Cheap Launch Ends In The Drink 41
Baldrson writes: "Wired reports that the only scheduled rocket launch for the CATS Prize has failed. Since the CATS Prize has a deadline of November 8, the enormous hard work and enthusiasm that has gone into this competition will meet with a lot of disappointment. This is unfortunate, because in my original prize announcement, I specifically requested that many individuals put up small amounts of money for their own awards so that there would be no single point of failure. The bright side of all this is that others are now taking that meta-challenge seriously. See, for example the Stark Draper Open Source Rocketry Award."
You get what you pay for (Score:1)
Disapointment but not failure. (Score:1)
I think the lack of a winner in the CATS contest is disapointing, but the contest itself wasn't a failure. It promped a genuine interest in private space flight, and several teams made reasonable attempts. Those teams have now learned something. (assuming people learn from their mistakes). Now maybe we will see more corporate interest (translates to cash) in private space flight.
Maybe we need a round 2 of CATS
Space is hard (Score:4)
It's a stark contrast that the ISS launch occurred in the wee hours of the morning, to the amateur spirit of rocketry. You might find they are strongly related. The first rocketry program - the V1 and later the V2, by the Germans, witnessed an incredible failure rate. NASA too has lost many, many professionally built and engineered rockets. This is a field where failure happens alot in the early stages, and is still not uncommon even in well-established programs.
I don't see this as a set-back. The fact that the CATS program managed to inspire people send something into orbit and to learn more about physics and the world is still a remarkable achievement. In America we still cling to a rather backwards convention that winning is everything... but in science the reverse is true - new discoveries are frequently ushered in with the words "That's odd", instead of "Eurika!" (I got it!).
Best of luck to all who undertake the endeavor to reach space. ~ A well-known, but for now anonymous, slashdotter.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:1)
What like Linux, low budget. But not lots of bugs, at least not when compared to windoze. I think the lots of bugs has to do with the early stage of the project. No project (code or rocket) is perfect at the onset. We are in the early days of private space flight, there are bound to be failures.
Oh well. (Score:2)
So they failed.. (Score:2)
True, but... (Score:2)
Bigger Contest? (Score:1)
CATS prize? (Score:2)
I think you would raised more prize money and gotten more contestants if either of these was the purpose.
...As Strong as the Weakest Link... (Score:2)
"We don't know what happened to the foam guides," Lajoie said. -- from the Wired article.
I'm not an engineer. And as much as I admire the initiative of these citizen-rocketeers, it seems odd to me that a relatively expensive, technically-sophisticated missile travelling at a high-velocity was placed at the mercy of "plastic foam."
Sincerely,
Vergil
3 troy ounces of gold... (Score:2)
Okay, so I was bored... `8rP
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Nano satellites (Score:1)
The only reason that NASA has for not sponsoring this sort of event is that people in politics have a habit of only going for the options that mean profit for their companies.
dnnrly
Re:True, but... (Score:1)
Re:3 troy ounces of gold... (Score:1)
dnnrly
Re:Bigger Contest? (Score:3)
Re:Bigger Contest? (Score:2)
"Open Source" Rocketry (Score:3)
(As a side note: It makes me really cringe when I see monitoring equipment in a hospital running in MS-Windows.... but I digress here)
This isn't to say that you could extensively test a system that would be very robust that you wouldn't mind putting your grandmother's life on the line, but that would take some strong testing before I would consider it ready.
On the same level or viewpoint, I think it would be possible to put together a volunteer group that would be working with "open" designs on components, that when fully assembled could become a rocket capable of human spaceflight.
What would this mean? Technology used to build something like this could also be transfered to other projects as well, and a unique opportunity to allow people to participate in "reaching the stars"
One of the problems with putting together something like that would mean that people who are not normally used to working in an open development group (like mechanical, aeronautical, and chemical engineers) would also have to be involved in order to put something like this together. That and a standardizing process to allow different components to come together, so if one component doesn't quite work that another can be relativly easily put in its place. Plus you would have to have somebody with one huge ego and a lot of free time (like Linus with Linux or RMS with GNU) who could organize something like this.
Impossible? No. Easy to accomplish? Far from it.
Right now non-governmental rocketry is at about the stage of the Home-brew computer club/Altair/Apple ][/TRS-80/Atari stage of development (to use an analogy with the computer industry). The very first practical commercial launches are finally getting off of the ground, but there is a long way to go.
contest (Score:1)
Anyone have details regarding the CATS payload? (Score:3)
One of us was curious about the exact details of the CATS official payload, but could never seem to get a straight answer out of them. Obviously it is not a solid Aluminum cylinder, as one response seemed to imply (Al is 2.7 g/cc, or more than twice the density of the 100mm(r) x 200mm right cylinder specified) He joked that it was "a Semtex payload" designed to guarantee no one succeeded.
I'm sure my friend's irreverence could easily have rubbed CATS the wrong way. I am curious if anyone "more busineslike" than my friend managed to get a detailed spec from CATS.
Where is Fox?? (Score:1)
Actually, it's very much like the "New World" was. (Score:3)
Sounds like the conditions of the New World expressed in modern times with modern needs.
Re:Space is hard (Score:1)
The current situation is difficult. Part of the CATS prize was that the participants could not use any government assistance. That pretty much means any already sucessful space initiative is out. Max Hunter told me he didn't see why it is so hard - when he was involved with the start of the space program, his company worked well. He may just be remembering the good times and forgetting the bad.
I used to think that a problem was the amateur volunteer nature of the groups. They just don't have the time to devote to such an undertaking. With the recent failures of Rotary Rocket and Beale, that seems not to be the case. Even new start programs are having a tough go. I'm not sure quite what the problem is, beyond a lack of patience.
As for failure, my favorite is a quote I got from one of these rocketeers:
Failure is not an option - it's a requirement.
Keep the pointy end of the rocket up, and learn when it doesn't.
SatelliteBoy
Katz prize? (Score:2)
The X prize - £10 million or so. (Score:1)
Or maybe $10 million (Score:1)
an application for social policy bonds (Score:2)
I place $1000 in escrow with some widely-trusted escrow agent. I create a certificate and instruct the escrow agent to pay the $1000 to the bearer of the certificate as soon as it can be verified that an amateur rocket launch has reached a height of 200 kilometers. Next I sell the certificate on EBay. To make things interesting, let's assume that hundreds or thousands of certficates have been issued by people who want to see cheap spaceflight become real.
The price of the certificates will fluctuate, just as stock prices do, based on the prevailing estimation of when and if the launch will actually occur. As with the stock market, there will be some people who buy and sell bonds purely on the basis of price momentum, but over the long term, the biggest winners will be those people who actually keep track of progress toward cheap spaceflight. Those people will have an incentive to help advance the state of the art.
The difference between this and a prize is that a prize has only one winner. With a prize, runners-up come home empty-handed. Knowing this, people who aren't sure they'll win may simply drop out of the race. Escrow certificates make it possible to reward everybody who contributes to the achievement of the goal.
Ronnie Horesh is an economist in New Zealand. He invented social policy bonds with the idea that they would be issued by the government, as a means to allow the government to specify and fund social agendas, while leaving the details of implementation to the free market. The government can certainly afford to post much larger bonds than I can as an individual, but one nice thing about this idea is that it can be completely privatized, assuming any trusted escrow agent is willing to issue and honor certificates.
I know this is totally off-topic, but... (Score:1)
On a slightly less off-topic note, who do they plan to recruit to fly these things? I'd demand a pretty large chunk of change to fly one things.
Re:...As Strong as the Weakest Link...Better Yet (Score:1)
I thought the contest was.. (Score:1)
Re:Nano satellites (Score:1)
That sets them apart from the virtuous private sector how, exactly?
It's harder than it sounds (Score:3)
From the outside, or with cursory knowledge, it seems so damn simple, and all the problems sound like they could have been prevented with a little thought. It's harder than it sounds. Feel free to help.
A lot of efforts came together in the last couple months, and none of them have been successful. After the fact, it's easy to toss off what should have been done.
Ky Michaelson's space shot got off better than most. It launched well, and went through it's full burn before losing a fin at mach 4+. If it had held together, it might have made it into space. Hindsight says he should have welded the fins.
The Wickman AN space booster static test CATO'd. Hindsight says he should have hydrotested the casing.
The HARC launch reached the full altitude for balloon launch (an achievement by itself), and the electronics all seemed to work, but the launch failed due to interference with the launch rail. Hindsight says they should have done a test launch from the ground with the launcher hung from scaffolding.
The SORAC team ran into some political and personal issues with the Bureau of Land Management, resulting in them being banned from black rock for a while, scrubbing their planned CATS launch. Being honest, it would have been a rush job if they had launched in the scheduled slot, but they still would have had a chance. Hindsight says they should have started cultivating the BLM bureaucrats at the start of the year.
JP Aerospace got fucked by the FAA. They have had licenses to try for 100km a couple times in the past, and they always turn everything in more than six months in advance and check up on the process constantly. Four days before they were heading to black rock, the FAA informed them that there were problems with their application. Hindsight doesn't say anything. There was still a pretty good chance JPA would have had problems with their new launch structure because they missed their last AWAY test run schedule, but they probably had the best shot.
Interorbital has a sea launch slot next week, but pushing for the last week of the prize sounds like things probably aren't quite ready to go.
The SORAC and JPA CATS rockets will still be launched when the proper permits are all in line again (the government agencies have turned around), so there is a decent chance that there will be an amateur rocket getting into space come spring, but unfortunately there won't be a payoff for them now that the prize is expiring.
John Carmack
TANSTAAFL (Score:2)
(/me ducks)
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Is there a list of prizes anywhere? (Score:2)
Re:It's harder than it sounds (Score:2)
It's actually quite informative and interesting, so it is worthy of a wider audience. We will ignore, for the sake of propriety, that for many Slashdotters, its author is the equivalent of The Pope or His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Re:It's harder than it sounds (Score:1)
I think the real question here: What would it take to improve the odds of private space development happening in a significant way? What are the kind of events that could lead up to creation of a real frontier in space? I would sincerely appreciate if some folks would participate in creating some more space claims on Ideosphere [ideosphere.com]. This tool isn't perfect, but it is a reasonable pass at giving folks a realistic idea of the odds of uncertain events. I'd be happy to help judge these claims and help write them if necessary(my e-mail is randall_burns@hotmail.com).
Re:So they failed.. (Score:1)
Re:I know this is totally off-topic, but... (Score:1)
The people who build them are supposed to fly them. Dick Rutan, the guy who built the plane that flew around the world non-stop a few years ago, is one of the major contenders.
However, I'm with you! There's no way I would fly in one of those things! My major hobby is building and flying high power rockets and their failure rate is bad enough.
Re:I know this is totally off-topic, but... (Score:1)
Re:I know this is totally off-topic, but... (Score:1)
That's not the full quote, by the way, I had to edit it to fit in my sig.
Happy Reading.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:1)
Anyway, it is unfortionate that the prize didn't materialize. Rocket hacking isn't quite as cheap as kernal hacking, I'm sure people invested nicely in the equipment for this contest. However, the rewards of being the first private citizen to launch a rocket into space is the real payoff anyway, and will continue to be the motivation for most in the future as it has in the past.
Re:Space is hard (Score:1)
Actually, space has had one of the biggest payoffs for modern civilization. Communications satalites, GPS, space telescopes, better understanding of the origins of the world and physics in general, and, for all we know, information from spy satelites may very well have kept much of the free world safe during the Cold War. Outer space is a big place, and we are only now beginning to see how we can reap the benefits it has to offer. While "space industry" (meaning in space, not making things for space) is probably a long, long way off, it is the ultimate long term investment. For some, like telecomunications providers, their space investments have already paid off. Ok, except Iridium, but that's another story...