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A Grand Day Out For British Rocketman
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jul 01, 2008 09:03 AM
from the low-grav-high-tea dept.
from the low-grav-high-tea dept.
Instine writes "Salford University, in the UK, is showing an article suggesting that Britain's biggest ever rocket has been unveiled, by an academic planning a space tourism offering by 2013. 'Nova 2 qualifies as the biggest rocket ever created and flown from the UK mainland,' says Steve Bennett, Head of Salford's Space Technology Laboratory
The current offering is said to amount to 20 minutes 'flight' and 3-4 mins floating. I'm not sure how much, but I'd pay for that."
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Well.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
3-4 mins floating (Score:2)
Just enough time for a nice cup of tea.
But seriously, its cool to see progress from all these small/private space companies.. onward and upward!
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But seriously, its cool to see progress from all these small/private space companies..
Correction: it would be nice to see some actual progress from these companies. So far all we've seen is "concept drawings" and announcement after announcement of what they're planning to do in the future. Paper and vapor.
I wish them all luck and such, but I'll get excited when any of them actually puts people into LEO. Repeatably. Cheaper and safer then what we have now.
I think Elon Musk is the prime example of a "space entrepreneur" who's been forced to eat humble pie after repeated failure of his gran
Superhuman children? (Score:5, Funny)
.
How many kids does it take to reach escape velocity??
Re:Superhuman children? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:Superhuman children? (Score:5, Funny)
You lived in Mosside and you actually went to school ! You must have taken some beatings for that.
Parent
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The average UK child these days is grossly obese, so quite a lot I'd imagine.
Re:Superhuman children? (Score:5, Insightful)
All this science, I don't understand.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It seems none of the mods has heard "Rocket Man" from Elton John... awesome post in response to the "scientific" analysis of chucking kids out the back of a rocket. Well done.
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No, you got it wrong. They'll use a kid fueled reactor (they must be out of kitten or something). So, answering your question, it depends on how fast you can feed them to the engine.
Obligatory Nick Park Comment (Score:5, Funny)
The FUSE Grommet, you forgot to light the fuse!!!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More importantly, on the way up they forgot the parking brake, not to mention the crackers. If you have not seen the show, it is a beautiful thing to watch.
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time... (Score:4, Funny)
Bennett went on to say that he is not the man they think he is at home, and that he will be burning up his fuse up there alone.
Eccentrics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoth TFA: "Steve Bennett who heads up the University's Space Technology Laboratory, will be presenting his 58ft Nova 2 rocket at the University and will discuss how his company, Starchaser Industries plans to launch it in September 2009 with the help of school pupils from across the UK."
There is something so British about that statement. I almost expected the guy to say, "well, I knocked it up in my garden shed at weekends with a friend of mine who is a keen amateur astronomer. We thought of getting some of the local schoolchildren to help out which would be good for their Scout's badges."
I miss the old country sometimes even if we are often portrayed as a nation of lovable middle-class eccentrics.
Re:Eccentrics? (Score:5, Insightful)
I miss the old country sometimes even if we are often portrayed as a nation of lovable middle-class eccentrics.
Yet another reason the wife and I would love to move there... It's hard being a middle-class eccentric in a walmart culture.
Sheldon
Parent
Re:Eccentrics? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe we could set up an exchange program. Ship Wal-Mart consumer drones from the UK (yes, we have quite a few) to the US in exchange for your middle class eccentrics.
I have a friend who worked in IT in the UK. He got sick of it and went to work on a ranch in rural Australia. I'm willing to bet there are quite a few farmers in rural Australia who would kill to work in IT in the UK.
1. Set up exchanges for people who think the grass is greener.
2. They get to find out if they're right.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Parent
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Re:Eccentrics? (Score:4, Funny)
That's because Raid-5 is not really dingo-proof due to the second failure problem and the appetite of the average dingo being about 1.65 disk drives. Every Australian rural server farmer knows that to be safe you really need to go Raid-6. Either that or provide an AOL disk appetizer in front of the raid array.
Sheldon
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yet another reason the wife and I would love to move there
Be prepared to be surveilled a lot, especially if you live near London. Don't try and speed, there are speed cameras everywhere. You have to pay for a TV licence to watch broadcast TV, put up with a very socialist authoritarian government... and those gun thingies you Slashdotters are always on about? Seriously illegal for virtually anyone to own over here. Carrying a knife in the street may also lead to a 4 year prison sentence.
Hmm (Score:2)
Is it bad that I heard British rocketman, and immediately thought Soldier [youtube.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
Not as bad as when I heard "British Rocketman" and immediately thought of Wallace and Gromit [wallaceandgromit.com]. Though that was certainly assisted by the mention of "A Grand Day Out" in the article title.
Biggest British Launch (Score:4, Informative)
Nova 2 qualifies as the biggest rocket ever created and flown from the UK mainland
It's because Britain used to have a rocket program in the 50s and 60s. All the launches of the large rockets were done from Woomera [wikipedia.org] in the Australian outback. The biggest of these was Blue Streak [wikipedia.org] developed as an ICBM. There are some pictures here [spaceuk.org]
We are shamefully lagging (Score:5, Insightful)
As nice as this is to see, it is shocking how far behind we are. I'm at Leicester University, and the pinnacle of British commercial rocket techology (A Skylark, a small payload sounding rocket) sits in the middle of our foyer. Meanwhile, the French with a similar sized population and a similar sized economy (and coming from a similar state of total-fucked-upness after the war) have a commercially successful 20t launcher flying regularly.
Tory fanboys perpetually bleat that what Thatcher did to our heavy industry was a necessary evil - but it wasn't necessary for the frogs and they were in as bad a state as we were in the 1970s. We voluntarily gave up our capacity to engage in any project on a larger scale than a new shopping mall.
Here he comes again ... (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, but... (Score:2)
H*ll, that rocket would take another 999 YEARS to haul enough nuclear waste out to the far side of the moon [wikipedia.org]!
"Get me rewrite!"
Malfunction! (Score:2)
Well the obvious malfunction that comes to my mind requires the ejection system to be able to eject passengers faster than the shockwave of an exploding fireball. Out of curiosity - how many astronauts have been saved by the ejection systems on their vehicles?
Britains Apollo Program (Score:3, Funny)
A little known, slightly less ambitious project (more reasonable, really),
whose announcement was plagiarized by John F. Kennedy:
It is our goal... goal... goal... (echo)
Before the decade is out... out... out...
To send a carrier pigeon to West Staines and return him safely to Slough.
Steve Bennett... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Biggest ever? (Score:4, Funny)
I suspect that the average tourist is fatter than the average astronaut
Parent
Re:Umm...what's the point..... (Score:4, Informative)
Not necessarily. You can launch from anywhere, it just costs you more to accelerate (slightly less starting speed than at the equator) and possibly more to get into the orbit you want.
Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome is further north than most of the UK and they certainly launch lots of stuff from there - though they prefer Baikonur, its politically more difficult....
Parent
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Unfortunately we leased the only remaining bit of the British Empire near the equator [wikipedia.org] to you lot back in 1976.
However unless I'm very much mistaken a near-equatorial location is only advantageous for equatorial orbits, and a polar orbit can be launched from any latitude.
Re: (Score:2)
According to the Wikipedia article, it is a joint base. Or do you think that the USAF will shoot down your rockets for having the temerity of challenging the agency that stole of USAF's rocketry program, and cancelled their Dyna-Soar program that would have built an un-Proxmireable space shuttle in the 1960s?
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C'mon, strap one o' those suckers to a 747 and tote 'er out there! Let's see how far she gets with a little more centrifugal "oomph" behind her!
(I've ALWAYS wanted to conquer the solar system along with our Brit cousins! We can NEVER repay you enough for the British Invasion [wikipedia.org]!)
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Hmm, yes I did, but that's sort of semi-leased to the US too...
We should never have given up RAF Gan if you ask me.
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The point is that you can ride the tube train to the launch site in the morning, and be home in time for evening tea.
If you are not planning to leave Earth's gravity, there is no overwhelming need to have the extra orbital speed offered at the equator. If the flight plan is up, then back down again, you have to pay a lot of attention to the landing part as you take off. I suspect that launching from England augments the entire process, or curbs it to a joy ride rather than ISS replenishment mission.
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Re:Umm...what's the point..... (Score:5, Funny)
You could use British Rail, but it'll cost you as much to get to Manchester as it does to get you into space.
Parent
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Dalek/Cylon crossover. Though it would be pretty gross seeing Six seducing Davros. Baltar could start talking to the Daleks, hack into the system and take Davros' place! I'd like to see the Daleks vs. the new Centurions!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent point.
My main problem with nearly every space tourism idea that I've seen floated is that they all want to offer you a few minutes of zero g, and charge the price of a new car, or more.
Maybe if I had a Bill Gates caliber bank account, I'd consider it. But for an average person, 4 minutes of ANYTHING, no matter how cool, just isn't worth the kind of money they're wanting to charge. Even if they throw in a smokin' hot hooker to be your seat-mate.
They need some sort of a "space hotel" to make it wo
Re:Headline of 2013 (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, air travel used to be restricted to the very well-off, too. Remember the phrase "jet set"? For that matter, there was a time when cars were basically toys for rich eccentrics. If rich people are willing to pay a bunch of money for a few minutes of thrill ride, that's great; they're essentially funding the R&D that will eventually bring the cost down to where the rest of us can afford it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I dunno, it seems there are lots of people, like former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who are willing to pay "the price of a car" for 4 minutes of fun.
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Hope they've got better protective uniforms than a track suit.
"I'm goin', I'm goin'!"
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But, being British, we're happier working in sheds and old WWII hangers with bits of old bathtub and wire. If our government tried to run a manned space program today, it would be the biggest waste of space, time and money in all human history.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
NO, they are emphatically ***NOT*** the same people.
The Reliant Robin Space Shuttle was built by the UK Rocketmen, led by Damian Hall. Both groups are based near Manchester, UK Rocketmen in Stalybridge, Starchaser near Salford, but that's the only significant link.
I know this, because I spent a week in France last year getting drunk with Damian and a bunch of other miscellaneous rocketry nutters (including ex-Starchaser folks). Great fun :)
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