Astronaut Farmer: Can You Build a Rocket?

[wolram]

It is a film sort of Disney ish ,that does not quite come up to the mark, the thing is this guy builds his own rocket, well two, the first sort of goes haywire, but his second attempt to get into orbit is a success , so how difficult would it be to build an air tight capsule sat on a volume of fuel?

 

[waht]

It's relatively easy. The hard part is not to blow up before launch, 10 feet off the ground, or having your air tight capsule taking a nose dive on your neighbor's house.

 

[binzing]

there's a civilian in Oregon, who'se doing it, he has a complete, one-man, rocket, its all ready, with launch pad. If I remember right, he's using hydrogen peroxide for the fuel. He's quite ingenius and is even producing his own his grade hydrogen peroxide(distilling from(i think) 30%)

 

[russ_watters]

Doing it right(safely) requires at least a hundred million dollars. I just put that movie on my netflix list, but no, it isn't realistic to believe a civilian can do that. Not even a sub-orbital flight. I'm sure you've all heard the old joke -- but going into orbit relaly is rocket science.

SpaceShipOne won the X-prize of $10 million, but cost $20 million -- and it came nowhere close to achieving orbit (half the altitude, 1/8th the speed - overall, 1/60th the energy according to wik).

 

[russ_watters]

Not even a sub-orbital flight.

Ehh, well, I should say obviously a filthy rich civilian like Paul Allen can do a suborbital flight - he funded the winning x-prize team. But not an ordinary farmer.

 

[rewebster]

I'll give it less than a hundred years--100 years ago only the rich could afford cars, nice telescopes, and refrigerators--and taking pleasure trips

 

[Mk]

He's quite ingenius and is even producing his own his grade hydrogen peroxide(distilling from(i think) 30%)

Well, I don't think that is that tough.

 

[russ_watters]

I'll give it less than a hundred years--100 years ago only the rich could afford cars, nice telescopes, and refrigerators--and taking pleasure trips

A hundred years ago, a car didn't cost a hundred million dollars. You're still off by a few orders of magnitude and comparing the rich to the middle class instead of the rich to the government. A better comparison would be to say that a hundred years ago, only the government could afford battleships -- and that's still how it is today.

 

[binzing]

No, the distillation isn't that tough, but its dangerous and requires skill.

 

[rewebster]

A hundred years ago, a car didn't cost a hundred million dollars. You're still off by a few orders of magnitude and comparing the rich to the middle class instead of the rich to the government. A better comparison would be to say that a hundred years ago, only the government could afford battleships -- and that's still how it is today.

I don't think that personal 'space travel' is that far fetched in 100 years (or less)--or will be only for the very rich or just governments. I really wasn't thinking just about the cost but the technological acceleration that would make it feasible--and who knows, maybe scientific discoveries from new theories may make it happen in 50 to 75 years.

"Originally priced at US$159,000, the UNIVAC I rose in price until they were between $1,250,000 and $1,500,000."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I

and I wonder what the 'cost' is for a similar calculating capability output is today?