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NASA test fires hybrid rocket motor 72

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-new-tech dept.
akey writes "According to this CNN article, NASA engineers test fired a new hybrid rocket motor. It's not as combustible on its own as conventional solid-fuel motors, and much less expensive than liquid engines, and allegedly produces fewer noxious emissions than solid-fuel motors. An added bonus is that for the motor to burn, an oxidizing agent must be continuously injected -- unlike other solid-fuel motors, it can be turned off after ignition if necessary. It won't be ready for use on a scale for the Space Shuttle for a few years yet, but it's showing promise. "
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NASA test fires hybrid rocket motor More

NASA test fires hybrid rocket motor

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  • While this hybrid motor may be a new thing for NASA, it's been around in hobby rocketry for years. People have played with it because it's functionality is closer to liquid engines without the danger or enormous cost. (almost all hobby rocketry uses solid-fuel engines.)

    This link shows just how simple they can be:
    http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rene/ws h.htm
  • "Paving the way to space and laughing all the way" is the motto of HAL5, a chapter of the National Space Society. They're trying to be the first amatuer group to get a rocket in orbit. The motto comes from their hybrid rocket -- it uses asfault and laughing gas for the propellant and oxidizer. It really works! They've been at it for a few years.
  • When we can get the gov't to privatize NASA, so its inherant conservatism is based on the engineering rather than beaureaucratic hoop jumping we all may just get to see our childrens children living in space. As it stands now, sadly, progress can be compared to a fast moving glacier. This is not a new technology. It's just sad that it takes forever to get anything 'new' approved for testing even...
  • This and linear aerospike engines are the hottest thing to come down the pike for NASA. While these have been around a while, I have a brother on the Lockheed development team. Pity all of the folks stuck with getting their news from CNN.

    At last a post which doesn't have a single thing to do with paranoia.

  • Do you know how much easier and cheaper it will be now to launch elint and optical surviellance satellites into leo?

    Big brother will be reading the contents of your hard drive from orbit to make sure that you're not decomposing and reverse engineering any M$ warez, or growing something funny in your backyard, or doing anything not mainstream.

    You've been warned.

    g90r69
  • You mean where its powered by a ground-based laser ?

    I can't see how that would ever work out....
    Too many things can happen to cause the laser
    to stop working, or the beam not contact the bottom of the craft...

    I could just see it now... billion dollar space craft plummets to earth as bird crosses path of laser beam.
  • Heh. No, more likely, the bird would instantly be burned into it's respective unique chemical components and vaporize itself on the spot, causing almost no interference with dsaid laser beam. Keep in mind these aren't the kind of lasers you use to point out things douring presentations. :)
  • But from what I understand the payload is still pretty low so for all the big stuff we'll still be using the good old fasion fuel.
  • Ancient technology. A private company (American Rocket Co?) was doing this stuff ten years ago and might well have made orbit by now if the CEO (George Koopman) hadn't managed to get killed in an auto accident.

    And sport rocketry hobbyists have been doing hybrids on a smaller scale for a few years now too.

    NASA, particularly the rocket folks, have become as hidebound and fossilized as any other government bureaucracy. They innovate about as well as Microsoft.
  • Too bad the article didn't mention AMROC, the American Rocket Company, that invented hybrid solid rockets years ago. I remember hearing about these back in the late 80's.

    - Necron69

  • Provatize NASA? why? The only thing is space technology that could possibly make money is launching sattelites, stuff like research, Cassini, Gallileo (sp?), Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Hubble etc etc would never make money.

    There's nothing stopping private companies doing reseach into alternate launch systems, but such research is incredibly expensive.
  • Check out the Stennis space center website, as referenced in the CNN article. They've got some quite cool closeup footage of SSME (space shuttle main engine) test firings. Impressive stuff, even if the tech is old.

    Apparently you can even observe test firings, if you happen to find yourself in the middle of Mississippi nowhere with nothing better to do.

    http://www.ssc.nasa.gov/lines/propulsion/ [nasa.gov]

  • Wrong. Hobby rocket engines are NOT hybrids. They contain their own oxidizer, just as all solid engines have as long as they have existed. Normally solid engines contain oxygen in the form of a nitrate or they use another form of oxidant. A basic solid engine could be made of zinc and sulfur powders and a binding agent, with the reaction product being zinc sulfide and heat. The engine described is quite different, because it required the oxidizer to be injected.
  • Any chance any of this stuff could be applied to commercial and private avaition? Like supersonic learjets that don't need air intake ducts and stuff like that?
  • sorry for second post.

    Could the system be adapted to power high speed turbine engines in boats and aircraft?
  • I'm an ex-employee of American Rocket Company (AMROC), which advanced the state of the art of hybrid engine design [uiuc.edu] in the late 80s and early 90s, and I'm glad that more than one Slashdotter remembers us.

    The loss of George Koopman was a tremendous blow, but the failure of their Single Engine Test vehicle [spacedev.com] on 10/5/89 was not a consequence of his accident. Decisions and circumstances unrelated to the engine technology pretty much doomed the proof of concept vehicle. Of course, we didn't recognize that until after the thing burned up like a stack of tires on the pad and sent a thick cloud of black smoke over Santa Maria, CA. (At least we proved the safety of hybrids - a solid or liquid rocket would have exploded spectacularly.)

    AMROC spent a lot of effort optimizing their 75,000-lb thrust hybrid engine. [hmx.com] I'm still bound by an NDA, but I can tell you that instabilities and resonances in the combustion flow occupied most of their attention. (The early ones would sputter and rumble and drone and even pop the casing or spew chunks of flaming rubber - it wasn't pretty.) I'm curious as to how this is affecting the current development of the 250,000lbf engine (the press releases mention nothing). Interestingly, SpaceDev [spacedev.com] of San Diego acquired AMROC's intellectual property [spacedev.com] last year, and they are not a member of the Hybrid Propulsion Demonstration Program consortium. Some of the AMROC principals helped establish the hybrid division at HMX [hmx.com], and they aren't involved, either. (It's hard not to jump to the conclusion that Lockheed and co. didn't intentionally ignore AMROC's legacy.)

    But yes, AMROC went out of business just a few years ago. It was an amazing company to work for: the President, George A. Koopman, was ex-CIA, ex-Hollywood, and co-author of Neuropolitique with Timothy Leary. James Bennet [islandone.org], VP and later president, penned seminal commercial space policy, and acquired for AMROC one of the first commercial launch licenses. Investors in AMROC in the late 80's included the Belushi family, Robby Kreiger, the Leary estate, and many other counterculture and fringe culture venture capitalists.

    Oh, yeah - and once Koopman once gave me the most awesome buds I have ever tasted in my life! George was extremely charismatic, terrific at drumming up investment money, and an inspiration to everyone who worked for him. Aside from demolishing our morale, his death effectively marked the end of investment money for AMROC...

    Most of the officers and technical gurus at AMROC came from Bennet's and Koopman's earlier hybrid company: Starstruck. Starstruck, based in the SF Bay Area, launched a hybrid demonstrator in 1984, called the Dolphin. [russian-orthodox-net.org] It was a sea launch concept, implemented >10 years before Boeing's Sea Launch. The vehicle was towed out to sea, buoyed only by collars of balloons. Before launch, the aft balloons were purged, the vehicle righted itself, the torch was lit, and it leapt out of the ocean. Regrettably, there's very little info available on the web regarding Starstruck.

  • You're half-right. It's the chlorine in the SRB fuel (from the perchlorate oxidizer) which makes it a possible ozone-depleter, so getting rid of it by going to a chlorine-free fuel and liquid oxygen for the oxidizer pretty much eliminates the issue for the SRB's. You can still form a little NOx (another ozone depleter) by applying heat to the outside air, but the temperature, pressure and time are all too low to get much conversion.

    Where you're wrong is in thinking that the "environuts" will stop. Take the Cassini "controversy" as an example. The nutcakes were trying to get the Earth flyby banned on the minuscule chance that the probe could hit us and spill plutonium and poison people. They maintain this paranoid scenario despite confirmed facts:

    1. The probe would have to have been at least 600 miles off-course to hit Earth, and JPL's guidance capabilities are such that they can hit a 1-mile wide window at Saturn (literally a billion miles away).
    2. Any guidance error big enough to hit Earth would be many times larger than the error which would put the probe on an track which would never get to Saturn; we'd lose the mission long before it could possibly hit Earth.
    3. RTG's have hit Earth before (Apollo 13's LEM carried two), and we never detected any plutonium from them. As far as we can tell they are sitting on the bottom of the Pacific, containment shells intact.
    4. Above-ground testing in the 40's and 50's released tons of Pu-239 into the atmosphere (half-life: 24,000 years). Cassini carries about 70 pounds of Pu-238 (half-life: 89 years). Even if it did get loose, could anyone tell?
    So no, the environuts will always be squawking about something. They'll keep squawking until the news media stop irresponsibly "reporting" their BS without rebuttal, and start providing analysis and facts which show the difference between their FUD and the truth. That requires reporters and editors with an education in science and willing to put truth before controversy. And we all know how likely that is, don't we?
  • I don't want my children's children living in space. All the more excuse for them to blow me off for the holidays.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • jpl i working on it. they recently within the past 8-9 months succeded in preliminary work of ground based lazer propulsion. its interesting because in the novel footfall by larry niven they had used the system. damn snouts!!!
  • Sorry, you are wrong. There is a line of hybrid motors (made by Hypertek, IIRC) built just for rocket hobbyists.

    You will not find them at your local hobby store. Blister-pack motors run about 1/4 A through D ratings. (Each letter designation is twice the total impulse of the one before; a B motor is equivalent to two A motors, a C to two Bs, etc.). The Hypertek is a J (about 64 times as powerful as a D), and is only sold to people with membership in the appropriate high-power rocket groups.

  • But now you can join the National Space Society and relocate to Mars :)
  • I was involved in Georgia Tech's Hybrid Rocket project --which mooched off both NASA and AMROC-- 4-5 yrs ago. Since we received neither money or tech assistance ('xcept some spare fuel pellets) from either, I ain't bound by an NDA ;-)

    It's been a long time, and it's not my field any longer, but I am under the impression that the biggest drawbacks of hybrids were:
    a) Unpredictability of the burn rate thru the fuel cell --basically rubber cannot be made at a uniform consistency. Rubber chunks may get injected in the exhaust flow; also temperature and pressure will not be uniform, causing unpredictable flows thru the nozzle, and possibly local shocks along the flow. If I went on to a PhD, my work would've been to computationally model the core to predict this behavior.
    b) The exhaust fumes are very, very bad (like tires burning, but 1000s of times worse)
    c) The motor is basically not very efficient, at least not anywhere nearly a solid or a liquid; since the core doesnot burn uniformly (and even if it did, the core pattern cannot be made in such a way as to prevent chunks from entering the flow), the core isnot burned 100%. I recall efficiencies of the order of 85% (compared to 97+% for solids and 99+% for liquids)

    Can an AC ( ;-) ) confirm or disprove these?

    At last, rocket science on /. ;-)...


  • The 250k motor that was fired last friday built on the old AMROC designs. The biggest difference was the use of a patented hybrid staged combustion head end design. Here is a quote from the NASA Stennis Space Center press release:
    "This particular hybrid motor featured new technologies including a revolutionary new head-end combustion approach and ignition system designed by Lockheed Martin Michoud Space Systems in New Orleans."
    HybridGuy
    Hybridsnow [tripod.com]
  • I don't know about you, but I would be willing to shell out thousands of $ to spend a few days on a space station

    I certainly would too, but I just don't see how privatizing NASA would make the goal come sooner.
    Im very interested in the science of the missions I mentioned above, none of which could possibly be commercialy viable. There is nothing stopping private entities from funding research into cheap launch systems right now.

    Basicaly I don't see the connection between turning NASA into a commercial sattelite launching outfit and increasing the pace of development of lower cost orbital launch systems.
  • Hey, don't we have the right to innovate by bundling MS Jabs? It adds value to me, the slashdot end-user. 8^)
  • Linear aerospike engines are way cool. Does anyone know if the X-33 has overcome the flow stability problems of aerospikes?

    Now, wouldn't it be cool to put an aerospike on a hybrid rocket?


  • You've obviously been away from 'hobby' engines for awhile. Both Aerotech and Hypertech make hybrid rocket engines and many kit manufacturers make kits designed specifically for them. Current designs are for large ('I' and up) engines, but some people are working on smaller hybrids.

    They're all cool and aren't regulated by the BATF like large solid engines.

    some links:
    Rocketry Online [rocketryonline.com] -- excellent rocketry site
    Aerotech [aerotech-rocketry.com] -- Motor (solid & hybrid) manuf.
    R.A.T.T. Works [night.net] -- Smaller Hybrids
    Public Missiles [publicmissiles.com] -- Kit manuf.
    NAR [nar.org] -- National Association of Rocketry

  • Unfortunately, the linear aerospike engine is a boondoggle. It's not necessary, it's just a way of squeezing more R&D money out of the taxpayer.

    If Goldin and NASA were really interested in applying "Better, faster, cheaper" to the basic business of earth-to-LEO transport, they would have continued the DC-1 development effort. The atmospheric test vehicle, the DC-X, was a phenomenal success. It proved that all the required low-speed maneuvers, including a reversal in flight and a powered landing, could be done with current technology. And it was all done on a shoestring budget.

    Unfortunately for the US taxpayer, the DC-X was built by SDIO, not NASA. SDIO is not in the transport business, so the DC-X was transferred to NASA. On the final flight of the test series, a landing-gear unlock hose was left disconnected. As a result one gear leg did not deploy, the craft fell over after landing, and it caught fire and burned. The pre-flight checklists did not call for the line to be checked before takeoff; now whose fault is that, do you think?

    After DC-X's destruction, the DC-1 program (which was slated to have a full-scale transport in operation around now) was shelved. Instead, Goldin announced the VentureStar program (with its fancy linear aerospike engine). VentureStar will take billions in development contracts and will not replace the Shuttle (and its standing army of maintenance people) for many years. The aerospace development lobby's stream of money was protected.

    Not a very good deal for us, I think.

  • A jab at Microsoft? Not at all, merely a comparison that most Slashdotters will understand. Writing for the intended audience, as it were.

    Interesting, though, that a comparison between NASA and Microsoft is seen as a jab at Microsoft.
  • I can see it now: All it is able to lift is a little toy. Basically useless.
    Depends what you're trying to lift. A lot of what goes into orbit, even today, amounts to bulk commodities (water, rocket fuel, even food and air). You can easily divide that sort of thing into lots of 10-pound packages and ship them up by the thousands. The laser power limits how much you can lift at once, but you forget: you can launch a new payload every few minutes! You can only put a few pounds of stuff on one foot of a conveyor belt, but that conveyor belt can move a whopping amount of material each day.

    If your costs fall from $10,000/pound to $50/pound for the bulk stuff, it suddenly becomes a hell of a lot cheaper to do anything in LEO that involves long-term human presence, for example. The same laser system would also be very useful for knocking space junk out of orbit. It makes too much sense not to spend effort on it.

    Not that NASA will spend money on anything that threatens Shuttle and its budget, but it should still be done.

  • Or, that turns out not to be the case.

    Rubber (polybutyldiene, IIRC) is used in most large solid fuel rockets as well as the hybrids. The worst thing that can happen in a solid (or hybrid) is for the grain to crack, increasing burn surface area (thus pressure, etc, in a positive feedback loop that usually ends with spectacular bang), so rubber compounds are used to add resilience to the grain.

    Further, in e.g. hybrids, the rubber is being burned in e.g. a pure O2 (injected LOX) environment, which makes for very efficient burning. Burning tires just plain do not burn well (and the rubber is mixed with all kinds of other stuff), and it's the incomplete combustion that makes tire fires so bad.

    You may be right about the lower efficiency, but hybrids have advantages to counter this: lower cost to manufacture than liquid engines, and greater control than solids. (You can't stop and restart a solid, and any throttling has to be designed into the shape of the grain. Hybrids can be throttled, stopped, and restarted by controlling the oxidizer flow).
  • When we can get the gov't to privatize NASA, so its inherant conservatism is based on the engineering rather than beaureaucratic hoop jumping we all may just get to see our childrens children living in space.

    NASA should be doing stuff like this -- studying advanced or experimental rocket technologies, the same way they study advanced flight technology. The difference is that in space, NASA is also expected to actually do the job, but for flight, the airplane industry does it.

    NASA needs to get out of the spaceflight business entirely (and that is happening, sorta) and concentrate on a) research, b) planetary exploration, and c) satellite science. But this ACE delivery service stuff is well past the point where we should let private industry take over. Hopefully, some of the companies at the cusp of doing this, like Rotary Rocket or the Pioneer Pathfinder folks, will succeed in the next couple of years, and pick up where NASA left off.

    This still leaves NASA with responsibility for stuff like Chandra or Cassini -- but getting "us" living in space shouldn't be a government program, just for the reasons you mention.
  • Why can't ground based systems be used for the initial acceleration of space vehicles?

    I'm thinking of a mag-lev train going up the side of a mountain with a shuttle mounted in a cradle on top. The train accelerates to 200mph then maintains the speed up the mountain. Just as it reaches the top, the rocket motors ignite and lift the shuttle from its cradle. The train decelerates in a long circle that brings it back to it's starting point where another shuttle is loaded.

    Or how about a deep hole where steam would force the shuttle mounted on a platform upward? Just as the top is reached, the candle is lit and off it goes, already boosted a mile up.

    Why isn't there any investigation into these types of launch systems?
  • Last I heard, the current research on it was at the point where to raise a 1/2 ton object to 20,000 ft would require (if it could be built, which isn't possible yet, so this is simple scaling) a $40 billion (to construct) laser, costing $3billion/second to operate about 4 minutes (or $720 billion total in energy, which can't be supplied yet), and the craft itself would need to either have some propulsion method built in to stabilize itself, or else spin fast enough to use gyroscopic forces to stay stable... too fast for any people to survive. Oh, and it says this would be so loud (due to the explosive vaporization of the air) that it would shatter eardrums at 4 miles. Fun fun!
  • What is this, some kind of libertarian trolling goin' on? Privatize NASA? Why? Who's stopping private industry from do launches now? (The short answer, BTW, is nobody.)
  • It's been a dream for years. Every kid who grew up watching Fireball XL-5 in the 60's would agree with you.

    There are some drawbacks to the idea. Mostly, going up the side of a mountain means that you have to launch from a mountain range. Usually you have populated areas to the east, and launching over them has been taboo in NASA circles. (Why do you think all the polar launches are done southward from Vandenberg, and the eastward launches are done from Canaveral? It's because the flight path covers nothing but water for thousands of miles.)

    On top of the risks and the cost of buying a whole new launch site, you lose some flexibility of launch azimuth (choosing your orbital plane). This shortens your launch windows, assuming that you have them at all. This is a high price to pay for shaving 200 MPH off your delta-V requirements. It might be worth it if you had enough volume to move into a particular orbit, but laser launchers will almost certainly be more cost-effective and more flexible for bulk materials and avoid all of the safety hassles.

  • CNN is only a couple of years behind on this. I saw a story about NASA developing this a couple of years ago on Discovery Channel. Cool stuff though.
    --- Never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time ---
  • They used synthetic tire rubber and liquid oxygen. Gave out paperweights made of it minus the oxygen B-) ). They were originally made up for bouncing off the desk of bureaucrats who wanted to deny them a license because of the "danger" of working with "highly explosive rocket fuel" in their particular patch of desert or whatever.

    Their first (and last) sounding rocket test firing had the worst possible failure - the oxygen valve stuck open at 10% - too little thrust to lift off, so it slowly burned up on the pad.

    Glad to hear something is left of 'em. (Anyone know if Jim Bennett is still there?)

  • or better yet for awhile the gov't was playing with a REALLY big gun to shoot stuff into space... they were getting close befor the project was terminated (something about the head designer dying) but how about something like that with a modern twist.. say large rail gun.. even just to shoot up sats or small payloads...
  • I just can't let this go by.
    Last I heard, the current research on it was at the point where to raise a 1/2 ton object to 20,000 ft would require (if it could be built, which isn't possible yet, so this is simple scaling) a $40 billion (to construct) laser
    Since this is a "simple scaling", please say where you got the figure of $40 million/pound lift from.
    costing $3billion/second to operate about 4 minutes
    Let's analyze this number a bit, shall we? Electricity is one of the most expensive forms of energy on the planet, so let's assume it's using that. $3 billion a second at ten cents US per KWH is 30 billion KWH/second, or 36 trillion watts. This is about ten times the total electric generating capacity of the USA. This number is clearly ridiculous.

    Let's work backwards from the thrust requirements. Pushing 1000 pounds at 2 G's would get it to 20,000 feet (fighting 1 G of gravity) in 35.2 seconds (not 4 minutes). If the propulsion system had an impulse of 5000 seconds, it would consume 0.4 lbm propellant/sec to produce those 2000 pounds of thrust. The minimal energy requirements are thus (0.4 lbm/sec / 2.205 lbm/kg ) * (5000 * 9.81)^2 / 2 = 218 megawatts. If the propulsion loses 50% of the laser pulse and the laser is 10% efficient, the power requirement is 4.36 GW. This is about 1/10000 of the number we get from Rift's figures. At $.10/KWH, consuming 4.36 GW for 4 minutes costs about $29,000. It would take somewhat longer (or greater acceleration) to put that load into orbit, but that's not bad for flying half a ton, eh?

    Building a system to lift 20 pound payloads instead of half-ton payloads cuts the numbers by a factor of 50, to about 90 megawatts electric. 20 pounds is a bunch of MRE's, a day's worth of fresh water, or enough H2/O2 to launch more than its mass from LEO to the moon. It's not much of a spacecraft, but 20 pounds could easily be the extrusion dies to make the aluminum frame from pellets (also shipped 20 pounds at a time) or an entire module of the ship's electronics.

    Space Shuttle is a Conestoga wagon; HELL is a pipeline. Guess which is cheaper for moving real quantitites of anything?

  • You are right about IKONOS-1.

    Meanwhile, the optimistic ones here at Space Imaging are hoping for a successful launch of IKONOS-2, so we still have jobs. :)

    Vandenberg's home page has a launch schedule link (although it seems to be down at the moment): http://www.vafb.af.mil/index.html

    Incidentally, there is no official or otherwise announced date for the launch of IKONOS-2 yet. When there is, you can find it at www.spaceimaging.com.

    - Necron69
    jsfarrow@hotmail.com
    sfarrow@spaceimaging.com

  • While off-topic, does anyone know what ever happened to the super-conducting rotating disks, NASA was looking into, which were measured to reduce gravity by a few percent on objects placed above them.
  • Sorry don't know Nick:). Turbine engines have been used on ships since WWI. From an enviromental point of view, it would be cool to have a fuel source that wouldn't leak into the ocean if the hull got punctured.

    From a aviation point of view, if this fuel could be used to power turbine based jet engines,it could reduce the problem of those terrible fuel fires when a jet crashes. If they could build engines that didn't need air-intake ducts, they could further streamline and increase fuel efficiency.

    Just my SciFi saturated Imagination going into overload.
  • Ask them how much of their favorite chemical is pumped into the atmosphere annually by volcanoes.
  • Almost certainly measurement error. Compensating for sticktion on something which is vibrating from nearby rotating machinery is a very tricky business.

  • You forgot to mention Amroc, which back in the 80's spent a lot of money building and testing hybrids for space launch use. Right after one test launch failed, NASA let out a large number of contracts to have hybrid technology studied, which apparently helped dry up AMROC's funding (their investors didn't want to compete with government-funded firms like LockMart).


    After Amroc went out of business, NASA lost interest in hybrid technology. Funny, isn't it, how they're suddenly trumpeting all their new technology, after finally being threatened with budget cutbacks?


    The only bad part was, the cutbacks were in the wrong part of NASA. NASA does need to be spending more money on research (and not let it end up as proprietary, as the X-33 might yet) that can be used equally by everyone, rather than to give one company an unfair advantage.


    Hmm, open source rocketry, anyone?



    Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
  • If you think nothing is keeping private enterprise from launching, look at the DOT's proposed regulations for RLV's. No payload launched via RLV could ever come within 200 km of a manned orbiting spacecraft. Since the station is going in a high-inclination low earth orbit, this is probably basically impossible... UGH. Hopefully someday we'll get a real administration that won't enact stupid laws like that...
    Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita

  • "...has overcome the flow stability problems of aerospikes?"


    Well, it helps a lot if one of the fuels being injected into the combustion chamber is in gaseous form. The RL-10 would make a good starting point...




    Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita

  • And one of the chief engineers at AMROC is now one of the principals at Rotary Rocket.



    Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita

  • much kewler and theyre SSTO as well..check out the roton rocket website.
  • Trust me,if you're in the middle of Mississippi, you don't have anything better to do!

    --- Never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time ---
  • If you mean CO2 it's about 3% of that produced by human activities. Try a few web searches and you'll find plenty of estimates - they seem to be converging on about 3%.

    There's a common myth that it's 30% - I think it's because the papers use scintific notation, and it looks like one number is about one third of the other, until you look at the exponents...

  • Shortly before the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 was passed, making it illegal for NASA to launch its own satellites unless no commercial launch service could be procured, I spoke with George Koopman about his commercial hybrid rocket business (American Rocket Company -- AMROC) and difficulties with NASA. Mr. Koopman claimed that this technology, which had been originally pursued by a younger healthier NASA in the 1960s, was so threatening to the late-80s NASA that some of AMROC's suppliers had been threatened with a loss of NASA contracts if they continued to do business with AMROC. Shortly after this conversation with Mr. Koopman (at the NSS space development conference), barely 2 months before the first test flight, 2 things happened very rapidly:

    1) NASA did an 'about face' and started 'helping' AMROC (supplying a little bit of hydrogen peroxide if memory serves me correctly).

    2) George Koopman was killed in a single car accident on the way to the test site.

    Now, I'm not saying there was any foul play here -- I did bother to check with the Sheriff who had the wrecked car in his possession, and Koopman was known for his engineering of the massive car wreck scene at the end of the Blues Brothers movie (a production which had the the largest cocaine budget in the history of the motion picture business). But I think it is instructive that a man who was as marginal as Koopman, was left tending such a highly valuable technology discarded by NASA in the 1960s, and then was most probably being driven by stress and a possible coke habit to the point that he self-destructed -- possibly taking the company down with him. (Believe it or not, the infamous "frozen LOX valve" problem caused AMROC's first test firing to fail -- this just isn't something that could happen to a rationally run rocket company subsequent to Gary Hudson's frozen-LOX-valve failure with the Conestoga.)

    In any case, this wasn't the end of NASA's subterfuge that I was 'privileged' to witness first hand.

    Once I testified before the House subcommittee on Space (July 31, 1991) in the wake of the passage of the LSPA (and promoting launch vouchers which also got passed the next year), I went around helping a few companies commercialize space technology. One of them was Norris Communications, which wanted to put up the first Ka-band satellite. There hadn't ever been a Ka-band satellite licensed before (Iridium and Teledesic hadn't yet even made it to the drawing board) and the FCC didn't want to help some Lancaster County Dutch Amish guy who had made his fortune reselling satellite bandwidth for evangelical broadcasters. I did a bit of work with my congressional contacts and some other guys who wanted to launch the Norstar satellite pulled some of their strings, and after an actual physical chase after an FCC bureaucrat who was trying to avoid capture by those she was supposed to be serving. Finally the FCC issued the license.

    Then when I was working with E'Prime Aerospace, which was trying to get the Peacekeeper production lines back into operation making commercial launchers, and which had helped get the first Ka-band license issued, I received an invitation from NASA, along with the rest of the E'Prime crew. We were supposed to sit in the VIP stand and watch a Shuttle launch a satellite that, by the very legislation I had helped draft and get passed into law, should have been launched on a commercial vehicle. Oh, but it gets better:

    The satellite was the Advanced Communication Technology Satellite built by the government to demonstrate Ka-band broadcast!

    The message was clear:

    We own space -- you can watch.

  • I saw an article in a little newspaper at the local space center (Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, of all places) where they were testing a large H202 engine. According to my father, who works at Stennis, "It was loud".
  • It would be very, very expensive.

    Launch facilities are expensive enough without building a train up the side of a mile-high mountain that can throw the shuttle straight up at 200 mph.

    And 200 mph is not a huge fraction of escape velocity, nor is a mile up a huge fraction of the distance to orbit.

    Most air-lift launches have the primary purpose of being able to use nice cheap (or at least pre-existing) airports to launch rockets, instead of having to make a big launch platform et c., not so much to gain the speed and altitude that the carrier plane provides.
  • Bennet's and Koopman's earlier hybrid company: Starstruck.

    I was under the impression that Koopman entered the picture after Starstruck failed. A quick search online shows no history of this transition.

    Do you have any good references to to such history?

    "Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

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