Pop-bottle rocket headed into orbit?
British Columbia's Ken Schellenberg -- who already holds the record for highest pop bottle rocket launch -- is working on a pop bottle rocket that will use compressed air to launch itself into orbit.
Link (via /.)Several years ago, one of his "toy" rockets - actually a Kevlar-reinforced, experimental, single-stage missile pressurized with compressed nitrogen and packing high-tech instruments - flew to just under 379 metres.
Based on that research, Schellenberg is now convinced that it will be possible to put a bottle rocket into orbit. In preparation, he's working on sending a modified two-stage rocket - reinforced with ultra-strong carbon-fibre and fuelled by liquid CO2 - up about five kilometres.
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Please tell me this guy is not near any flight paths. I mean its cool and all but do people have to check for things like airplanes before they launch this kind of thing?
Only his experiment will tell. Low orbit at best; there isn't enough energy in liquid CO2, the expanssion rate and thrust drops off too quickly to place anykind of payload in orbit.
Have you seen the Astronaut Farmer?
@ #1 Yes. Yes, they do. They design rockets. For fun. Most of 'em know what they're doing...
You can see videos of the launch and evolution of the rockets here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/antigravityresearch
@ #1 If you were indeed interested in the answer to your question, you may have found the article a fascinating read:
"But he won't be launching that from his pasture near Chilliwack. He acknowledged he'll need a proper site where passing airplanes would not be at risk - something along the lines of the military test facility at Cold Lake, Alta."
5 km is nowhere near orbital (or even sub-orbital) altitude. Be that as it may, the technology is still pretty awesome.
From Wikipedia: The Kármán line lies at an altitude of 100 km (62.1 miles) above the Earth's surface, and is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space.[1] This definition is accepted by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which is an international standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics.
If he sent it up part of the way suspended under a balloon, he could do it. It would concentrate his fuel load for the hard part - up where the atmosphere is much thinner and his expanding CO2 would deliver that bit more velocity.
@#7
I agree, and no need for fancy-pants Wikipedia-ing to show that 5kms is way sub orbit. I mean, jets fly over 10kms!
It's pretty cool that he's able to do that, but to be fair, people claiming that space is anything below 100kms annoys me. Especially calling it orbit is lame, because there's actually no chance a bottle rocket could orbit earth at such altitudes.
CO2 sounds a bit heavy. Wouldn't he get better performance from N2?
Perhaps he is launching the rocket from 5Km up using balloons as a launch pad?
It'll only be a short while before the DoD realizes their potential as low-cost mortars...