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A 1/48 scale model of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket
- stwr 6y agoLongtime supporter of Joe and his incredible model flights. Also worth looking up his Sprite development!
- rydre 6y agoBeen watching Joe for a long time. The dude deserves more support
- calin2k 6y agoamazing perseverence, but a bit overproduced :)
- Ericson2314 6y agoThe guy even looks a bit like Elon. 1/48 scale net worth too?
- spuz 6y agoThey don't call him budget Elon for no reason. If he is not running his own orbital rocket company in 10 years I will be amazed.
- ben_w 6y agoA net worth of 1/48th of Musk’s would be enough to buy eight Falcon 9 launches.
- hn_check 6y agoShouldn't it be 1 / 110,592 scale net worth though? Saying 1/48th model is a bit misleading as it's 1/48th in 3 dimensions, whereas worth is one dimensional.
- rfrey 6y agoNot really, since we're really talking about the size of swimming pool you need to hold the coins you dive into.
- spuz 6y agoThis is all the more impressive when you realise all the design, build, programming, filming, editing and even the music is done by one guy. I highly recommend subscribing to his YouTube channel to keep up with his current project: https://youtu.be/eh8ic1-5wFo https://youtu.be/eh8ic1-5wFo
- airstrike 6y agoTruly amazing. > Also, do I even have to say it? Of course those boosters are gonna land! The propulsive landing test program is isolated from the Falcon Heavy program right now, but the two will merge as the success rate for both programs increases.
- rrss 6y agoIt seems like it would be really hard to land the boosters with no throttle.
- jcims 6y agoThere's been a few clues that we won't forever be without throttle. IIRC it looked like he was tinkering with a hybrid propellant system. Could also create a flame diverter if he's stuck with solid propellant.
- rrss 6y agoI just watched a couple of his videos, and it sounds like he got pretty close to landing with solid propellant ('echo'), but ultimately decided that it was too finicky and ended that project to move onto a liquid biprop rocket.
- epaulson 6y agoAre liquid engines still in the realm of hobbyists? The estes engines he's using are pretty widely used and understood to be fairly safe, is there something equivalent for liquid rockets?
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoThat's really cool! I wonder what the bottom-line price tag on something like that would be.
- SupriseAnxiety 6y agoI remember my first play around with the small rocket kits. 1 small motor and you press “Fire” annnnd it’s gone. You can’t see it anymore and it’s lost lol.
- dTal 6y agoThat just means you put too big a motor in it! Each motor letter designation is double the total impulse of the previous one - it's a log scale. If you stick a C motor into a small, well-built, lightweight rocket, it's going to go over a thousand feet. Unless you painted it a very bright color, you're probably going to struggle... so stick to the A motors for your maiden flight! (Also: launch from the upwind edge of the field!)
- bkfh 6y agoThat's exactly the content I'm on HN for
- andarleen 6y agoRare gem - the bulk is made of open source stuff no one asked for, rants against employers, and weird calls to revolution. Worth staying for the rare ones tho.
- unixhero 6y agoThose open source tools are sometimes how I stay employed. Wouldn't want to be without HN.
- andarleen 6y agoTrue - but I am referring to useless open source posts. Forgot to add those claiming OOP, code documentation, and so on, are useless. Waste of time and are a distraction from what you mentioned.
- amelius 6y agoYes, this is cool to see. But at the same time it shows that rocket tech is not as difficult as people make it out to be. (Rockets were difficult when we didn't have computers.) Also, some universities have student teams which regularly launch similar rockets. I'm personally hoping for someone to build an IC fab or even a wafer stepper in their garage.
- humbledrone 6y ago> But at the same time it shows that rocket tech is not as difficult as people make it out to be. It really doesn't. The scale model probably weighs a few pounds where as the real Falcon Heavy weighs 3 million pounds [1]. Think about what a different scale that is! Also note that the scale model's (really cool) test flight failed -- with the real Falcon Heavy that lesson would cost something like $150M. I think this is kind of similar to: it's really easy to query/serve a SQL database even if it's a few tens of terabytes in size. But make it a few tens of exabytes, and things are dramatically more difficult due to the scale. The architecture that works at the terabyte size (single machine) falls over completely. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy
- throwablePie 6y agoSpaceX has a huge potential opportunity for raising funding / earning profits via toy licensing and sales: https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacex-overwhelmed-by-demand-for-toy-dinosaur-that-went-into-orbit-51590931933 https://www.barrons.com/articles/spacex-overwhelmed-by-deman... Wouldn't it be interesting if Elon could achieve his Mars objectives faster not by selling LEO satellite services or space launch capacity but by selling and/or licensing toys (and sparking dreams) here on Earth? Despite the current pandemic, this is a great time to be a young person. Dreams and human potential seem infinite. Edit: Who would own the IP, NASA or SpaceX or both?
- qzw 6y agoAbsolutely. I would buy the heck out of a 4000-piece Falcon Heavy LEGO set, and I suspect I’m not alone.
- rootusrootus 6y agoYep, it can go right next to my 1969 piece Saturn V.
- traes 6y agoThat is genius. They should continue the trend and do a 2020 Falcon (or whatever year they choose).
- rurounijones 6y agoSaturn V scale Falcon 9 fan submission under review. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba917b6e5b https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba...
- rurounijones 6y agoSaturn V scale Falcon 9 fan submission under review. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba917b6e5b https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1abc6458-52e8-4e7d-a04c-04ba...
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- liquidify 6y agoThe whole time I was reading this article, I was hoping I would eventually see a "buy now" button at the end. Alas...
- shash7 6y agoHe has a shop here - https://bps.space/shop https://bps.space/shop
- throwawaysea 6y agoI was just watching this channel yesterday after the SpaceX launch. Anyone know what he uses for the actual rocket engine bit? They don’t seem like something that can be throttled. And yes he definitely looks like Elon!
- JulianMorrison 6y agoIf nothing has changed from my childhood, probably Estes model rocket engines, that are solid fuel.
- aj7 6y agoWell, not exactly. First stage has 27 Merlin 1D engines.
- mandeepj 6y agoDepends which Falcon. Falcone 9 has 10 Merlin engines, while Heavy has 28. https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon_users_guide_042020.pdf https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon_users_guide_042020.pdf
- BasedCode 6y agoIf it's possible to fit that electronic hardware on something the size of a credit card how does it compare to what is used for that purpose in a real orbital rocket other than redundacy features?
- lisper 6y agoIt's basically the same technology. They're pretty common in airplanes nowadays. Here is an example of a portable unit intended for use as a backup: https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/iLevilSport.php https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/iLevilSport.p... And another one designed to be panel-mounted: https://www.dynonavionics.com/pocket-panel.php https://www.dynonavionics.com/pocket-panel.php If you want to get more details, the search terms you want are EFIS (electronic flight instrument system) and AHRS (attitude and heading reference system, pronounced "ay-harz").
- wbl 6y agoGimballed thrust puts this squarely into all the cool hobbies involve ITAR territory.
- Havoc 6y agoThe tube launched rocket looked decidedly weapon-like too. Cool tech though. Hope he doesn't get into trouble
- chrisdalke 6y agoHe’s been pretty careful to not do anything illegal (he’s talked about this in a few live-streams), for example not open-sourcing any of his control software and using just local IMU data for in-flight control.
- alkonaut 6y agoIs this a typically US thing or does this kind of thing risk getting you into trouble elsewhere too? I mean the first thing you'd want to try once you have a "platform" is things like GPS guidance, adding wings & making cruising rockets, trying terrain guidance etc. Isn't the cat out of the bag with this kind of tech already, much like strong crypto was once a non-exportaple technology in the US, but now it isn't? What exactly is the tech that is off limits (I don't mean tech that will get someone to come to your house and ask questions, but tech that is actually 100 % certainly illegal?)
- Danieru 6y agoAccessible to nation state actors, and order-able off Alibaba, are 2 different levels of "available. You would be surprised, that most acts of aggression do not have months of planning and 1M+ engineering budgets. Remember the most "special" tooling the 9/11 terrorists had was some cash plus basic flight training.
- bigiain 6y agoDidn't work out great for this guy from New Zealand: http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml (Not "go to jail" bad, but "The New Zealand government has moved aggressively to shut down this project -- and by using quite unscrupulous methods which appear to be in breach of the law." type of bad...)
- piyushpr134 6y agoA single guy has probably achieved what a whole division of a large corporation or a large govt agency would not be able to achieve in years
- qzw 6y agoIn a just world, he would have 1/48th of Elon’s fame/fortune too.
- baggy_trough 6y agoUnfortunately, sending 1/48 of an astronaut into orbit is not as valuable.
- ViViDboarder 6y ago1/24th* since it was two astronauts, no?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y agoSending 1/48th of an astronaut into orbit would be a great achievement actually. The problem is when you said an astronaut into 1/48th of an orbit, which is what this is currently doing :)
- bigiain 6y agoAt around $3k per kilo to orbit, I'd bet he'd be _very_ happy with the $6k or so 1/48th of a ~100kg astronaut+spacesuit would mean per launch! He ain't getting anywhere near orbit using Estes motors though... Not even 1/48th of the way to orbit I'd guess... (Hmmm, spaceflight.com's pricing page says they'll send a 3U 5kg cubesat payload to LEO for $295,000... That's I guess pretty close to "1/24th of an astronaut to orbit"? Minus the ~10,000% surcharge for "manrated" though, I'm guessing.)
- 4gotunameagain 6y agoI don't think you understand the breadth of rocket science, material science or the convexification of the mathematical model required to do what spacex does. While this is very cool and pretty, it's still an advanced toy.
- scottrogowski 6y agoHow high does this thing go? I read the article but as far as I can tell, it was never mentioned.
- pageandrew 6y agoBased on the videos, maybe 100-300ft?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TangoFB 6y agoDid it blow up during an engine test?
- whoisjuan 6y agoWow, he is even is trying to design landable boosters like in the real thing! WTF!
- amenghra 6y agoQu8k (https://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html https://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html) is some impressive amateur rocketry from 2011.
- eggy 6y agoIf SpaceX doesn't hire him, then Space Force surely has an opening!