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Honest question by someone who is not familiar with this space: what prevents a well-resourced by determined civilian team from beating them? Like, yes, this is

Honest question by someone who is not familiar with this space: what prevents a well-resourced by determined civilian team from beating them? Like, yes, this is rocket science…but it's rocket science done by a team of college students. Surely there are other groups interested in this kind of thing? Does the government step in at some point and go "that's enough" when you try to do significantly better?

kevmo314 2y ago
At some point the label of amateur starts costing more than the value the achievements bring.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  The value is in educating the next generation of rocketmen.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    idk what "value" people expect out of a model rocket, anyway. Of course SpaceX or NASA is sending things to orbit. The value is you get to have fun launching things into space yourself!
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Working through the equations, and then building a working machine from it, is very educational.
lmm 2y ago
This is the amateur record, not the civilian one. And while the group may be "student-run", if you check their sponsors page it's funded partly by the university and partly by a who's who of the aerospace industry (Boeing and SpaceX are prominent), which I suspect is much easier for a college student group (who make a good feel-good cause, and those companies are implicitly courting to come and work for them) than a group of working adults.
- plugger 2y ago
  The biggest hurdle (besides knowledge) in an endeavor like this is cost. Those sponsors aren't providing technical expertise. The main 'competitive advantage' USC RPL has developed that enabled this space shot is their in house filament wound carbon fibre cased ammonium perchlorate motors. By swapping comparatively heavy/over engineered aluminum motor casings that are reusable they make single use cf cased motors. I'm pretty sure Boeing and SpaceX aren't the places you go for solid motors.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    > Those sponsors aren't providing technical expertise. Do you know that about this specific case? Because I personally know a similar student team where the sponsor absolutely is giving guidance on technical matters.
    - plugger 2y ago
      Look, did they use industry to help them with things like xraying their motor grains to check to confirm they had no voids? possibly. But this team has been at this for nearly 20 years and made their first spaceshot attempt over a decade ago (Traveler I). All of their in house designed and built GPS and radio triangulation electronics failed. It was the COTS stuff that gave them good data. I would think if private industry was doing any heavy lifting for them that wouldn't have occurred. They've blown up a lot of their motors in testing to get to their R class motor they used here. I also doubt that would have been the case if they were getting private sector assistance.
- monksy 2y ago
  Not only that but they're a self organizing team. Unlike the professional world they want to be there, they're not getting selected out due to vibe checks/leetcode proficiency or filtered out due to comp ask. Also they don't have business dictating design or trying to ban engineering practices.
plugger 2y ago
Nothing. The FAA in the US is pretty good about these things and as long as you stay below 490,000 ft AGL and are flying a sounding rocket (eg not trying to make orbit). With that said, well-resourced doesn't matter too much, it's more knowledge and experience. CSXT attempts were done by a team of aerospace engineers experienced in these types of things in their day jobs. They reached space (above 100km AGL) twice. USCRPL has been doing this for well over a decade, and have also reached space twice. And they've had heaps of failures along the way. TLDR; Going Mach 5 in fairly thick atmosphere is exceptionally hard to do without encountering a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Flying a two stage to space is more efficient and less rough on the rocket, but no one has done that yet as it's quite a bit harder that a relatively dumb 4fnc rocket.
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  There is an interesting documentary about a team from Sheffield University and their attempt to reach the Karman line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZUuVvpgoCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZUuVvpgoCU
xyx0826 2y ago
I think college student teams strike a combo of time, talent and resource that would be surprisingly hard to come by in the larger “civilian world.” In college, you have a bunch of freshly educated, similarly minded people in one place with a whole bunch of free time to put towards one project, highly motivated because it’s both an extracurricular escape and a career prep achievement. And these teams are often financially supported by their school departments or fundraisers. If you fail, there are little if any consequences on your life. All these motivators improve the likelihood of making something truly impressive. Sure, we can make an arrangement like this out of college. Call up your ex-rocket club teammates, who have all now graduated and making banks at rocket startups. Spend the Thanksgiving week grinding out the CAD, code and circuit boards then test everything out in a desert. But projects like this are a huge time investment and with work and family in the way, they can often be very difficult to coordinate and pull off. Even if your rocket does end up shooting off and breaking a record, does it truly “beat them”? I find it a bit hard to compare a team of similarly educated college students to a group of adults, usually with relevant professional backgrounds. Maybe the closest we can get are YouTuber collabs. Sometimes I miss my days spent on my college team; it’s pretty hard for me to get an exciting, rewarding, comradely and occasionally traumatizing experience like that ever again.
- plugger 2y ago
  > I think college student teams strike a combo of time, talent and resource that would be surprisingly hard to come by in the larger “civilian world.” The flip-side of this that you have a bunch of very smart young people absolutely dripping with theory knowledge and close to zero relevant real world experience in anything applicable in this space. The ability of college university teams to make exceptionally bone headed f ups is very well known. I've mentored a couple of university rocket teams for over 5 years now and I can tell you it's often an exercise in 'unknown unknowns'. USC RPL has been at this for almost 20 years now. Their main competitive advantage (besides in-house cf cased motors) is documentation and knowledge transfer. As I'm sure you can imagine there are probably no founding team members actively involved today. I was at Balls in 2013 (IIRC it was 13) when they launched their first Traveler rocket, which was their first space shot attempt. They didn't actually reach that goal until April 2019.
bragr 2y ago
Amateur rocketry is relatively common, although space shots are a considerable engineering effort. A good example is BPS.space (Joe Barnard) on youtube [1], who is making significant progress towards a space shot (over the karman line) and documenting it in detail, though he's definitely not the first to do a space shot. He's doing everything himself including his own solid propellent, nozzles, casings, flight computers, control surfaces, cameras, and flight computer. On the regulatory side, the FAA has a regulatory regime to support these kinds of activities. There are amateur launch facilities like the Friends of Amateur Rocketry [2] in the Mojave Desert that support these kinds of launches, although they do require you progress through successful launches of smaller rockets to get permission to fly larger rockets, so you can't just rock up with a huge rocket the first time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@BPSspace/videos https://www.youtube.com/@BPSspace/videos [2] https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/ https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Tom Mueller (#1 hire at SpaceX) and friends had been working on big amateur liquid fueled rockets in his garage before Musk got him to leave TRW.
  - chasd00 2y ago
    Mueller was a member of RRS which is legendary in the amateur rocketry scene. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Research_Society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Research_Society
hoseja 2y ago
Feds are gonna come and talk to you very sternly, at first.
chasd00 2y ago
A lot of these college teams are mentored by someone in the HPR (high powered rocketry) hobby. Many of the college level competitions require it. HPR hobbyists have flown above 300k feet, and once you’ve reached 100k going higher it largely a propellant cost problem. 100k feet is a goal for many hobbyists because you’re above Mach2, doing staging, plus recovery and altimeters have to work differently at that altitude. However, going higher just means more propellant. There’s an annual event called BALLS out in Nevada where HPR flyers can go as high as they want. There’s also a site called FAR (friends of amateur rocketry) where you can fly above 100k ft as well as liquid biprop engines if you want. https://www.tripoli.org/content.aspx?page_id=4002&club_id=795696&item_id=2104846 https://www.tripoli.org/content.aspx?page_id=4002&club_id=79... https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/ https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/
- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  It's not just more propellant. Note the engineering that went into keeping the thing from burning up. Or look at the MESOS rocket--the guy who built that took the choice of delayed ignition of the second stage, accepting the extra gravity loss in exchange for less drag loss. And if you don't have a guidance system you have to complete your burn low enough that aerodynamic forces keep your rocket pointed up during the burn. The bigger your burn the more of an issue that becomes.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
mclau156 2y ago
This is not traditional rocket science of turbines and cryogenic fluids, this is igniting solid propellant and ensuring your rocket is strong enough to not explode
snowwrestler 2y ago
You mean like SpaceX, which is a well-resourced and determined civilian team?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Notably not an amateur team.
  - snowwrestler 2y ago
    Agreed but the post I replied to said civilian, not amateur. How about Armadillo Aerospace: better example?
carabiner 2y ago
Mostly tooling, machining. Autoclaves to cure the carbon, lathes, CNC fab. Total cost not including the space is easily over $100k. Few hobbyists can do this, but a university can sponsor it when it'll be used by multiple groups and for research.
hermitcrab 2y ago
The old saying goes 'Rocket science is easy. Rocket engineering is hard.'. You need a lot of expertise and experience to build a rocket that is light and strong enough to get anywhere near this sort of altitute and also be recoverable afterwards. So many things can go wrong.

kevmo314 2y ago

At some point the label of amateur starts costing more than the value the achievements bring.

WalterBright 2y ago
The value is in educating the next generation of rocketmen.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  idk what "value" people expect out of a model rocket, anyway. Of course SpaceX or NASA is sending things to orbit. The value is you get to have fun launching things into space yourself!
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Working through the equations, and then building a working machine from it, is very educational.

lmm 2y ago

This is the amateur record, not the civilian one. And while the group may be "student-run", if you check their sponsors page it's funded partly by the university and partly by a who's who of the aerospace industry (Boeing and SpaceX are prominent), which I suspect is much easier for a college student group (who make a good feel-good cause, and those companies are implicitly courting to come and work for them) than a group of working adults.

plugger 2y ago
The biggest hurdle (besides knowledge) in an endeavor like this is cost. Those sponsors aren't providing technical expertise. The main 'competitive advantage' USC RPL has developed that enabled this space shot is their in house filament wound carbon fibre cased ammonium perchlorate motors. By swapping comparatively heavy/over engineered aluminum motor casings that are reusable they make single use cf cased motors. I'm pretty sure Boeing and SpaceX aren't the places you go for solid motors.
- echoangle 2y ago
  > Those sponsors aren't providing technical expertise. Do you know that about this specific case? Because I personally know a similar student team where the sponsor absolutely is giving guidance on technical matters.
  - plugger 2y ago
    Look, did they use industry to help them with things like xraying their motor grains to check to confirm they had no voids? possibly. But this team has been at this for nearly 20 years and made their first spaceshot attempt over a decade ago (Traveler I). All of their in house designed and built GPS and radio triangulation electronics failed. It was the COTS stuff that gave them good data. I would think if private industry was doing any heavy lifting for them that wouldn't have occurred. They've blown up a lot of their motors in testing to get to their R class motor they used here. I also doubt that would have been the case if they were getting private sector assistance.
monksy 2y ago
Not only that but they're a self organizing team. Unlike the professional world they want to be there, they're not getting selected out due to vibe checks/leetcode proficiency or filtered out due to comp ask. Also they don't have business dictating design or trying to ban engineering practices.

plugger 2y ago

Nothing. The FAA in the US is pretty good about these things and as long as you stay below 490,000 ft AGL and are flying a sounding rocket (eg not trying to make orbit). With that said, well-resourced doesn't matter too much, it's more knowledge and experience. CSXT attempts were done by a team of aerospace engineers experienced in these types of things in their day jobs. They reached space (above 100km AGL) twice. USCRPL has been doing this for well over a decade, and have also reached space twice. And they've had heaps of failures along the way. TLDR; Going Mach 5 in fairly thick atmosphere is exceptionally hard to do without encountering a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Flying a two stage to space is more efficient and less rough on the rocket, but no one has done that yet as it's quite a bit harder that a relatively dumb 4fnc rocket.

hermitcrab 2y ago
There is an interesting documentary about a team from Sheffield University and their attempt to reach the Karman line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZUuVvpgoCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZUuVvpgoCU

xyx0826 2y ago

I think college student teams strike a combo of time, talent and resource that would be surprisingly hard to come by in the larger “civilian world.” In college, you have a bunch of freshly educated, similarly minded people in one place with a whole bunch of free time to put towards one project, highly motivated because it’s both an extracurricular escape and a career prep achievement. And these teams are often financially supported by their school departments or fundraisers. If you fail, there are little if any consequences on your life. All these motivators improve the likelihood of making something truly impressive. Sure, we can make an arrangement like this out of college. Call up your ex-rocket club teammates, who have all now graduated and making banks at rocket startups. Spend the Thanksgiving week grinding out the CAD, code and circuit boards then test everything out in a desert. But projects like this are a huge time investment and with work and family in the way, they can often be very difficult to coordinate and pull off. Even if your rocket does end up shooting off and breaking a record, does it truly “beat them”? I find it a bit hard to compare a team of similarly educated college students to a group of adults, usually with relevant professional backgrounds. Maybe the closest we can get are YouTuber collabs. Sometimes I miss my days spent on my college team; it’s pretty hard for me to get an exciting, rewarding, comradely and occasionally traumatizing experience like that ever again.

plugger 2y ago
> I think college student teams strike a combo of time, talent and resource that would be surprisingly hard to come by in the larger “civilian world.” The flip-side of this that you have a bunch of very smart young people absolutely dripping with theory knowledge and close to zero relevant real world experience in anything applicable in this space. The ability of college university teams to make exceptionally bone headed f ups is very well known. I've mentored a couple of university rocket teams for over 5 years now and I can tell you it's often an exercise in 'unknown unknowns'. USC RPL has been at this for almost 20 years now. Their main competitive advantage (besides in-house cf cased motors) is documentation and knowledge transfer. As I'm sure you can imagine there are probably no founding team members actively involved today. I was at Balls in 2013 (IIRC it was 13) when they launched their first Traveler rocket, which was their first space shot attempt. They didn't actually reach that goal until April 2019.

bragr 2y ago

Amateur rocketry is relatively common, although space shots are a considerable engineering effort. A good example is BPS.space (Joe Barnard) on youtube [1], who is making significant progress towards a space shot (over the karman line) and documenting it in detail, though he's definitely not the first to do a space shot. He's doing everything himself including his own solid propellent, nozzles, casings, flight computers, control surfaces, cameras, and flight computer. On the regulatory side, the FAA has a regulatory regime to support these kinds of activities. There are amateur launch facilities like the Friends of Amateur Rocketry [2] in the Mojave Desert that support these kinds of launches, although they do require you progress through successful launches of smaller rockets to get permission to fly larger rockets, so you can't just rock up with a huge rocket the first time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@BPSspace/videos https://www.youtube.com/@BPSspace/videos [2] https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/ https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/

pfdietz 2y ago
Tom Mueller (#1 hire at SpaceX) and friends had been working on big amateur liquid fueled rockets in his garage before Musk got him to leave TRW.
- chasd00 2y ago
  Mueller was a member of RRS which is legendary in the amateur rocketry scene. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Research_Society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Research_Society

hoseja 2y ago

Feds are gonna come and talk to you very sternly, at first.

chasd00 2y ago

A lot of these college teams are mentored by someone in the HPR (high powered rocketry) hobby. Many of the college level competitions require it. HPR hobbyists have flown above 300k feet, and once you’ve reached 100k going higher it largely a propellant cost problem. 100k feet is a goal for many hobbyists because you’re above Mach2, doing staging, plus recovery and altimeters have to work differently at that altitude. However, going higher just means more propellant. There’s an annual event called BALLS out in Nevada where HPR flyers can go as high as they want. There’s also a site called FAR (friends of amateur rocketry) where you can fly above 100k ft as well as liquid biprop engines if you want. https://www.tripoli.org/content.aspx?page_id=4002&club_id=795696&item_id=2104846 https://www.tripoli.org/content.aspx?page_id=4002&club_id=79... https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/ https://friendsofamateurrocketry.org/

LorenPechtel 2y ago
It's not just more propellant. Note the engineering that went into keeping the thing from burning up. Or look at the MESOS rocket--the guy who built that took the choice of delayed ignition of the second stage, accepting the extra gravity loss in exchange for less drag loss. And if you don't have a guidance system you have to complete your burn low enough that aerodynamic forces keep your rocket pointed up during the burn. The bigger your burn the more of an issue that becomes.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

mclau156 2y ago

This is not traditional rocket science of turbines and cryogenic fluids, this is igniting solid propellant and ensuring your rocket is strong enough to not explode

snowwrestler 2y ago

You mean like SpaceX, which is a well-resourced and determined civilian team?

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Notably not an amateur team.
- snowwrestler 2y ago
  Agreed but the post I replied to said civilian, not amateur. How about Armadillo Aerospace: better example?

carabiner 2y ago

Mostly tooling, machining. Autoclaves to cure the carbon, lathes, CNC fab. Total cost not including the space is easily over $100k. Few hobbyists can do this, but a university can sponsor it when it'll be used by multiple groups and for research.

hermitcrab 2y ago

The old saying goes 'Rocket science is easy. Rocket engineering is hard.'. You need a lot of expertise and experience to build a rocket that is light and strong enough to get anywhere near this sort of altitute and also be recoverable afterwards. So many things can go wrong.