Wanna Buy a Reusable Rocket for 19k USD?

Anonymous Coward writes with story from the Mainchi Daily News: "'Earlier this month, Hokkaido University started putting its Camui rockets on the open market. Camui rockets are true rockets, being 1.6 meters long, flying at 300 meters per second and parachuting slowly to the ground after reaching heights of up to 1 kilometer.' The Camui use a mixture of fixed fuel acrylic and liquid oxygen."

Be sure to read the fine print:

[Black Parrot]

"Not recommended for use near airports or presidential motorcades."

Not first post :-(

[Anonymous Coward]

Feh. If I only had some faster-than-light propulsion I would have got first post, but all I've got are these *damned* slow rockets. :-(

WMD?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems much more of a WMD than the Iraqi aluminum tubes. When does the bombing start?

Bonfire night

[peterprior]

Well, bonfire night in the UK is less than a month away. I wonder what the shipping time is on these. :)

Camui rockets suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Camui rocket fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Camui rocket (a 300m/s w/1km altitude max) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Titan IV running 150m/s, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Camui, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, the guidance system will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even GPS is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Camuis, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Camui that has run faster than its Boeing counterpart, despite the Camui's faster propellant architecture. My hobby kit model rocket with helicopter nose cose runs faster than this 300m/s rocket at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Camui is a superior machine.

Camui addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Camui over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Re:Camui rockets suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate the bandwidth-distance of a Camui rocket filled with DAT-72 tapes...

Might be a possible candiate for a new "space speed record" for data.

Wanna Buy a Reusable Rocket for 19k USD?

[Prophetic_Truth]

No, Not really.

Re:Be sure to read the fine print:

[polecat_redux]

Buying one of those rockets these days is a sure-fire way to get a puppet regime installed in your living room.

To summarize

[ceeam]

19k big firework that you need some liquid oxygen to launch. Hm... Sounds like a bargain, what's the catch?

+2 informative?

[RMH101]

can we turn this into a "which is the better platform: crack or crystal meth" thread?

IN OTHER NEWS:

[nilbog]

The Bush administration has found evidence of a massive WMD missile facility in your backyard.

Re:Be sure to read the fine print:

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying one of those rockets these days is a sure-fire way to get a puppet regime installed in your living room.

So is marriage.

Re:Camui rockets suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Bush fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of Bush (IQ 2.5) for about 20 minutes now while he attempts to copy the Letter A from one piece of paper to another. 20 minutes. At home, John Kerry, which by all standards should be a lot slower than Bush due to flip-flopping, the same operation would take about 1 second. If that. In addition, during this letter transfer, the guidance system will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even My Balls are straining to keep up as I type this. I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working with Bush, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Republican avoid the draft faster than its Democrat counterpart, despite the Republican's more "patriotic" architecture. My hobby kit model rocket with helicopter nose cose runs faster than this 300m/s rocket at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Bush is a superior candidate. Bush addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Bush over other faster, cheaper, more mentally stable Candidates.

One most important question!

[ceeam]

Is there a section for a cat or do you strap it externally? Do they provide a tiny helmet?

Re:Camui rockets suck

[KrunZ]

If they like auto trolls complaints, why not expect a little more. E.g. from Scott Pakins Complaint generator:

http://www.pakin.org/complaint?firstname=Camui&p gr aphs=10&gender=c

"The purpose of this letter is to outline a plan to rise to the challenge of thwarting Camui's money-grubbing, vile plans. Let's review the errors in Camui's statements in order. First, Camui's use of acrimonious scrubs is unquestionably pathetic. I do not find warnings that are stingy, sexist, and impolitic to be "funny". Maybe I lack a sense of humor, but maybe in order to solve the big problems with Camui, we must first understand these problems, and to understand them, we must replace today's chaos and lack of vision with order and a supreme sense of purpose.

Camui will probably never understand why it scares me so much. And it does scare me: Its double standards are scary, its snow jobs are scary, and most of all, it has never gotten ahead because of its hard work or innovative ideas. Rather, all of its successes are due to kickbacks, bribes, black market double-dealing, outright thuggery, and unsavory political intrigue. Camui's wheelings and dealings leave me with several unanswered questions: Will peeling back the onion of its treacherous philippics cause it to shed tears or will it merely enhance its desire to manipulate everything and everybody? And when it looks in the mirror in the morning, does Camui see more than the same, dissolute face that all randy, flagitious worrywarts share? These are difficult questions to answer, because Camui hides behind the carefully managed prevarication that neurotic, brassbound geeks are easily housebroken. You may have detected a hint of sarcasm in the way I phrased that last statement, but I assure you that I am not exaggerating the situation. If Camui can't be reasoned out of its prejudices, it must be laughed out of them. If Camui can't be argued out of its selfishness, it must be shamed out of it.

I may be beating a dead horse here, but I do want to point out that I find that some of Camui's choices of words in its pranks would not have been mine. For example, I would have substituted "ugly" for "hexosemonophosphoric" and "piteous" for "anthropomorphotheist." If there is one thing I have learned, it is this: At no time in the past did mean-spirited warmongers shamble through the streets of cities, demanding rights they imagine some supernatural power has bestowed upon them. Camui's smears are based on a denial of reality, on the substitution of a deliberately falsified picture of the world in place of reality. And this dishonesty, this refusal to admit the truth, will have some very serious consequences for all of us some day.

What that means, simply put, is that I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people. I can therefore assure you that I have a dream that my children will be able to live in a world filled with open spaces and beautiful wilderness -- not in a dark, wishy-washy world run by surly cozeners. If my memory serves me correctly, Camui's cronies believe that anyone who resists Camui deserves to be crushed. It should not be surprising that they believe this, however. As we all know, minds that have been so maimed that they believe that we ought to worship bloodthirsty fast-buck artists as folk heroes can believe anything, especially if it's false. There is a problem here. A very large, frowzy, coldhearted ..."

Re:regulations

[Anonymous Coward]

Concerned your plane might be shot down by a rich kid's rocket?

Sir, the affordable Camui range is aimed at the masses so your plane is much more likely to be brought down by missiles fired by kids from lower income families.

I trust this allays your fears.

Camui Marketing Director

It will go absolutely perfectly...

[vudufixit]

With the surplus decommissioned missile silo I picked up for a pittance. Next step: declaring my fully armed and operational missile silo sovereign territory. Surviving relatives of Randy Weaver, Ted Kaczinsky and David Koresh are welcome to stay with me.

reaching heights of up to 1 kilometer..

[D4MO]

..at 300 meters per second. A little over 3 seconds worth of blast. Hey, lasts longer than me, honey.

Re:why is this here?

[ceeam]

The problem w/ 60km is that you can be sure you won't be the first one to pick it from the landing site.

Playboy magazine?

[tod_miller]

Star-struck space lovers can now buy their own bona fide rockets, thanks to a Hokkaido University aiming for the stars, according to Weekly Playboy (10/26).

?? So I am not the only one who reads the articles?

Lets think seriously:

1: When does linux get installed
2: What kind of imaging can we expect
3: Some more money than sense geek gonna hack us up a nice GPS tracking and imaging softwqare with gyro compass and GIS based ground sensing auto navigation?

Neat.

Re:why is this here?

[craXORjack]

a km?

Yes, but Japanese are short so 1 km probably seems much more impressive to them.