I found this year's X Prize Cup to be something of a disappointment, more about hype than substance. And it didn't help that food was in short supply on the ground, as attested to by an attendee quoted in a report for the Las Cruces newspaper. I'm all about food at events. Feed me well and I'm happy. If there isn't good food, well....
However, schemes are already trickling in for next year's Cup that should make it more exciting.
For instance, Tim Pickens, president of Orion Propulsion tells me he's hatching plans for a rocket powered low rider pick up truck.
Here he is with Orion engineer Angie Fulmer at the Orion booth at the space symposium held in Las Cruces just before the X Prize Cup last weekend.
"You take a truck," Pickens told me as I snapped this picture. "You don't do anything to it. It's just a nice ride you buy from some teenager. They put all their money in it, and now it's a low-rider."
Then you bolt a 2,000 pound thrust hybrid rocket engine fueled by nitrous oxide and asphalt into the truck bed. Most of the time you hide the rocket engine behind the tailgate.
But when you pull up to a red light next to "some smart-Alec with a thumpin and bumpin" sound system, you can drop the tail gate and "you say 'I got your noise right here!'" and boom! light that thing up and blast off down the road in the world's most powerful drag racer.
Pickens wants to show up at the next X Prize Cup in the rocket rider with Fulmer behind the wheel to help turn heads, and then do some rocket demos everyone can relate to. Now, that I'd like to see.
There's a serious purpose behind Pickens's fun. "What it will do," says Pickens, "is it'll show the inherent safety of hybrids." Not to mention get people thinking about how they can get their own rocket to ride in. And isn't that what a rocket expo should be all about?
6 comments:
The inherent safety of rocket/gasoline hybrids? Seriously?
Well, not rocket/gasoline hybrids, but hybrid rocket engines, meaning rocket engines that run on a mix of gaseous or liquid and solid propellants. Most rockets in use are either all solid fuel (like the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters) or all liquid, like the space shuttle's main engines.
SpaceShipOne put hybrid rockets on the map last year (running nitrous oxide and synthetic rubber), and some people think they're the best choice for manned flight because they're inherently safer than all-liquid rockets.
Pickens helped develop SpaceShipOne's rocket engine, and he says the asphault he wants to run his low rider rocket on gives the same performance as SpaceShipOne's rubber fuel.
I was just kidding. With all the talk of gas/electric hybrid cars recently, the first thing I thought of when I read about the truck was the rocket/gas engine power combination.
Most of the time my sense of humor is limited in its scope.
What would the need for a rocket powered truck be , if its never driven by the power of the rocket motor ???
Its so easy to state that a rocket powered truck will do a certain MPH with a certain amount of thrust, but if its never proven ,its just a test bed with a fancy paint job and chrome rims
A rocket truck is just a truck ,with a rocket motor in it, if its never taken down the asphalt. But when i started to build the frame and all for the rocket truck to hold the hybrid motor ,all i heard was we will take this baby for a ride.Now from what i read is that it was built by employees that volenteered their time at night..What happened to the weekends when I was there building and machining....
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