The station was never meant to be a rescue system for the shuttle. That was my whole point. To blame a system that can't do something that it was never designed for is stupid.
Welcome to the current state of the aerospace industry. The giants are immobilized by their size. True, 50 years ago we could take new designs from draftingboard to flight ready in a couple of years but as the price tag has increased so has the development time.
I think you have that reversed. There is no way that Boeing or any other large aerospace program could design a new manned launch vehicle and launch operational prototypes within 5 years. They're marred down in to much bureaucratic BS to get that done.
Small companies however, can do quick turn arounds from initial designs to testing hardware. They don't have to get the signatures of a dozen supervisors who may have no idea what the hell they're signing off on but beware if you don't get that signature.
While I don't want to rain on their parade, this is only a single step in the process of building a flight ready bird. Doing it purely through the net is pretty impressive though.
But, in my experience building a CubeSat, it was the time from final "design" to flight ready status that went over time and over budget on every level. If they expect to have a flight model ready in less then a year they're dreaming, even if this was at one location with the team all centered and working together that's going to be pushing it. I can't even imagine trying to get the actual hardware working in a distributed environment like that. It was practically required to work in the same room as the other teams because of the level of systems integration. A single change in one area affected the rest of the subsystems. Or a simple question may take you through three other people and being able to just walk over and ask them the question was a hell of alot faster then emailing and waiting for a response.
Then there are the problems that come up with "final" hardware delivery. I've seen at least three revisions of each "flight" part, each one promising to be ready to fly right up until a test goes bad and we have to fix something.
Regardless to the challenges ahead, good job and good luck. It's always nice to see universities proving they can build faster, better, and cheaper then the big companies and doing what the "experts" say is impossible.
Nope, I typed that right. The FCC is going to base licencing of the frequencies on the deorbit info. Wonderfull stuff. It has been challenged as to if it has juristiction by a couple groups but nothing in the courts yet. I'm trying to find a link to the latest proposed rule making but not having much luck. The last release was in July of this year if you want to do some research of your own.
Actually the worry is that it starts a chain reaction, one particle hits a LEO bird and that breaks into multiple particles and spreads.
This is a very real worry and the FCC is processing rules to ensure that satellites deorbit or go into so called junk orbits after end of life. They've released a couple recent notifications and proposed rules that has picosatellite builders scared since it's virtually impossible to build in deorbit capabilities on birds this small.
It would effectively limit our orbits to 500km or less and that would severly limit the launches we could ride on since we can't dictate the launch altitudes, we go wherever the primary goes.
Exactly. Our primary cost is paying the students and a few parts. Even though everyone jokes that student time is free time (and it nearly is) we do still get paid a little.
The physical structure and equipment also costs some money. While machining on campus is sometimes an option, we need pretty accurate parts sometimes and even just running board production off site costs a decent amount. Little bits of money here and there adds up.
If you guys really want to build one check out CubeSat.org The standard is there and it's pretty open ended and we're always willing to help get more people into the community. Our primary asset is the community and their willingness to help others.
I forgot mine last time and had to find someone with one to listen to the audio once it was up at launch altitude. They got a local station to rebroadcast the voice comm and that was invaluable in finding the bird before launch.
Denny's was the place to be the night before. They were hopping!
Hybrid rockets are not new. They are however seeing a renewed interest in them from hobbiest since the BATF started regulating APCP alot more.
Xprize teams, and other similar projects, are interested in hybrids for their power and controlability. APCP is bad for manned vehicles because there is no way to turn it off once started. Liquid rockets are expensive to design, build and maintain. Hybrids have alot of the pure power that APCP has while being able to be throttled and even turned off.
Why can't you have flights two weeks apart? They can only fly as often as they have passengers and I doubt they will have enough customers at first to fly more then once a month. It'll depend on the price of course.
That said, I think we'll see the two flights a week apart. That gives them plenty of time to check all the systems, go through the data collected and prepare for another flight, while giving enough time to delay if weather or other conditions exist.
Because an experience pilot can bring the craft down even with a computer failure.
Believe it or not, but there are people out there willing to risk their lives to further space exploration and I don't think you or anyone else has the right to say they can't pursue their dreams.
Sorry if this sounds harsh or directed at you, I'm just tired of people saying people can't risk their own lives for something great. We let you drive to work in the morning and that's alot more risky then flying an experimental aircraft/spacecraft.
Except that they are not carrying the required three passengers on this flight. Depending on the outcome of this flight they will then plan for the Xprize.
This is still experimental flight and they're minimizing personel risks.
But isn't the environment just a set of rules? True they may change after a time, but that's just a new game.
With the new rules you will get a new "race" of robots that learn faster or are prediposed to the new game. They'll adapt to the new changes and either the old robots will find a niche to survive or they will go extinct.
First though you had to learn how to walk, how to chase things, etc. You already had a huge advantage on the field. These systems need to learn the basics of individual operations before you can expect them to start using group operations.
Evolution didn't start out with multicellular organisms. It started out with single cell systems that had to compete on its own. THEN you started seeing multicellular organisms evolve.
The robots are just starting out. Give them some time before you apply the whole "kids can do it, why can't robots" analogies. You have to understand, despite what SciFi, movies, news, like to claim, robotics/AI are still just trying to figure out the very basics.
Would completely depend on what it was designed for. If you really wanted to you could morph constantly in minute differences as the fuel was used. Or do it every half hour or anything in between. I doubt you would see much difference in performance from changing every second to changing every thirty minutes. You would see a large increase in system requirements though. A classic engineering problem, find the optimal solution among an infinate solution set.
Look at the difference between the position of the wingtip durring taxi on the ground and cruise. Many larger aircraft (747, 777, etc) have a difference nearly 5 ft, and this is normal conditions. The wings also have to be designed to take much more durring turbulence and emergency manuevers.
If you want to see some crazy stuff look around for wing flutter. This is where the wing hits a natural frequency and crazy stuff starts to happen. One of my proffessors use to do research in this area with NASA and has some crazy stories.
Actually commercial aircraft have to fly in many different conditions. Flying out of SFO is completely different then flighting out of DEN first in air density and then there are different weather conditions.
If Boeing or Airbus could offer an aircraft that could take off out of Denver on a hot day with the same payload capabilities as flying out of SFO on a cold day, they would have alot of buyers.
Once they're at cruising altitude you could change your wing to cruise settings for that maximum distance based on total weight and alter that durring the flight to minimize induced drag.
Depends on how it's built. Memory alloys come to mind and they have little maintenance requirements vs a mechanical system. Also the relative bending in parts doesn't have to be that much for a significant result in the flight characteristics.
Even a sheild will let some thermal radiation past, even if just from radiation from the sheild its self. Plus if it's anywhere near another body (Earth, Moon, Jupiter, etc) it'll get some reflection from that source also.
They're not ready or they would have flown already. They're slowly adding equpiment and testing new parts in each flight. They added the heat shielding right around the time they went supersonic. They'll keep testing systems right up until they make an attempt.
I wouldn't expect to see more then one or two full system flight tests before an attempt. Alot of the equipment can't even be fully tested onboard until they make an attempt or at least make the max altitude with or without two people onboard.
Actually there are a surprising number of interested parties out there that are willing to take the risk. Universities are one.
The two biggest problems universities face when trying to launch their satellite are cost and ITAR. A lot of the satellites that universities build have the latest and greatest because companies like to give samples and parts to universities. We stick those on some satellites and then ITAR becomes an issue. The state department laughs at us and says there's no way that's leaving the country. So now we're stuck on an American launch vehicle, which costs much more and generally has more stringent requirements for redundancy. So we sit on the ground with no way of getting into orbit.
Then comes a startup. They offer a cheap(er) ride to orbit, with less stringent safety requirements (yay, only triple redundancy instead of quad or higher), are an american company, and a little more risk on our side. So our satellite might not make it into an exact orbit with the precision that a Delta could do. So our satellite might blow up in a million parts, but hey, at least we had some fun and had the chance of getting into space. University satellites generally only have a 50/50 chance of working once in orbit anyway.
I work on a picosatellite project called CubeSat. We developed a standard system to allow universities and other interested parties to build picosatellites (10cm x 10cm x 10cm, 1kg) and then integrate all the satellites together into a single system that is then sent to the launch provider as a unit and attached to the launch vehicle. The goal is to provide cheap, easy, frequent, access to space. We have our second launch coming up this fall on a Russian DNEPR launch vehicle and will be deploying 14 satellites from universities all across the world. This same launch is also carrying multiple other small satellites.
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But under the First Amendment, if it is a matter of speech it is protected. No other law can take that right away.
So, burning the flag express an opinion is protected. Just burning the flag for the hell of it is not.
The station was never meant to be a rescue system for the shuttle. That was my whole point. To blame a system that can't do something that it was never designed for is stupid.
Hm, lemme check, yep, the Space Station crew has a rescue plan: Jump into Soyuz and land back home.
Correct, it deprives the victim of their right to life.
Welcome to the current state of the aerospace industry. The giants are immobilized by their size. True, 50 years ago we could take new designs from draftingboard to flight ready in a couple of years but as the price tag has increased so has the development time.
I think you have that reversed. There is no way that Boeing or any other large aerospace program could design a new manned launch vehicle and launch operational prototypes within 5 years. They're marred down in to much bureaucratic BS to get that done.
Small companies however, can do quick turn arounds from initial designs to testing hardware. They don't have to get the signatures of a dozen supervisors who may have no idea what the hell they're signing off on but beware if you don't get that signature.
While I don't want to rain on their parade, this is only a single step in the process of building a flight ready bird. Doing it purely through the net is pretty impressive though.
But, in my experience building a CubeSat, it was the time from final "design" to flight ready status that went over time and over budget on every level. If they expect to have a flight model ready in less then a year they're dreaming, even if this was at one location with the team all centered and working together that's going to be pushing it. I can't even imagine trying to get the actual hardware working in a distributed environment like that. It was practically required to work in the same room as the other teams because of the level of systems integration. A single change in one area affected the rest of the subsystems. Or a simple question may take you through three other people and being able to just walk over and ask them the question was a hell of alot faster then emailing and waiting for a response.
Then there are the problems that come up with "final" hardware delivery. I've seen at least three revisions of each "flight" part, each one promising to be ready to fly right up until a test goes bad and we have to fix something.
Regardless to the challenges ahead, good job and good luck. It's always nice to see universities proving they can build faster, better, and cheaper then the big companies and doing what the "experts" say is impossible.
Nope, I typed that right. The FCC is going to base licencing of the frequencies on the deorbit info. Wonderfull stuff. It has been challenged as to if it has juristiction by a couple groups but nothing in the courts yet. I'm trying to find a link to the latest proposed rule making but not having much luck. The last release was in July of this year if you want to do some research of your own.
this is aerospace, the factor of safety is only 1.5
Actually the worry is that it starts a chain reaction, one particle hits a LEO bird and that breaks into multiple particles and spreads.
This is a very real worry and the FCC is processing rules to ensure that satellites deorbit or go into so called junk orbits after end of life. They've released a couple recent notifications and proposed rules that has picosatellite builders scared since it's virtually impossible to build in deorbit capabilities on birds this small.
It would effectively limit our orbits to 500km or less and that would severly limit the launches we could ride on since we can't dictate the launch altitudes, we go wherever the primary goes.
Exactly. Our primary cost is paying the students and a few parts. Even though everyone jokes that student time is free time (and it nearly is) we do still get paid a little.
The physical structure and equipment also costs some money. While machining on campus is sometimes an option, we need pretty accurate parts sometimes and even just running board production off site costs a decent amount. Little bits of money here and there adds up.
If you guys really want to build one check out CubeSat.org The standard is there and it's pretty open ended and we're always willing to help get more people into the community. Our primary asset is the community and their willingness to help others.
BRING RADIOS.
I forgot mine last time and had to find someone with one to listen to the audio once it was up at launch altitude. They got a local station to rebroadcast the voice comm and that was invaluable in finding the bird before launch.
Denny's was the place to be the night before. They were hopping!
Hybrid rockets are not new. They are however seeing a renewed interest in them from hobbiest since the BATF started regulating APCP alot more.
Xprize teams, and other similar projects, are interested in hybrids for their power and controlability. APCP is bad for manned vehicles because there is no way to turn it off once started. Liquid rockets are expensive to design, build and maintain. Hybrids have alot of the pure power that APCP has while being able to be throttled and even turned off.
Why can't you have flights two weeks apart? They can only fly as often as they have passengers and I doubt they will have enough customers at first to fly more then once a month. It'll depend on the price of course.
That said, I think we'll see the two flights a week apart. That gives them plenty of time to check all the systems, go through the data collected and prepare for another flight, while giving enough time to delay if weather or other conditions exist.
Because an experience pilot can bring the craft down even with a computer failure.
Believe it or not, but there are people out there willing to risk their lives to further space exploration and I don't think you or anyone else has the right to say they can't pursue their dreams.
Sorry if this sounds harsh or directed at you, I'm just tired of people saying people can't risk their own lives for something great. We let you drive to work in the morning and that's alot more risky then flying an experimental aircraft/spacecraft.
Except that they are not carrying the required three passengers on this flight. Depending on the outcome of this flight they will then plan for the Xprize.
This is still experimental flight and they're minimizing personel risks.
But isn't the environment just a set of rules? True they may change after a time, but that's just a new game.
With the new rules you will get a new "race" of robots that learn faster or are prediposed to the new game. They'll adapt to the new changes and either the old robots will find a niche to survive or they will go extinct.
First though you had to learn how to walk, how to chase things, etc. You already had a huge advantage on the field. These systems need to learn the basics of individual operations before you can expect them to start using group operations.
Evolution didn't start out with multicellular organisms. It started out with single cell systems that had to compete on its own. THEN you started seeing multicellular organisms evolve.
The robots are just starting out. Give them some time before you apply the whole "kids can do it, why can't robots" analogies. You have to understand, despite what SciFi, movies, news, like to claim, robotics/AI are still just trying to figure out the very basics.
Would completely depend on what it was designed for. If you really wanted to you could morph constantly in minute differences as the fuel was used. Or do it every half hour or anything in between. I doubt you would see much difference in performance from changing every second to changing every thirty minutes. You would see a large increase in system requirements though. A classic engineering problem, find the optimal solution among an infinate solution set.
Look at the difference between the position of the wingtip durring taxi on the ground and cruise. Many larger aircraft (747, 777, etc) have a difference nearly 5 ft, and this is normal conditions. The wings also have to be designed to take much more durring turbulence and emergency manuevers.
If you want to see some crazy stuff look around for wing flutter. This is where the wing hits a natural frequency and crazy stuff starts to happen. One of my proffessors use to do research in this area with NASA and has some crazy stories.
Actually commercial aircraft have to fly in many different conditions. Flying out of SFO is completely different then flighting out of DEN first in air density and then there are different weather conditions.
If Boeing or Airbus could offer an aircraft that could take off out of Denver on a hot day with the same payload capabilities as flying out of SFO on a cold day, they would have alot of buyers.
Once they're at cruising altitude you could change your wing to cruise settings for that maximum distance based on total weight and alter that durring the flight to minimize induced drag.
Depends on how it's built. Memory alloys come to mind and they have little maintenance requirements vs a mechanical system. Also the relative bending in parts doesn't have to be that much for a significant result in the flight characteristics.
Even a sheild will let some thermal radiation past, even if just from radiation from the sheild its self. Plus if it's anywhere near another body (Earth, Moon, Jupiter, etc) it'll get some reflection from that source also.
They're not ready or they would have flown already. They're slowly adding equpiment and testing new parts in each flight. They added the heat shielding right around the time they went supersonic. They'll keep testing systems right up until they make an attempt. I wouldn't expect to see more then one or two full system flight tests before an attempt. Alot of the equipment can't even be fully tested onboard until they make an attempt or at least make the max altitude with or without two people onboard.
Actually there are a surprising number of interested parties out there that are willing to take the risk. Universities are one.
The two biggest problems universities face when trying to launch their satellite are cost and ITAR. A lot of the satellites that universities build have the latest and greatest because companies like to give samples and parts to universities. We stick those on some satellites and then ITAR becomes an issue. The state department laughs at us and says there's no way that's leaving the country. So now we're stuck on an American launch vehicle, which costs much more and generally has more stringent requirements for redundancy. So we sit on the ground with no way of getting into orbit.
Then comes a startup. They offer a cheap(er) ride to orbit, with less stringent safety requirements (yay, only triple redundancy instead of quad or higher), are an american company, and a little more risk on our side. So our satellite might not make it into an exact orbit with the precision that a Delta could do. So our satellite might blow up in a million parts, but hey, at least we had some fun and had the chance of getting into space. University satellites generally only have a 50/50 chance of working once in orbit anyway.
I work on a picosatellite project called CubeSat. We developed a standard system to allow universities and other interested parties to build picosatellites (10cm x 10cm x 10cm, 1kg) and then integrate all the satellites together into a single system that is then sent to the launch provider as a unit and attached to the launch vehicle. The goal is to provide cheap, easy, frequent, access to space. We have our second launch coming up this fall on a Russian DNEPR launch vehicle and will be deploying 14 satellites from universities all across the world. This same launch is also carrying multiple other small satellites.
CubeSat