Wanna Buy a Reusable Rocket for 19k USD? 153
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."
regulations (Score:4, Interesting)
With so much airtraffic is not a danger?
Can be this technology used for making weapons? I remember the article of someone building cruise missiles: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/12/09/205252.shtm
Seems very nice, but I would not like a plane shot down because a rich kid was playing with one of this toys.
why is this here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is this a story? Someone deisgned and constructed an overpriced, hard to use, liquid fuel rocket that can be outperformed by a twenty year old Estes and is offering copies of it for sale, but no one has been stupid enough to buy one yet. This is news?
Re:Second Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:regulations (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, if I were a terrorist I wouldn't be looking to buy some proper rocket system. Over the counter fireworks seem like a great way to dump anthrax spores over a wide area. Do it at an event like bonfire night, July 4, New Years Eve etc. and you'd probably have a nice crowd of people standing underneath to infect too.
Re:Second Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
Wanna build a reuseable rocket for 20 bucks USD? (Score:4, Interesting)
Within Three Seconds? (Score:5, Interesting)
I Googled for "Camui rockets", to see if the whole "1 km" deal was true. From what I read, this article was taken from an AP article, which originally read:
"The Camui-50P rocket was developed by a team from Hokkaido University and can fly as high as one kilometer (0.6 mile) within three seconds after take off"
Dunno if that means "that's as high as it gets" or "that's how high it can get within that short amount of time"; for $19,000, though, let's hope it's the second one.Re:pictures ... (Score:1, Interesting)
I can buy God for only $19,000?
Re:Be sure to read the fine print: (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, come on, if they're going to ban model rockets like Estes (and their engines), how long until they do the same with these?
Real Rockets! (Score:5, Interesting)
One kilometer?? DEBI [erau.edu] was a real rocket. [pictures [erau.edu]] About 30 feet long, two stage solid fuel. With 40 G's acceleration it reached mach 10 in a little under 30 seconds (below 40km altitude) and sailed to a apogee of about 800km. Since the rocket had a ballistic trajectory we needed clearance through the pentagon to circumvent the anti-ballistic missle treaty.
Even little baby Loki Dart's [designation-systems.net] will reach 50km on a good day.
Re:Be sure to read the fine print: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Be sure to read the fine print: (Score:5, Interesting)
1 [sas.org]
2 [space.com]
And I'm sure Google has even more info on it. I haven't seen anything new on it, so I have no idea what has happened since then. I haven't seen any new complaints, but I also haven't seen anything to indicate people being happy it didn't pass, so...
Re:Second Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
CC.
Re:regulations (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:WMD? (Score:3, Interesting)