New Zealand to Launch Private Rocket into Space

[ria_river]

Private New Zealand aerospace company Rocket Lab completed its final ground-based test and is now ready to launch New Zealand into the space race with its Atea-1 launch vehicle.

 

The first high altitude launch of Atea-1 is scheduled for the end of November this year. Once Atea-1 has successfully concluded the development phase it will:

 

 

* Be the first privately built rocket launched from the Southern Hemisphere to enter space

 

* Launch the Southern Hemisphere’s first commercial space programme

 

* Be the first commercial sounding rocket to use hybrid fuel technology

 

* Give the global scientific community the first practical alternative to conventional rockets – at significantly lower cost

 

 

You may read the entire article EDIT: Or something like it http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/11/17/0021222/New-Zealand-To-Launch-First-Private-Space-Rocket?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+(Slashdot)

[Getting A Life]

Go kiwis! Yes this rocket is something special. It's small, sleek, and carries lots of equipment. Mainly composite carbon fibre materials minimised the size possible.

 

The best thing about this company is that they are not controlled by a government. No gag orders o what they find (yet).

[CraigD]

The Atea-1 is a cool rocket, to be sure, but it falls, as best I can tell, somewhere between a large hobbyist rocket, and the sort of state and private rocket used to launch satellites, space probes, and astronauts.

 

It’s truly small: 65 kg mass, 5 m length with its 2 stages assembled, small enough for a single or a couple of people literally to carry, and thanks to using the same kind of hybrid rocket motor used in the larger (3600 kg) Space Ship One that won the Ansari X prize in 2004, which isn’t explosive until its solid fuel is oxygenated with a gas such as N2O, shippable via ordinary postal carriers. It’s the sort of system that colleges, or even good high schools and hobbyists could conceivable buy, to lofts small payloads briefly (it lacks the impulse to put a payload into orbit) into space (120 km altitude) and return them softly to land or sea – a wonderful thing.

 

It’s payloads are, however, small: 2 kg, not including its built-in systems, such as its parachute and a GPS to aid in its location and recovery. Though one can presumably cram a lot of science experiment into a 2 kg package, that’s still not very much.

 

I put the Atea-1 in somewhat the same class, performance-wise, as CSXT’s “GoFast” rocket, which flew a small payload, consisting of a video camera, GPS, and a 2.4 GHz (Ham frequency) radio to transmit the video and telemetry, to 116 km altitude, in 2004. However, the Atea-1’s hybrid motor is a great practical improvement over the GoFast’s dangerous-to-handle ammonium perchloate-based solid fuel motor (similar, but much smaller, than the Space Shuttle’s SRBs).

 

All this puts me in the mind to play with hybrid motors in very small hobbyist sizes. They’re available in small sizes – the smallest I found with a quick search is, 38 mm x 16 inch (at this website) costing $120 for the multiple-use motor and $40 per reload. If these could be scaled down to 24 mm, they’d be suitable for use on the scale of an ordinary hobbyist model rocket, but unlike their little black powder motors, would, with the right miniature valves and radio/computer controls, be throttleable, raising the prospect of a scale model rocket that not only look realistic standing still, but lift slowly and realistically as well. :)