, just a suborbital "hop" to 100km's of altitude. Why 100 ? Because thats where internationally agreed boundaries of space begin at. So X-prize passengers will officially be astronauts, the league up until now open to select few of government employees
X-prize and its followup X-prize Cup ( a "rocket NASCAR" ) are hoped to revolutize the private spaceflight industry.
hint: X-prize has its own messageboards @ http://www.xprize.org/messageboard that could actually use some slashdotting.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/chopper/www /heli_project.html
./ wannabe minut.ee have never mentioned it
Carnegie Mellon's autonomous helicopter model. AFAIC, flew with on-board laser mapping system. Of course, development time and budget are of another league, compared to my fellow countryman Risto here. Restecp for such achievements.
Funny that our local news outlets, including
here: http://www.canadianarrow.com/spacediving.htm
What do you think this here is ?
Microwaves (~100GHZ range ) get through the air almost without energy loss, thats what makes Solar Power Satellites concept feasible at all. I dont remember which, but one Japanese semiconductor corp is planning to put up small sats to beam power to handheld devices via microwave.