Article from LA Times
Darrell Mobley
I don't know how many saw this article, but I thougth I would post it:
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The New Space Race
Local inventors hope to be the first amateurs to reach space,
challenging major aerospace companies with garage- built rockets that
cost $10,000 or less.
NEXT L.A.: A look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the
emerging metropolis.
By JEREMY BOGAISKY, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times Tuesday August 22, 1995
Home Edition
Metro, Page 2
Type of Material: Infobox
SEE CORRECTION APPENDED
In the trunk of Charles Pooley's 1979 Oldsmobile are old phone
books, coils of wire, a broken umbrella and the two foot long engine of
a
rocket the Pacific Rocket Society is hoping to launch into space. The
society's members call it the Amspace Spacefarer X-80, standing for
their
ambition to propel the rocket higher than any amateur has before; 80
kilometers (or 50 miles) above the Earth.
The Spacefarer X-80 is the first entrant in an amateur space race
now going on in machine shops and garages across America--and as far
away
as Australia. Unlike the cold war space race, this one is being fought
on the cheap.
"We're doing for $10,000 what NASA does for ten times as much," says
George Morgan past president of the Los Angeles based Pacific Rocket
Society.
With the Southern California based aerospace industry reeling, and
rocket enthusiasts everywhere losing hope of seeing space through the
efforts of the government, the Pacific Rocket Society and other local
rocket enthusiasts are dreaming of fomenting a cottage industry based in
the Los Angeles suburbs of small-scale, economically built commercial
rockets.
To them it's a simple issue. "If you want to reach space, build
rockets,"Pooley says.
Built out of agricultural irrigation pipe, plumbing valves and
consumer electronics, the Spacefarer X-80 stands 23 feet tall and weighs
in at a cost of under $3 a pound in materials. With the design finalized
the PRS says it could be duplicated for as little as $600 a rocket.
The $10,000 seed money for the Spacefarer X-80 was provided by Margaret
Jordan, vice president of the National Space Society, to prove a point:
that a non-defense contractor, a weekend rocketeer, could reach space
cheaply. "We want to spur a low cost approach, an everyman's rocket if
you will," says Jordan.
The grant, and the initial success of the Spacefarer X-80, got the
amateur rocket community thinking big. "That lit a fire under us for
sure," said Pooley, a member of the Pacific Rocket Society.
As word of the society's project spread through the far- flung
amateur
rocket community- Pooley says he's received calls from as far away as
Australia-other groups started to talk about trying to build a space
rocket. And with a wealthy Florida rocket enthusiast said to be close to
funding a $100,000 prize for the first amateur group to put a rocket in
space, activity is kicking into high gear.
At least four other rockets are being built in the Los Angeles area.
Groups in Northern California Alabama, Miami, England, and Australia
are
also hard at work.
"The goal is to get as many grassroots organizations building rockets
as possible," said Korey Kline, who did early work on the Spacefarer
X-80
and is involved now in a commercial startup company in Florida.
"It's one of the last few frontiers," Kline said. "If you ask me what
can the guy on the street jump into nowadays and make a significant
contribution, I say its rockets."
What happens next could have implications for the commerical
development of space, what kids do in high school science class, and the
future of rocketry in Los Angeles. Southern California has been the
capital of the defense-funded rocket business, playing host to most of
the major companies that built the U.S. space program. In their midst
the
core of the nation's amateur rocketry community grew up.
"Everything you need to build a starship is within 50 miles of us
here, as far as aerospace machine shops, surplus yards and computer
equipment," says Paul McQuown, a member of the San Gabriel Valley
amateur
group Independent Rocket Systems.
Local rocket groups is a crazy quilt mix of students, retirees,
dreamers eking out a living at part-time jobs to support their rocket
work, and a healthy number of aerospace professionals eager to get their
hands dirty after a day of shuffling papers.
In amateur rocketry the line seperating fact from science fiction
dreams can be hazy. One member of the Pacific Rocket Society is a
television producer who hopes to film infomercials "if and when" the
group gets close to building a vehicle that could transport people into
space. Production crew from the science fiction TV show "Babylon 5" have
come out to watch launches of smaller rockets in the Mojave desert.
The amateurs, however, have a down-to-earth grasp of economics and
the
problems with government funded space programs. They complain of
expensive cold war technology developed in a "cost is no object"
environment, of a professional rocket industry sheltered from the free
market, demanding outrageous prices to keep thousands of needless
employees employed.
With the government cutting back funding of space programs, the
amateurs say there is a need for homegrown private space enterprise.
"Homegrown means you forget NASA ever existed," Pooley said. "You use
cheap materials, you use techniques and processes that are rougher maybe
sloppier but probably still reliable, and build it from scratch."
Fuel tanks on the Spacefarer X-80 are fabricated from lightweight
aluminum irrigation pipes mass-produced for farms. Valves are from the
local hardware store. The fuel is liquid oxygen and watered down
denatured alcohol.
Pooley, an electrical engineer, has been working part-time to give as
much time as possible to the rocket. Robert Matevossian dropped out of
Cal Poly POMONA for two quarters to work on the rocket. Working out of
his parents' garage in North Hollywood and in a machine shop at Cal
Poly,
they finished their propulsion system. On June 11 they completed a full
duration burn of the rocket at their desert test site northeast of
Mojave
in Kern County.
Clamped to a stand, the engine fired for 52 seconds producing a
constant 2,000 pounds of thrust. It was believed to be the largest
test-firing ever by an amateur.
The amateur rocketeers hope to complete assembly of the remaining
parts of the rocket and launch into space within the next 4 months from
the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Their Mojave site is too close to
commercial air traffic for the FAA's comfort.
Many of those working towards breaking the 80-kilometer barrier hope
to drum up investments for more serious business ventures. Amateur
rocketeers speak of producing cheap "sounding rockets" used for
instantaneous sampling of weather conditions, of putting up small 1 or 2
pound satellites or enabling small kitschy industries like burial in
space.
A bigger hope is to horn in on the satellite launch business
currently
dominated by aerospace giants like McDonell Douglas. Currently three
private ventures--including one backed by computer software mogul Bill
Gates--are planning global communications systems that will require
putting almost 1,200 satellites into low earth orbit in the next few
years.
But how real are the commercial possibilities for amateur space
launches? Asides from satellites the rocketeers aren't too sure.
"I don't know anybody who needs to have their next day air letters
rocketed around the world at 25,000 mph to the other end of the
planet--do you?" McQuown said.
Still McQuown and the other amateurs are too drawn by the
possibilities to let that stop them. "If you can get into space for
$10,000, what can you do for $100,000?" asks Kline. "What can you really
do with a million?"
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
The Sky's the Limit
Members of the Pacific Rocket Society are among the leaders in a race
to become the first amateurs to reach space, hoping to propel a rocket
built of inexpensive, commonly available materials higher than 50 miles
(or 80 kilometers) above the Earth.
*
Spacefarer X-80
Success of the Spacefarer X-80 could bring a cottage industry of
small-scale, garage-built commercial rockets that would horn in on the
satellite-launch business.
*
Building the Rockets on the Cheap
Some of the materials used to build the rocket:
Lightweight aluminum pipes mass-produced for agricultural irrigation,
are used as propellant tanks.
Plumbing valves from a local hardware store.
Fuel consists of inexpensive liquid oxygen and denatured alchol
watered down to 150 proof.
A flight-stabilizing gyroscope of the type used in model helicoptors.
A small video camera in the rocket's nose.
A global positioning system that cost the rocket designers $1,500 but
which they say can be built for $400 or less.
Fiberglass cloth of the type used to make surfboards is laid over
stryrofoam for nose cone.
Steel and copper pipe for engine available at $3.30 a foot and $11 a
foot respectively.
Parachutes from surplus parachute store.
*
The Flight Plan
1. Rocket is launched within the next four months from a 50-foot tower
in
the desolate Black Rock desert north of Reno, Nev.
2. Initial thrust of 2,000 pounds, roughly three times the rocket's
weight, keeps it from tipping over and allows tail fins to bite into the
air for stability.
3. About 19 miles up, the engine runs out of fuel. But low atmospheric
density allows rocket to coast upward to at least 50 miles.
4. Signals from GPS satellites provide Rocket Society members with the
rocket's trajectory and flight- path information.
5. During descent, the fins open into a pair of panels that act as air
brakes. AT 30,000 feet (5.7 miles), a small chute is released, followed
by a larger one.
6. Parachutes slow rocket allowing it to be retrieved intact. On- board
radio transmitters direct society members to desert landing site.
Source: Los Angeles Times
CORRECTION
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday August 23, 1995
Home Edition
Metro, Page 3
Type of Material: Correction
Rockets--Because of a production error, the final words were left
off the story on Tuesday's Next L.A. page. In the article on rockets,
the
last sentence should have read: "I don't know anybody who needs to have
their next-day air letters rocketed around the world at 25,000 m.p.h. to
the other end of the planet--do you?" McQuown said.
Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times, 1995.
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