Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: gunnss on November 08, 2007, 01:54:01 AM
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Well we did it, we put our er.. Hand in the meat grinder,
A few of my co workers and my self have put the paperwork together to enter the lander challenge for next years X prize.....
http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge/
Wish us luck,
Kevin
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Sweet! Good luck!
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Wtg, Gunnss... best of luck!
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Best of luck to you! Outstanding project there. :aok
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Good luck man, I love to see small private industry take on the challenge.
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Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
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good luck..
:aok
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Gunns, I know where you can get one, most of the work has already been done, bring a big truck
StenniSphere, NASA Stennis Space Center
Hancock County Welcome Center
I-10 at Exit 2 in Mississippi
(http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t92/Airscrew/vt1LL.jpg)
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I'm just down the road from NASA Houston.
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Nice! Hope you do great!
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Just a thought here and I'm no rocket scientist and have no clue how you guys are thinking of doing it. So I figured I'd share this idea with yea.
I've always thought using Hot air balloons to lift a craft into the upper atmosphere would be a easier and a cheaper way to get a craft into near earth orbit.
If you do a little research you will find some old US military experiments where they used hot air balloons to lift a guy into near earth orbit so he could parachute back down. (was the only guy I know of, to break the sound barrier with out a aircraft)
I always thought it would make a cheap launch platform to get objects into space, because the hardest part of getting to space is of course breaking the earth's gravity.
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If I was going to try and do this on the cheap, I'd do the following:
Hydrogen Peroxide decomposition monopropellent motors - Easy and cheap to build, no flaming explosions at failures (or at least, lower likelihood) and no flammable vapors. Pressurized for simplicity (no pumps) w/ a regulator for fuel flow, using something cheap like nitrogen. It's cheaper and easier to work with than exotics, and for the specific challenge should be more than good enough.
Instead of spending a lot of time trying to perfect a finicky throttle-able engine, I'd have a single big sustainer that can _almost_ lift the craft, and then a bunch of simple tiny H2O2 thrusters around the edge that both give it the extra thrust to take off (and descend, if all engines are off, the sustainer would give it a slow descent) and stabilize. The weight of H2O2 expended during the flight would need to be taken into consideration too, of course, the lander should have 'negative bouyancy' when at near empty.
To reduce dependence on gyroscopes and complicated stability systems (Armadillo has lost a few to computer and gyro mishaps) I'd try and make it dynamically stable. The lower the center of gravity, the better, maybe suspending the sustainer above a hollow center 'donut' would work, for instance. Something like this would make the lander neutrally stable, so you can reduce the complexity of the guidance task.
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BTW, I quickly sketched what I meant for trying to make it neutrally stable:
(http://hallert.net/images/nov8land.GIF)
Just a side view, of course, the idea would be to have the engine suspended in the middle so that the mass is 'hanging' off of it instead of balancing on top like a broom on the end of your finger. Plus, with H2O2 monopropellent rockets, the exhaust is just steam, so minimal shielding is needed to protect the tanks and sensitive bits.
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Originally posted by crockett
Just a thought here and I'm no rocket scientist and have no clue how you guys are thinking of doing it. So I figured I'd share this idea with yea.
I've always thought using Hot air balloons to lift a craft into the upper atmosphere would be a easier and a cheaper way to get a craft into near earth orbit.
If you do a little research you will find some old US military experiments where they used hot air balloons to lift a guy into near earth orbit so he could parachute back down. (was the only guy I know of, to break the sound barrier with out a aircraft)
I always thought it would make a cheap launch platform to get objects into space, because the hardest part of getting to space is of course breaking the earth's gravity.
Altitude does not equal orbit. While the altitude would reduce the atmospheric drag, you still need to attain a speed fast enough to overcome gravity. Vehicles in orbit still feel gravity almost as much as we do on the ground. Their speed is sufficient to keep them falling around the earth.
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Here Gunnss, get a copy of this so you can test your designs in a "realistic" environment...
(http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t92/Airscrew/lunar.jpg)
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Airscrew - Link?
Originally posted by crockett
Just a thought here and I'm no rocket scientist and have no clue how you guys are thinking of doing it. So I figured I'd share this idea with yea.
I've always thought using Hot air balloons to lift a craft into the upper atmosphere would be a easier and a cheaper way to get a craft into near earth orbit.
If you do a little research you will find some old US military experiments where they used hot air balloons to lift a guy into near earth orbit so he could parachute back down. (was the only guy I know of, to break the sound barrier with out a aircraft)
I always thought it would make a cheap launch platform to get objects into space, because the hardest part of getting to space is of course breaking the earth's gravity.
Crockett, all sorts of balloons, balloons + rocket, and huge "blimp" solutions have been tried and refined... They mostly can't compare with rocket propelled solutions.
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Originally posted by moot
Airscrew - Link?
no link, that was just a screen shot I found. I do recall though reading about a website that had all those games online you could play...
I guess I should do a little searching...
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Originally posted by AKIron
Altitude does not equal orbit. While the altitude would reduce the atmospheric drag, you still need to attain a speed fast enough to overcome gravity. Vehicles in orbit still feel gravity almost as much as we do on the ground. Their speed is sufficient to keep them falling around the earth.
The idea behind it, is to allow the craft to carry less fuel, which equals lighter and less effort needed to enter orbit. That's the only reason I was thinking of it, kinda the same concept as Space Ship One uses but this would just be a much higher alt launch pad.
In hindsight it appears they wont be entering orbit with this contest, which makes my idea illrelevant for this contest anyway. I had heard about this contest before and was under the impression that they actually were going to achieve orbit.
It's silly to think that anyway now that I thought about it, because I'm sure NASA wouldn't be to keen on having some more space junk orbiting the earth. :D
I guess this contest is just for an actual lander on the moon so getting to orbit isn't their problem as this contest will just be a simulated landing here on mother Earth.
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Thanks all,
We are trying for the lunar lander prize. basically we need to take off fly to a set altitude, hover for a set amount of time, then soft land on a target. Then within a per-set amount of time we need to launch, hover and land on the original launch site. there are lot of other rules, including instrument package and payload to be carried, but that is the basic challenge.
Our approach will be a lot lower tech than most of our challengers, but alas the team is already getting really proprietary with our designs. So I can't really say much about the how.:noid
The 08 entry forms and year specific rules come out soon, and Our 1/10th prototype is about half built.
Alas the rules exclude hypergolic fuels, so a Minni Me163 is out.
Regards,
Kevin
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Good frikin luck... you'll need it!