Question Brainstorm: How to build a spaceship?

[Artlav]

Starting today, with no significant surplus of money, and head full of nominal intelligence, how will you, an average homo terrestrialis with a habit of looking into the big sky, build a spaceship capable of taking you and a friend around the Moon?

Any optimistic ideas?

 

[Ghostrider]

you, an average homo terrestrialis with a habit

Now now, it's true that we wear tight suits and kinky boots but let's not jump to conclusions.

 

[insanity]

99% Hydrogen Peroxide, An old laptop, astroglide, some tanks, steel, glass, and beer

 

[Dig Gil]

I don't think this is impossible, but (under my conditions without the time eating works I have) it would take a year or three... You said to "take people"? Erh... 5 years if with all the money and resources needed...

• Develop a airless propulsion system. This could be done with plumbing and agriculture shops and a physics teacher's help (because there are no backyard rocketeers around this town.
• Develop all the other subsystems needed like telemetry gauges, controlling devices and measuring devices. This could be done with an electronics nerd to help and a radioshack.
• Get a remote airplane from the local model airplane club and start testing prototype rockets.
• If the tests end up succeeding, I'd start building a remote rover that would be deployed at Lunakhod style.
• Start tests to the rover and deployment devices. The mountainous on the outskirts of the town should work.
• Prepare a flight path and simulate the needed power and altitude. With Orbiter of course .
• Take off by airplane that would fly the highest possible and then launch the rocket. Seeing demonstrations of SpaceShipOne is something to do.
• When the first stage of the rocket was separating, it would be useful release a satellite that would work as debris radar and Earth-Moon retransmission point.
• Further on Pray to the Probe for Godspeed and avoid collisions and major trajectory disturbances.
• If we are lucky at landing, then take a picture, give coordinates for later analysis and wait one second.
• Scream for victory and post in this forum.
• Tell the X-Prize foundation.
• Do it all over again (getting advantage of what was learnt before) but in a larger scale enough to take people.

This is a practical procedure for the real world and then my opinion the success rate is about 30% (taking into account the mistakes made by having a team).
For the conditions you gave it would probably take 6 or more years and much more MacGyver-like constructions and testing conditions (with "nominal intelligence" it won't be hard). Under your conditions I consider the success probability as around 45% (taking into account social and psychological restrains and the poor quality resultant of the cheap development).

---------- Post added at 08:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:03 PM ----------

99% Hydrogen Peroxide, An old laptop, astroglide, some tanks, steel, glass, and beer

I'd take a Guaraná please!

 

[Urwumpe]

Likely never... even a simple basic spacecraft requires skills that only multiple experts out of many different fields have...one person alone can't do that.

 

[Bj]

Question

Is it legal for someone to build a backyard controllable rocket? I would assume anything with a rocket engine strapped to it has to be pointed up and uncontrollable -- otherwise it would be considered a 'missile' and could be targeted at objects...

 

[Dig Gil]

I know, but who cares?
Go making your launches from the local football field (of my town) that no one will notice, believe me.

 

[T.Neo]

Oh, quite simple.

Step 1: Get a lot of money.

Step 2: Get a group of engineers that seriously know what they are doing.

Step 3: Get permission from your government to launch what is essentially a bomb into space...

Step 4: Build the vehicle and launch facility. You will likely need involved technical know-how (the engineers can help) and more money (inconel and alu-lithium alloy doesn't come cheap...)

Step 5: Train yourself and your equally crazy friend. Not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if Star City would allow you to complete basic astronaut training (at a price, of course).

Step 6: Light the contraption, and pray, because there isn't much else you can do to prevent the 99% chance that it will blow up with the force of a small atom bomb...


Seriously, no one person would be able to do this (IMO the main reason comes down to money; even professional ventures have failed).
There have been people (such as John Browning, the inventor of countless firearms, who managed to fabricate prototypes and such from his home in the middle of nowhere in Utah, in a time when fast transport was nonexistant) who were clearly geniuses and extremely dedicated to their work, however.

Perhaps if a "kit spaceraft" (at least one where a set of foolproof plans were available) existed, it would be possible to do so. But the undertaking would still be immensely expensive.

A more realistic goal would be a simple, one-off, one person suborbital flight. But you'd still need money and expert help (or at least brains) to pull it off.

 

[Hielor]

#include <The_Astronaut_Farmer>

 

[agentgonzo]

£50 of acid tabs

 

[atuhalpa]

AgentGonzo :thumbup:

 

[JamesG]

Starting today, with no significant surplus of money, and head full of nominal intelligence, how will you, an average homo terrestrialis with a habit of looking into the big sky, build a spaceship capable of taking you and a friend around the Moon?

With no money? Simply isn't possible. Spacecraft burn money faster than fuel. Note that in the "Astronaught Farmer" he mortgaged the farm and spent every last penny he had building and launching.
Even if you came up with some sort of Hollywood uobtainium "anti-gravity" device, and got all of your materials for free, there would still be the time you put into it, which is not free (you could be working, spending time with your family, etc).

Sub-orbital or maybe even full orbit *might* be possible on a shoe string. I personally favor a small delta lifting body with a scram jet towed to 30K ft. by a leer jet or something and then released and dives to build up enough speed to light the scram, with a secondary rocket engine for that initial accelleration and manuvers above 100 km.

This gets around gub'ments nerviousness about thier citizens building very large missiles and throwing themselves into the airspace. Its just a very high altitude "aircraft". But even this is fraught with headaches. Google the red tape that Scaled Composites had to cut thru in order to fly Spaceship 1...

 

[Ark]

Buy a plane ticket to Russia, sneak into a Soyuz while it sits on the pad, and have a buddy press the button.

The ground crews are all drunken Kazakhstanis, how hard could it be?

 

[T.Neo]

Even if you came up with some sort of Hollywood uobtainium "anti-gravity" device, and got all of your materials for free, there would still be the time you put into it, which is not free (you could be working, spending time with your family, etc).

If you invented anti-gravity, you wouldn't have to work another day in your life.

 

[JamesG]

If you invented anti-gravity, you wouldn't have to work another day in your life.

Because the men in black suits would make you disappear...

 

[T.Neo]

Because the men in black suits would make you disappear...

Let me get the tinfoil hats... :lol:

 

[Dig Gil]

There are the "Lifters" (which aren't anti-gravity) which are relatively cheap and simple and could fly very high. The best part is that they don't need fuel (just electrical current makes them work). The problem is to build one capable of taking payloads large enough to even carry its power source only.

 

[alrik]

Do you guys know arduino?

What about a GPL spaceship? Helps about the people resource problem.

Once developed anyone could build his/her own xD with years of work of course... but with a good amount of information... could be at least... "easy"... xD

Edit: I think in the community we have all we need... physicist, biologist, engineers...

If we do it with linux... why not with a spaceship a car, a boat, a plane...

 

[Artlav]

Arduino? I'm using it.

Now, open-source spaceship? Why the hell not?
Where will we start?

 

[Sky Captain]

I doubt it would be possible for an individual without huge bank account and dozens of skilled engineers to scratch build a spaceship capable of going to the Moon. Even suborbital Spaceship One took more than 10 million $$$ to develop. Only way I can see building one man orbital craft plausible might be if you somehow get your hands on surplus military hardware - some decommissioned booster stages, engines and whatnot. Then you would "only" need put all that together and build a space capsule for you to ride in. Even then it would be 99% chance of everything blowing up on pad.