I read an article in the local newspaper last weekend about this guy from Oregon who plans on riding his homemade rocket to the edge of space. He said jokingly that he hoped it would help him pick up chicks…
Anybody else have ambitions of riding your personal bottle rocket to the moon?
I say, Go Rocket Guy, Go!
As for picking up women, sounds good to me. Kind of gives new meaning to the old line, “I’ll send you to the moon, baby!”
Once upon a time, when people were drawing their analogies from the early days of exploration and the early days of airplanes, you could entertain ideas of backyard rockets. Look at, for instance, Raymond Z. Gallun’s “The Planet Strappers”.
Nowadays, with restricted airspace and overcrowding, not to mention the high cost of spacefilght, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Even if he could afford it, I don’t think I’d want my next-door neighbor screwing around with highly explosive fuel mixtures. That goes for any of the other methods of putting things into orbit, as well – they demand highly concentrated fuel or energy sources somewhere along the line.
Don’t be so hasty to judge him. There are still amateur rocketmakers around. I’m not talking about your local hobby shop balsa wood kit with prepackaged engines, but large-scale custom metal contraptions that use real fuel. They meet for launches held in the desert like New Mexico, because of safety concerns. A guy at work was telling me about it. None are orbital capability yet, but they’re working on it.
This Rocket Guy may sound a little nutty, but he seems to be pretty sensible about it - for someone willing to strap himself on a homemade jet pack. His site says he is using a hydrogen peroxide system like the Bell Labs jet pack. More recent footage of that is in the TV show “The Fall Guy”, Lee Major’s show about a stunt man from the '80s. The concept is pretty simple - the screen acts as a catalyst, and the fuel is sprayed on the screen. That sets off a chemical reaction that creates the thrust. It is much cooler and less explosive and less dangerous than other fuel systems - like hydrogen-oxygen or hydrazine. The downside - there’s no off switch. But that’s pretty much like the SRB’s on the Space Shuttle - once they light, they can’t turn off.
Also, he seems to be a pretty capable technician. Needed if you’re going to have confidence in your own handiwork.
Plus, he is planning and training. Learning from the pros the types of things he will need to know - like parachuting.
A little daring, but not nuts. I wish him all the best.
As long as he doesn’t buy any of his rocket hardware with the Acme Supply Company, he should be all right. Never did work out for Wile E. Coyote.
Who’s judging? Nobody said he was insane, nor did I put it in the Pit. I just thought it was an interesting news story–and as Cal mentioned, I suppose I might be a little concerned if my neighbor was playing with large quantities of rocket fuel…
So you think he’s a sensible nut…
Go to the MOON? You Earthlings are actually impressed by this?
What are you talking about, Bluepony? Wile E. Coyote was ALWAYS being blasted into deep space. The thing is, he was trying to go horizontal, not vertical.
I remember that little rocket sled of him, with something like forty engines strapped to the back, designed to run along railroad tracks. He started it up, the rockets puffed a bit… then with a blast of jet fuel, he took off… just not forward, as he desired, but rather, straight up.
Then he blew up. Of course.
Yeah, but Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius (Said so on his card) always walked away. I wish your neighbor the best, but this may be a Darwin award waiting to happen. 150,000 feet is a long way up.
…oh, and I forgot to mention - he better be REAL careful where he drops the rocket - if the parachutes fail, thats a lot of weight dropping…
Note to self: Check if insurance covers space debris and/or falling objects.
All he’s going to do is go up 30 miles and fall back down with parachutes. Big deal. I can do that with one hand tied behing my back.
There are LOTS of people building private rockets now. Robert Truax was the first guy to get the ball rolling - he had a homebuilt rocket that was supposed to fire a person into space and back - Truax was to be taken seriously, as he was an ex-NASA rocket engineer, did a whole bunch of work for the Navy (I think he helped design the Polaris missile).
Eventually Truax was hired away from his pet project by another company working on private rocket launch, and I think he died a little while ago without ever finishing his rocket. The rocket, BTW, was comprised of most off-the-shelf NASA and military rocket hardware that he bought surplus for pennies on the dollar. Some of the hardware he even designed himself while working for NASA, then bought it back from them for pennies. (I remember him commenting on some gimbals he bought for the rocket - NASA paid something like half a million dollars for them, and he bought them surplus for $500.)
If you want to see what current private rocket projects are going on, check out http://www.xprize.com.
BTW, my pick for the winner of the X-prize is Burt Rutan. His company, Scaled Composites, is building a reusable orbital launcher called Proteus. You can see details about it at http://www.scaled.com