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Space The Almighty Buck Science

Getting Into The Private Space Race 29

Posted by timothy from the go-fast-don't-turn-left dept.
powerbarr writes "This article has an excellent description of the issues of getting into the rocket industry without government funding and focuses on one startup that is doing it. Sea Launch is a subsidiary of American, Russian, Ukrainian, and Norwegian companies that has cheaper, more accurate, and more reliable launch system that is trying to compete with all the government sponsored systems that are more expensive and less reliable."
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Getting Into The Private Space Race More

Getting Into The Private Space Race

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  • Let's Slashdot Outer Space (Score:3, Funny)

    by stoborrobots ( 577882 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @05:07AM (#6113167)
    All us techies can get together, launch in to outer space, and knock the "bad people" out with our open source rockets!!! ;-)

    • Re:Let's Slashdot Outer Space (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dr. Photo ( 640363 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @05:49AM (#6113290) Journal
      All us techies can get together, launch in to outer space, and knock the "bad people" out with our open source rockets!!! ;-)

      1. Cramped quarters in space craft.
      2. Stale, recycled oxygen.
      3. Elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of geeks; many having personal hygiene no better than you or I!
      4. Male-to-female ratio: let's just say a rounding error could kill off the species.
      5. "Open source rockets" would be a terrible way to thank the thousands of people who eagerly volunteered to help you pack.
      • 1. Everything is roll-your-own... There's no way I'm letting anyone else on my rocket... There's a wall of fire =) around it...

        2. Fresh Hydrogen; 1atom/cubic metre

        3. See 1.

        4. The species is dead anyway... I just hope I find a single female to constitute an exception to 1.

        5. You're right... We should use proprietary rockets on them, and keep the open-source ones for ourself...

    • Why do we need high-tech whizbangs like rockets and space planes? I think NASA is on to something with the X-4000 Launch Aparatus, [uncoveror.com] a simple and inexpensive old school design.

  • I get it ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by stoborrobots ( 577882 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @05:18AM (#6113200)
    This is just Boeing trying to edge out Lockheed Martin...

    This private venture is 40% owned by Boeing [sea-launch.com]

    Methinks there might be opportunities for British Aerospace and Concorde to start launching space missions...

  • Repeat competition comments from previous article (Score:3, Funny)

    by stoborrobots ( 577882 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @05:46AM (#6113283)
    #include "http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/ 03/2322221"

  • uh... one launch? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by kevin lyda ( 4803 ) *
    they've made one launch so far. that's hardly enough data points to compare them to nasa, esa or the russian space program.
  • http://www.totse.com/en/technology/science_techno l ogy/railway.html

    quite alot to read to get the meat , but it is there .

    I think a high altitude rail gun suspended from a balloon
    platform at 160,000 ft would be best .

    NASA recently set a balloon record at 161,000 ft.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020 82 7063353.htm

    At that altitude it would not have to deal with the friction
    of 99% of the earth's atmosphere .

    At that altitude storms/weather does not affect launches ,
    there is no wind either .
    • You know about that newton guy right? Had a unit named after him?

      1. You need a balloon that is 100 times bigger to lift the same amount of weight where the atmosphere is 99% thinner.

      2. For every action...

      When you fire this thing, the balloon is going to recoil just as much as the projectile.

      BTW-I thought the files on totse were old BBS files and a lot of really weird stuff.
      • As for the weight differential you are right, it would
        require an enormous amount of lift to pull it off
        even with hydrogen balloons .

        The credits for the information aka references were at
        the bottom of the page .

        Of course you already knew that as you read the whole thing
        real fast and rapid fire responded to me .

        Oh well ...

        As for for the transfer of forces, the ballon platform is
        not capable of moving at mach speeds, and also E=MC(squared)
        so the mass of the platform, MANY tons is greater than
        that of a 450kg
        • Neither article was about launching satellites from balloons. One was about railguns, the other was about a large balloon. I skimmed them.

          What does relativity have to do with this? I kinda wonder what kind of education you military guys get, it seems to be pretty lacking on the theory side.
          • Yes, it is lacking on the theory side , your right .

            Yes, you are correct, none of the articles are
            about balloon launches .

            The ballon raised platform is my own idea .

            But a short burst recoil is not going to move a
            huge multi-ton platform that much and you have to
            consider time constants in equations as well .

            Also the platform is going to have drag against
            the recoil .

            The short time constant, aka firing time, and
            the drag of the platform , ie. converting
            the recoil into acceleration of the huge platform
            has to
          • E=MC(squared)

            You ask what this has to do with this ???

            Maybe your education was lacking on theory ???

            Rail Gun "energy" ??? Recoil "energy" ???

            Platform "mass" ??? projectile "mass"

            Time as the Constant ...

            I think it has a FAIR amount to do with relativity,
            then again ALL things do .

            Outside this is the drag of the platform during recoil .

            Once again I will relate the size of the balloons
            to a cloud city to hold this monster up at that
            high of an altitude , but it will make for weather
            free launch system for
    • This is a mass driver, rather than a railgun, unless your payload is hot plasma, no?:

      railgun [railgun.org] [railgun.org].

  • Sea Launch is a joint project between Boeing, Energiya Ukrainiya, and a Norwegian company that makes oil platforms. All three are private companies, but they are tightly tied to their respective countries' military-industrial complexes. I'll take Elon Musk or Burt Rutan any day of the week and twice on Sunday over these guys. (Check previous Slashdot stories.)
    • Actually, Boeing is leaving the company out to dry because of how cheap they are. They directly compete with Boeing's much higher cost Delta rockets and Boeing really wants the company to fail. This is because of their merger with Lockheed Martin that got them into the rocket business after Sea Launch was set up.

      I was not aware that Burt Rutan is working on large rocket engines to enable geosynchronous orbit. The article is about the commercialization/privatization of space and how it compares to the ai
  • Does this remind anyone else of S.A.L.V.A.G.E.?

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