5 ms·

You know, it’s sad whenever a tinkerer or explorer gets killed, but I have a feeling he knew this was his destiny, and this was clearly the path he loved in lif

by nlh 7y ago

You know, it’s sad whenever a tinkerer or explorer gets killed, but I have a feeling he knew this was his destiny, and this was clearly the path he loved in life. Good on him for being an explorer and pushing the limits. Sorry it had to come to a end :(

thombat 7y ago
One thing to tinker, another to claim that a steam-powered rocket would ever get to high altitude. Nevermind flat Earth, that's just setting your face against engineering.
- avian 7y ago
  This reminds me that there's a company claiming to be developing a steam-powered booster for orbital launches. Scott Manley did a video about them a while back [1]. Where this stands on the spectrum between a scam and a real thing remains to be seen, but they did seem to be convincing enough to get some investments and build a test rig. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    The major distinguishing factors between a scam and an also ran in my opinion are that for something to be a scam the people running it have to be aware that it will not work and that they have not ignored any expert advice telling them that it will not work in sufficiently clear terms that they can't claim that it is just naysaying. Plenty of people that relieved investors from their funds were unaware that what they were building was a scam. Plenty of people working for companies that built stuff that didn't work were not aware of the fact that it could not work until they themselves established that. Plenty of successes where there were people saying 'this can't possibly work' right up until the time that it did, in fact, work. Theranos, Moller sky car, Ubeam (now renamed to SonicEnergy in an attempt to leave their past behind them) -> clearly scams. This particular steam powered rocket is not a scam in the sense that it did not attempt to pass the risk or the eventual results onto others. It is merely very stupid, and it should serve as an object lesson in that if you are trying to do something in your backyard that normally has budgets in the 10's to 100's of millions that you are likely not going to succeed. Finally, it should teach people that your tests of vehicles of any kind that go up should be done unmanned as long as possible.
- cstross 7y ago
  If you squint at it the right way, the UK's Black Arrow launch vehicle was steam-powered; it used HTP (85-98% hydrogen peroxide) as an oxidizer, which decomposes to oxygen plus superheated steam on its way into the engine (the oxygen was then combusted with RP-1 fuel). The steam contributes a fair amount of reaction mass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow ... And the (one) satellite it successfully launched is still in orbit, nearly 50 years later.
  - justin66 7y ago
    You probably know this, but one can quite successfully skip the kerosene entirely and just use peroxide as a monopropellant with a silver catalyst. Presumably Hughes's belief system demanded that all his silver exist in coin form, hoarded and buried in the backyard, or something.
    - wolf550e 7y ago
      117 seconds specific impulse [1] is miserable. It is possible [2] to reach orbit with that, but not efficiently. 1 - http://www.astronautix.com/h/h2o2.html http://www.astronautix.com/h/h2o2.html 2 - https://space.stackexchange.com/a/8720 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/8720
  - mhh__ 7y ago
    I believe that we (the UK) are the only nation to develop and test a orbit-capable launch vehicle and then scrap it?
    - thesaint 7y ago
      Thank the EU?
nrr 7y ago
You know, I had some serious hopes that he'd actually find inspiration to pursue more mainstream rocket design through this hobby and use his experience operating on the fringes to make some interesting inroads in the mainstream. I can say that I'm only comforted thinking that he died doing what he loved. If only we all could be so lucky.
Igelau 7y ago
I score it somewhere between "Bodhi riding the giant wave at the end of 'Point Break'" and "Reichelt Testing his Flight Suit from the Eiffel Tower" on the tragedy scale.
krisoft 7y ago
"explorer and pushing the limits" Which limits exactly? According to the article he planed to go up to 5000 feet. That's a "rent a Cessna and pay your pilot buddy to take you up" territory.
- willis936 7y ago
  The limits of what a human is willing to do. Note that his title isn’t “rocket scientist” but “daredevil”. When you compare getting into a rocket you built on your own to riding a bike across the Grand Canyon, well, Evel Knievel seems tame.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    I think you misspelled "Evel": ;) https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Douchebag%20Knievel https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Douchebag%20...
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    You are only a daredevil if you win. Otherwise you are a losedevil
- lilSebastian 7y ago
  Or buy a weather balloon and stick a camera on it...
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > Which limits exactly? The limits of stuntmanship.
cdumler 7y ago
> Good on him for being an explorer and pushing the limits. NO. Just, no. This guy willfully ignored the knowledge and expertise that came before him; both, in how to accomplish the task and the demonstratively provable physics that show his goals were folly. If he just claimed that gravity was false and jumped off a cliff to the rocks below to prove it, it would just be "local idiot jumps to his death." Some how, if you add rockets and a flat earth conspiracy it gets praise? No. This is the tragedy of the U.S. education and mental health systems.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted. I love eccentric people but he wasn't likely to make any contributions to science; rather, he was a prop on a 'science TV' channel that that has very little science and lots of 'mysterious mysteries of strange mystery' - their top show right now is about the curse of the Bermuda triangle. The glorification of guys like this is part of why we have disease outbreaks due to people's unwillingness to vaccinate and why every attempt to have a serious public discussion about climate change is overrun by denialists and trolls.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > This guy willfully ignored the knowledge and expertise that came before him; This is true for all pioneers - the successful and the unsuccessful. Everything from airplanes to vaccines to the age of european exploration is a result of guys willfully ignoring the knowledge and expertise before them. > No. This is the tragedy of the U.S. education and mental health systems. I suppose except the "tragedy of the U.S. education and mental health systems" put a man on the moon, created the internet and the modern world. If you are going to blame something for the failures, you should credit it also for the successes.
  - cdumler 7y ago
    > This is true for all pioneers He wasn't a pioneer, though. It's one thing when people say it can't be physically done, and the people talking have no theoretical basis to support it. People said it would never be possible to fly, but they has zero physics to back up the statement. It's another when it has been physically done and the physics behind it is well understood. If he believe he was building a faster than engine using some new gravmetric-eletromagnetic effect, well more power to him. We have an ample amount of history on rockets, how to compute the physical performance of them, and a multitude of failure scenarios. This was ignored. When it came to putting a man on the moon, we used the might of our education to predict everything we could and used hindsight when we failed. Importantly, we built into the systems things that would tell us what was happening so if there was a failure we could learn to not make the same mistake again. Rocket systems fail, which is why you launch them without people first.

by nlh 7y ago

thombat 7y ago

One thing to tinker, another to claim that a steam-powered rocket would ever get to high altitude. Nevermind flat Earth, that's just setting your face against engineering.

avian 7y ago
This reminds me that there's a company claiming to be developing a steam-powered booster for orbital launches. Scott Manley did a video about them a while back [1]. Where this stands on the spectrum between a scam and a real thing remains to be seen, but they did seem to be convincing enough to get some investments and build a test rig. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The major distinguishing factors between a scam and an also ran in my opinion are that for something to be a scam the people running it have to be aware that it will not work and that they have not ignored any expert advice telling them that it will not work in sufficiently clear terms that they can't claim that it is just naysaying. Plenty of people that relieved investors from their funds were unaware that what they were building was a scam. Plenty of people working for companies that built stuff that didn't work were not aware of the fact that it could not work until they themselves established that. Plenty of successes where there were people saying 'this can't possibly work' right up until the time that it did, in fact, work. Theranos, Moller sky car, Ubeam (now renamed to SonicEnergy in an attempt to leave their past behind them) -> clearly scams. This particular steam powered rocket is not a scam in the sense that it did not attempt to pass the risk or the eventual results onto others. It is merely very stupid, and it should serve as an object lesson in that if you are trying to do something in your backyard that normally has budgets in the 10's to 100's of millions that you are likely not going to succeed. Finally, it should teach people that your tests of vehicles of any kind that go up should be done unmanned as long as possible.
cstross 7y ago
If you squint at it the right way, the UK's Black Arrow launch vehicle was steam-powered; it used HTP (85-98% hydrogen peroxide) as an oxidizer, which decomposes to oxygen plus superheated steam on its way into the engine (the oxygen was then combusted with RP-1 fuel). The steam contributes a fair amount of reaction mass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow ... And the (one) satellite it successfully launched is still in orbit, nearly 50 years later.
- justin66 7y ago
  You probably know this, but one can quite successfully skip the kerosene entirely and just use peroxide as a monopropellant with a silver catalyst. Presumably Hughes's belief system demanded that all his silver exist in coin form, hoarded and buried in the backyard, or something.
  - wolf550e 7y ago
    117 seconds specific impulse [1] is miserable. It is possible [2] to reach orbit with that, but not efficiently. 1 - http://www.astronautix.com/h/h2o2.html http://www.astronautix.com/h/h2o2.html 2 - https://space.stackexchange.com/a/8720 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/8720
- mhh__ 7y ago
  I believe that we (the UK) are the only nation to develop and test a orbit-capable launch vehicle and then scrap it?
  - thesaint 7y ago
    Thank the EU?

nrr 7y ago

You know, I had some serious hopes that he'd actually find inspiration to pursue more mainstream rocket design through this hobby and use his experience operating on the fringes to make some interesting inroads in the mainstream. I can say that I'm only comforted thinking that he died doing what he loved. If only we all could be so lucky.

Igelau 7y ago

I score it somewhere between "Bodhi riding the giant wave at the end of 'Point Break'" and "Reichelt Testing his Flight Suit from the Eiffel Tower" on the tragedy scale.

krisoft 7y ago

"explorer and pushing the limits" Which limits exactly? According to the article he planed to go up to 5000 feet. That's a "rent a Cessna and pay your pilot buddy to take you up" territory.

willis936 7y ago
The limits of what a human is willing to do. Note that his title isn’t “rocket scientist” but “daredevil”. When you compare getting into a rocket you built on your own to riding a bike across the Grand Canyon, well, Evel Knievel seems tame.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  I think you misspelled "Evel": ;) https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Douchebag%20Knievel https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Douchebag%20...
- lonelappde 7y ago
  You are only a daredevil if you win. Otherwise you are a losedevil
lilSebastian 7y ago
Or buy a weather balloon and stick a camera on it...
gridlockd 7y ago
> Which limits exactly? The limits of stuntmanship.

cdumler 7y ago

> Good on him for being an explorer and pushing the limits. NO. Just, no. This guy willfully ignored the knowledge and expertise that came before him; both, in how to accomplish the task and the demonstratively provable physics that show his goals were folly. If he just claimed that gravity was false and jumped off a cliff to the rocks below to prove it, it would just be "local idiot jumps to his death." Some how, if you add rockets and a flat earth conspiracy it gets praise? No. This is the tragedy of the U.S. education and mental health systems.

anigbrowl 7y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted. I love eccentric people but he wasn't likely to make any contributions to science; rather, he was a prop on a 'science TV' channel that that has very little science and lots of 'mysterious mysteries of strange mystery' - their top show right now is about the curse of the Bermuda triangle. The glorification of guys like this is part of why we have disease outbreaks due to people's unwillingness to vaccinate and why every attempt to have a serious public discussion about climate change is overrun by denialists and trolls.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dntbnmpls 7y ago
> This guy willfully ignored the knowledge and expertise that came before him; This is true for all pioneers - the successful and the unsuccessful. Everything from airplanes to vaccines to the age of european exploration is a result of guys willfully ignoring the knowledge and expertise before them. > No. This is the tragedy of the U.S. education and mental health systems. I suppose except the "tragedy of the U.S. education and mental health systems" put a man on the moon, created the internet and the modern world. If you are going to blame something for the failures, you should credit it also for the successes.
- cdumler 7y ago
  > This is true for all pioneers He wasn't a pioneer, though. It's one thing when people say it can't be physically done, and the people talking have no theoretical basis to support it. People said it would never be possible to fly, but they has zero physics to back up the statement. It's another when it has been physically done and the physics behind it is well understood. If he believe he was building a faster than engine using some new gravmetric-eletromagnetic effect, well more power to him. We have an ample amount of history on rockets, how to compute the physical performance of them, and a multitude of failure scenarios. This was ignored. When it came to putting a man on the moon, we used the might of our education to predict everything we could and used hindsight when we failed. Importantly, we built into the systems things that would tell us what was happening so if there was a failure we could learn to not make the same mistake again. Rocket systems fail, which is why you launch them without people first.