Student Moon Shot Questions

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SpaceShot2018

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Hello Space Enthusiasts!


My name is James and 12 of my friends from my introduction to aerospace class were chatting. We thought to ourselves, why has a student group not gone to space yet? The severe lack of motivation from our peers that is going to slow down the industry. The moon landing was almost 50 years ago. Why haven't we been back? WE ARE GOING TO FIX THAT. My friends and I have assembled a plan to put a small rover on the moon by 2022 for our senior design project. But not only are we going to simply land, we are going to bring the rover back! Peter, our robotics guy, will be handling the rover, but this thread is going to be all about rockets!


We made a timeline and we promised ourselves to sacrifice whatever it takes to achieve it. First step, 2019. Our plan will be to develop a fully reusable bi-propellant liquid rocket by the end of this semester. Hence, Spaceshot2019. Since we are only taking about 16 credits a piece, we should be fine. Since we are going to be smart about our steps the first vehicle, Von Brawn 1, will utilize high test hydrogen peroxide and kerosene. This is that we eliminate any need for cryogenic equipment to get our feet wet. The rocket will have about a 400 psi chamber pressure and produce 11000 lbf of thrust. John is working on the pumps and we are going to utilize a gas generator cycle like the V2. The rocket should be able to carry about 100-120 kg of payload and weight anywhere in a range of 1800-1950 pounds.


Step two is orbit. Major companies today like Virgin Galatica are using planes to launch rockets into space. But what if we got rid of the plane? Over the past week we have developed a concept to use a balloon to launch a rocket off of directly into orbit. Andrew, Bartholomew, and James are on this sub team and should be able to fly a "level 3" rocket off of it as proof of concept and for the pregame show for this year's spaceshot. This will save us thousands of dollars and loads of deltaV.


Step three is of course the moon! Thomas and Simon are going to talk to one of the professors next week to gauge what exact maneuvers we will need to get there. We also need a lot of power that is light weight to get there. After our preliminary trade study we have gone with liquid fluorine-nitric acid for our main rocket fuel. It is mind blowing no one has used this stuff yet! An engine of this magnitude will put South Hampton Institute of Technology on the MAP.


That is all the public details for now but I have just a few questions.

  1. Where does SpaceX buy their turbo pumps? I can't find it anywhere...
  2. Will there be a loss in performance using said pumps for H202 or Fluorine?
  3. Our school has given us a budget of $850. We obviously need more than that to go to space. How fast do you think it will take to crowdfund our goal of $10,000
  4. Does anyone have contact info for UCSD, Michigan, or Purdue's teams? We are looking to recruit people and potential customers.
  5. How much DeltaV loss should we expect from our thrust vectoring system?
  6. Is moon dust poisonous? When we get the rover back do we need to wear suits?
  7. Does anyone have a good book on orbital transfers?
  8. One forum we found said that Kerbal Space Program uses real physics. Can we just import our engine to the software? How accurate is this?
  9. How long does it take for an FAA waiver? We want to be proactive and get one ASAP.
  10. Who is Karmen and what does the line mean? We don't want to cross any lines without permission from authority and local governments.

LOOK OUT FOR OUR GOFUNDME SOON.


Thanks -South Hampton Institute of Technology Space Squad
 
Oh boy this is going to be fun. Heck, it's been a couple of years since the last rockoon thread but this one is several times the magnitude. Heck moon for $10K? Why not?
 
SpaceX gets their turbo pumps from Sharper Image.

True story.
 
Really? South Hampton Institute of Technology Space Squad(SHI##S)

So what kind of joke is this?
 
I really hope that this is a joke post, otherwise I have many questions.

When I was a young'un, I tried to design my own little moon shot. In my defense, I was between 13 and 15 at the time, and didn't fully grasp the sheer complexity that went into something like that. Heck, I'm involved in a space shot (just up to 330k feet), and I feel like the technological complexity of that is almost beyond my understanding.

If you're serious, please consider researching the Apollo program to get a better perspective on the management end of things. I recommend "Stages to Saturn" and "Moon Launch!" both of which are available on Amazon. $10k is very far from enough to pull off a project as ambitious as this. You may want to consider scaling things back to, say, a lander that rides on someone else's rocket, and multiply your timescales and budget by an order of magnitude.
 
I don't want to rain on your parade, but what you are proposing is incredibly expensive and difficult. I seriously doubt the FAA will grant you permission to launch a large rocket from a balloon without massive amounts of paperwork and years of analysis. This idea has been around for a while and I don't know how far people have actually taken it.
 
"Mr. Spock, Analysis?"

"Fascinating, Captain. Star Fleet Command does not have a record of any contributions to the human race from a group with that name."
 
And the acronym for the South Hampton Institute Technology....S.H.I.T...

Now which one of our little jokesters is it? Could this be the OCF boys? Who knows....
 
Ha at first I thought it was a serious post from the guys(s) who had that god-awful rocket balloon sketch on ...was it gofundme or kickstarter..Or the one with the two stage sugar motor and AP and CP motor...Or the one with the full scale V2 who said "This is happening!" Wonder where he got off to. o_O

"Hence, SpaceShot2019" when in fact their name is SpaceShot2018
S.H.I.T was used in the movie Accepted. It was South Harmon on the movie though. Funny movie.

I was a little bummed that it wasn't real though. I was going to sell them my excess DeltaV at a premium!
 
" Von Brawn 1" isn't a bad idea for name (except, of course, for the associations with slave labor and tons of high explosives dropped onto civilians) .

I am guessing that somewhere, someone, has a paper towel tube rocket called "The Von Brawny"

I was hooked until about the middle of the second paragraph. The weirdly specific technical details were actually pitch-perfect for this kind of post, but it is hard to simulate the right degree of cluelessness without signaling that you know what you are getting wrong.
 
Ha at first I thought it was a serious post from the guys(s) who had that god-awful rocket balloon sketch on ...was it gofundme or kickstarter..Or the one with the two stage sugar motor and AP and CP motor...Or the one with the full scale V2 who said "This is happening!" Wonder where he got off to. o_O

Any chance you have a link to that rockoon sketch? I'm interested, in a morbid sense.
 
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