Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Tuesday, 8 August 2017

What do you get if you cross a rocket with a raccoon ?

More on the company hoping to launch satellites from Snowdonia.

I would love them to succeed, but my oh my the opening graphic and poor English (it isn't any better on the rest of the site) doth not fill me with confidence. So far as I can tell, they have no hardware and a team consisting entirely of managers. No mention of any aereopsace engineers, though their bios are all on linkedin which I refuse to join because it's Spam Central. Their animations are OK, but... I'm almost tempted to write to them and say, "look, I'll give you this better graphic on the house because you can't use that terrible font, boring slogan, incorrect use of an article and weirdly capitalised letters on the front page of your website, that's just wrong."

Anyway :

We are developing a High Altitude launching system, a stratospheric balloon will lift a self operative platform from where to deploy the launcher. Saving cost by skipping the highest density part of the atmosphere and gaining altitude up to 35 km, smaller and cheaper rocket will deliver the payload into the required orbits. Based on existing technology, improved and adapted to maximize performance and provide affordable access to space.

The animation says it can deliver 150 kg to LEO and the first stage is fully reusable (with parachutes, no fancy rocket-powered landing system).

However, credit where credit is due :

Innovating, researching and developing feasible “Rockoon” technology...

Rockoons !!!
http://b2-space.com/#projects

4 comments:

  1. Doesn't a high altitude balloon launch require very good weather conditions...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oliver Hamilton​ what's the weather like in Snowdonia? If the balloon stage is able to stay aloft for several hours, you could launch in advance of a storm and loiter at altitude before firing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aaron Gilliland often cold, cloudy, wet, and windy...

    metoffice.gov.uk - Wales: climate

    ReplyDelete
  4. Large space balloons have been previously attempted before from the UK, sadly without success :
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QinetiQ_1
    Wales has a particularly large amount of weather. I'm not sure they've thought this through.

    ReplyDelete

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