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Space Science

One Small Step 21

Posted by Hemos from the moving-forward dept.
redcliffe writes "Armadillo Aerospace has completed their first successful manned flight. It's only a small hop but it looks very cool."
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One Small Step More

One Small Step

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  • Very Cool. (Score:4, Informative)

    by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:01AM (#4358316) Homepage Journal
    It was only a handful of feet off the ground, and it was in a frame cage with the rocket nozzles around them, but it had a person in the chair, and it went up, then down, and didn't go off "thataway". Good initial flight, and it took guts to do that.

    I question if the work they are doing there will scale up to a full sized rocket, but that's an armchair question, and they are the ones doing the work, so I'll assume they know what they are doing until I have a rocket scientist say otherwise. :)

    Congrats to the Armadillo team. Ad Astra Per Aspera.

    --
    Evan (no SF reference, kinda)

    • Re:Very Cool. (Score:5, Informative)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @07:28AM (#4358433) Homepage
      This is just a small rocket to test out the control system and get experience building and controlling rocket engines; this launch vehicle uses only hydrogen peroxide.

      The final system they are working on will achieve 100km altitudes (i.e. space) and return to earth with fare-paying passengers. The final launcher will also use a 'bipropellent' such as peroxide and kerosene; that gives almost twice the delta-v per kg of fuel. They've done tests with such motors, and they've achieved good results- good enough performance to achieve their goals I would think.

      They're making good progress- though they thought they'd get to this point last year, but they had catalyst issues which I think are a bit better understood now; but they are ahead on other fronts.

      • Re:Very Cool. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by JabberWokky ( 19442 )
        So in other words, they have split the project into flight control (testing that with the lower power, but presumably safer and cheaper simple peroxide rockets) and propulsion (the heavy thrust engines). Makes sense to me - you can test the flight control stuff cheaper, meaning more trials, and the experience and refinement there will clearly apply to when they use the flight controls on a heavy thrust rocket.

        So, how much longer before they stop issuing new news, and Carmack suddenly shows up as having a security clearance and rank in the Air Force - but nobody hears anything public from them? (*cough* Rocketplane *cough*). :)

        No, I'm not actually a conspiracy theorist - this stuff is honestly hard enough to do without some shadowy supression program. But the tin foil hat writing makes for entertaining reading simply because it does make sense if taken at face value.

        Ahem... as long as the Green Party doesn't get in control and we don't enter an Ice Age... wait... aren't we due for one of those?

        --
        Evan

        • - this stuff is honestly hard enough to do without some shadowy supression program.

          There's a saying in the aerospace industry:

          "Rocket science isn't rocket science."

          It's actualy fairly easy to build rockets- a rocket is about the simplest machine you can make, apart from a few valves it has zero moving parts.

          The only rocket science bit here is working out a way for it to pay for itself. Carmack thinks he can get fare-paying passengers to foot the bill.

          The really nice thing about this is that he can gradually build up to it. Unlike the Space Shuttle which was a cross your fingers and pray, he can gradually go a bit higher and faster each time until he reaches 100km; he can "extend the envelope " as they term it.

          As to shadowy suppression; one thing that Carmack is doing is publicising everything he does. This makes it hard for them to shut him down. Everything he writes comes under free speech. He might get gagged if he tries to patent something, but America isn't supposed to be some totalitarian state, so other than that he should be ok.

          • maybe your average estes rocket isn't, but I can tell you that getting anything to fly as stably as that cage did sure takes a hell-lotta rocket science and all the brains to go with it.

            And btw, there are moving parts on rockets: the thrust control/vectoring nozzle being the most important...
            • And btw, there are moving parts on rockets: the thrust control/vectoring nozzle being the most important...

              Sure, some rockets have moving parts, thrust vectoring is one example, turbopumps are very complicated; but not all rockets have these; you can always make anything more complicated.

              Counterexample- Carmack's rocket has no moving parts apart from the valves. He uses 4 jets on the underside to control the attitude- he DOESN'T use thrust vectoring.

  • Pretty stupid to be so near that curb, if you ask me. Surely these guys could find a more level site.

    • Re:Pretty stupid... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by foolish ( 46697 )
      The lander testing was done out of the "business park"/wharehouse location. It appears that is where they've done all the lander testing to date. The test area looks like it is between the different parking spaces for each building.

      While I agree doing the test near the curb was apparently dangerous, they had the lander tethered, and I *believe* that it was tethered so that it wouldn't end up on the curb.

      IIRC, they do all of the larger flight vehicle engine testing out at the OK "Space Facility"/ bunkers.

      It sounds like they'll start doing more work on the tube vehicle now, and testing more for the 4 main engine model now.

      Waiting for the weekly update is always exciting... it is a marvel that these guys share their findings so openly when a lot of other groups are fairly close mouthed about their process/progress.

  • It just makes me nervous... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dr00g911 ( 531736 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @10:21AM (#4359557)

    My personal favorite quote from the article:

    We had an ambulance on site, just in case. This is surprisingly inexpensive, and should be considered by anyone doing something potentially dangerous.

    Not sure if that was sarcasm, doe-eyed naivete or what, but it sure made me hella-nervous while I was waiting for the /.ed video feed to load.

    Congrats, guys! Precautionary ambulances or not, it takes some big brass balls to do this stuff, much less succeed -- no matter how small the increment.

    • Not sure if that was sarcasm, doe-eyed naivete or what, but it sure made me hella-nervous while I was waiting for the /.ed video feed to load.

      Then perhaps you understood it! They took a whole bunch of precautions, but some failures are going to be potentially life threatening. If the computer were to crash- not necessarily because of a software bug, hardware failure for example, then the vehicle can turn upside with the rocket running at full blast (that's what the frame is for and the crash helmet). Or the throttle could stick and send it up 30 feet, and then fall back down (I think they had a parachute) - each of these failure have occured with Carmack's earlier unmanned vehicles by the way... ;-(

      It looked incredibly easy; but this was not a lot easier than the actual landing bit of landing on the moon- and that was done under 1/6 earth gravity.

    • had an ambulance on site, just in case

      Seems kinda pointless to me.

      Experimental rocketry is one of those cases where everyone walks out without a scratch, or you do your crew recovery with an industrial wet-dry vacuum cleaner.

      -
  • Congratulation to them and especially Russ who sat quietly in the chair. I know someone whose shorts were probably full of bricks by flight end. I know I couldn't do it, noway!, zippo!, nada! Can this be a solution to the infernal commute to work every morning? --Vuzz

  • Radiation hardening? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Monday September 30, 2002 @12:28PM (#4360870) Journal
    The X prize target is 100km up (or even normal airliner altitudes) where there's lots more ionizing radiation. The radiation can cause electronic devices to malfunction.

    Seems there are radiation hardened i486 based single board computers. But it is not clear on the site if the PC/104 they are using is one of them.

    I suppose they could do initial tests using the cheaper SBCs and then migrate to a radiation hardened one.

    Maybe they won't need the computer by the time they reach that height - only critical for the initial phases?

    Link.
    • Not enough radiation to worry at 100 km. The ISS is higher and doesn't have any radiation shielding AFAIK. It gets worse the higher you go, 300 km is starting to get more interesting from there the Van Allen belt goes beyond Clarke orbit (>37000 km).

      No radiation hardening is needed at 100km, I don't think the Space Shuttle worries unduly over it either, and that goes higher.

      • >It gets worse the higher you go

        Not true.

        Cosmic rays 'shower' in the atmosphere leading the a peak in charged particle flux well below the ISS.
        • Do you have a link for that? I've never heard that mentioned anywhere as a particular problem, and I've seen several references to the Space Shuttle not using any specially shielded electronic equipment.

          However, cosmic rays are definitely a long term issue- I believe they can cause cancer over 10-15 years unless you have meter of shielding, but as a short term cause of electronics failing?

      • Do search for "single event" effects, "avionics" and similar stuff (ionizing radiation airliners etc).

        Excerpt from:
        http://www.irfl.lu.se/HeliosHome/avionics.h tml

        "It is now well known that modern microelectronic devices can suffer from single event effects caused by cosmic radiation neutrons in the atmosphere. The phenomenon has been observed both on ground and at aircraft altitudes. The neutron flux at aircraft altitudes (15 km) is large enough to make the neutron single event effects an issue of reliability in aircraft electronics"

        Excerpt from:
        http://klabs.org/DEI/References/design_guid elines/ design_series/1258jsc.pdf

        "Even high altitude commercial airliners flying polar routes have shown documented cases of avionics malfunctions due to radiation events"

        Link.
        • Of course it will happen. It's just a question of how often. Hundreds of aircraft fly polar routes every day, and have done for decades. An event occuring in a system that is only launched a few times a week at most is much less likely to actually occur.

          Besides, if you are doing a fly-by-wire system, as most rockets are, you'd want duplication of control computers anyway, to handle other failures. Radiation is the least of your problems; we're not talking about a high probability of failure due to radiation up to 100km. Radiation hardened equipment is not required, for example, they don't use radiation hardened equipment on the ISS.

          • So far I see plenty of evidence that they do use radiation hardened equipment on the ISS. That is: intentional use of radiation hardened equipment for its radhardness, not because of availability and other nonrelated reasons.

            Go do a search on google.

            As for how often radiation is a problem - it's often enough to be a reliability problem for airplanes at airliner altitudes - as stated in the article I cited.

            And often enough to be easily measurable on nonhardened equipment on the ISS:

            http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/ sc ience/iss/sc-iss-tpcs.htm

            To me that indicates the problem is significant and that one should use radiation hardened devices for critical functions. That said, there's no mention of blind testing - comparisons with ground or below tests in heavily shielded areas. But the fact that they are doing the tests indicates they have concerns.

            Unless you have real evidence to the contrary I find it very hard to believe they don't use radiation hardened equipment on the ISS, or need such stuff.

            Cheerio,
            Link.

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