Concordia students set to launch most powerful rocket developed by civilians | Hacker News Reader

Concordia students set to launch most powerful rocket developed by civilians

concordia.ca

> "Starsailor has already set a world record for being the first rocket engine developed and fired by civilians, when it was initially tested in 2021."

Say what? Obviously something got garbled between the students and the Media Relations office.

> "The team’s current goal is to make history by launching the first student-built, liquid-fuelled rocket to cross the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and into outer space, known as the Kármán line."

That didn't sound likely, either. And no; USC would like a word with them (2019). [1] [Edit: Ah, cute. USC had a solid rocket engine.]

Further edit: Not to belittle the team's chops. A liquid-fueled engine is a lot more difficult that a solid motor. And, the team has showed a lot of perserverence in their journey.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/a-rocket-built-by-students-reach...

Indeed. This marketing copy is spectacularly over-reaching.

Canada has a proud history in sounding rockets; I wonder if comparisons to that military research work were the stepping-off point here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Brant_(rocket)

Canada also has prior non-military liquid-fueled rocket engine development worthy of note:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Arrow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD0ChIZnPLY

That project also originated in a prize competition context; it's great to see Space Concordia persevering with their effort on its own merits.

Addendum: A much more reality-tethered description of the group's achievements as of a couple of years ago: https://www.pccomposites.com/space-concordia-fires-most-powe...

>marketing copy is spectacularly over-reaching

Like all those medical studies that need "in mice" appended to the title, you need to add a "in Canada" for many institutions here. There's no shortage of breathless coverage to go around.

canadians on downvote rampage

It's like a paradox: Nearly every Canadian can recite a laundry list of grievances they have with Canadian news media but if you actually make any of those accusations, welp, you're not being super-chipper-patriotic enough and get hit with the DVs.

> Canada also has prior non-military liquid-fueled rocket engine development worthy of note:

Non-military... for Canada only, not necessarily for it's allies and partners like China. The Canadian government is known to close it's eyes to dual intent technology transfers to China[0]. Good thing here in America there's ITAR[1] keeping these technologies from the hands of such bad actors.

Canadian universities are also known to host and subsidize degrees for a significant number of Iranian nationals studying aerospace and nuclear engineering, for peaceful purposes I suppose. The Iranian drones currently used in Ukraine by the Russians seem to point toward technology transfers from Canada[2].

> Indeed. This marketing copy is spectacularly over-reaching.

From the tittle and skimming the article I assumed they were claiming to be the first student-led group to reach the Karman Line, completely ignoring USC's record in 2019. Then, I realized they meant with a liquid fuel engine, thus making it a real first (albeit on a technicality). Then actually reading the article I realized the rocket doesn't actually exist and the funding for is hasn't even been secured. They did perform a static test for the engine, but that's not the same as a real flight by any stretch.

Then the article gets really weird, with statements like:

"With the ability to deliver 65 kilograms of scientific payload to over 135 kilometres in space, Starsailor is in the same class as United States suborbital launch companies' rocket-powered vehicles."

Which sounds true except some of these rockets are actually flying. I guess if Starsailor does liftoff and performs to spec it'll be of the same class. Also why aren't they naming any of the companies? Fear of lawsuits?

And then there's the name dropping at the end "The student-led team has scored an impressive number of wins since its inception in 2014, beating other universities such as Stanford, MIT, Caltech and McGill."

I wonder why they went with that list of Universities (to get the right keyword in the article?). I mean, I don't think MIT or Caltech talks about Concordia in it's press releases... And no mention of USC who accomplished a similar goal?

[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-chinese-mil...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...

[2] https://montrealgazette.com/news/canada/iranian-drones-canad...

Based on the gofundme, I think an editor replaced "largest" with "first"

> Starsailor's engine was first successfully tested in the summer of 2021. The test became a world-record-setting event: the largest rocket engine developed and fired by civilians.

The wording of the last clause is identical other than that word. Even then its a bit of a stretch, I assume by "civilian" they mean something like "non-commercial hobbyist".

https://www.gofundme.com/f/starsailor

They should have defined the terminology. A rocket _engine_ is turbomachinery. A rocket _motor_ is a lump of solid propellant in a pressure vessel.

"Developed by Civilians" meaning students and hobbyists? Last time I checked SpaceX is a private company, as are Boeing and other big aerospace companies. Sure, dual-use technology often have government and defense customers, but civilian-built launches for comms satellites are far from uncommon.

None of the rockets from the big defence contractors were built without DoD money paying for R&D, though. Even Artemis uses portions of STS which was developed with DoD money.

So "not taking military money" could be a viable categorisation for it being first "civilian" rocket.

Concordia University collaborates with the Chinese Military, so by your analysis, perhaps the rocket is not civilian. The article mentions Concordia, and hints at possible collaboration of “space science with Chinese military scientists” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-chinese-mil...

Also Electron is a far bigger rocket than Concordia’s: Rocket Labs was civilian (I believe) with their first rocket design in New Zealand. Rocket Labs was bought out by US interests, I guess because of difficulties for a New Zealand company to access the US market. https://www.rocketlabusa.com/

As someone who did some work on Starsailor's avionics, and was quite involved in the rover club (not the rocket project). I can attest the chinese government isn't helping Space Concordia. I think the main point here is that this rocket is built by students, not some private company with a ton of investor funding bringing in top talent. It's just some students that are passionate about their big rocket.

Pretty sure the Falcon 1 was developed and built without any DoD R&D money, and flights 4 and 5 achieved orbit. Not sure why that wouldn't count as a civilian launch?

First two launches of Falcon 1 were paid by military, third one was mix of military / NASA / private civilian funding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1

As mentioned elsewhere, first two launches paid by military, third partially by military.

DoD money was a target from the start.

Blue Origin? Virgin Galactic?

Ansari X Prize, I think.

Is Arianespace purely civilian, or partially funded by military?

Also, TIL about the Civilian Space eXploration Team: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Space_eXploration_Tea...

> Is Arianespace purely civilian, or partially funded by military?

Depends what you mean by _funded_, but certainly a lot of its customers are military or military-adjacent. Also, these days (it's had a _really_ complex ownership history), it's owned by a joint venture between Airbus and Safran, both of which are, amongst other things, defence contractors.

Realistically, _any_ large aerospace venture is going to involve, at a minimum, working with defence contractors; that's just how the industry is.

I would also classify Robert Goddard as a civilian.

His stuff didn't even break 10,000 feet.

NASA is also a civilian organisation.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, “civilian” can be used as a synonym for “non government” rather than the more narrow “non military”.

Though many frown on this usage.

Or it could just be a press release for Canadian consumption

Yeah I think they meant hobbyist or non-commercial.

Copenhagen Suborbitals has been launching crowdfunded liquid fuelled rockets for years. Not quite as big as Concordia is proposing but interesting nonetheless: https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/

Interesting tidbit from that site:

"No crewed spacecraft has ever been developed and flown from Europe."

I think whoever wrote this article has never heard of Tripoli. Albeit, a liquid fueled engine is quite an accomplishment. The article should have focused on that.

Since when did 'civilian' == amateur?

You could sort of exclude NASA and other govt agencies from the civilian qualifier, but spacex? Blue origin? All the other private space companies?

SpaceX wouldn't get anywhere without military contracts, not sure about Blue Origin.

Many other recent rocket startups have also went for DoD money.

So? If the military put Tabasco in their ration packs does that make Tabasco military rather than civilian? What about the chilli farmers?

And I wouldn't say they wouldn't get anywhere, yes they have military contracts, their bread and butter is more NASA though, and it's a stretch to not describe NASA as civilian so it's even more of a stretch to describe one of their private contractors as non civilian.

If you take the maximalist approach, nothing is civilian. Including this university supported rocket.

DoD funding was "make it or not" point for SpaceX, to the point that they admit leaning a bit outside of safety regs just to ensure they didn't lost it.

Similarly, USAF was major investor in making Starlink happen.

AFAIK Ariane is also non military. Of course the program is government funded but it seems fairly ‘civilian’

Well, it probably wouldn't be viable without military customers (nor would any private/semi-private large rocket programme). And Arianespace is ultimately a joint venture between Airbus and Safran, both of which are, amongst other things, defence contractors; in that regard it's little different to, say, Boeing.

Ariane 5 IIRC was the first that wasn't built from ICBMs - previous was built from ICBM projects retargeted for space launch, and ofc all the rocketry tech base in the manufacturing companies is still from ICBM manufacture.

Ariane 4 at least would also have used main rockets designed explicitly for civilian purposes; no-one was building liquid-fueled ICBMs by that point (and, past the _very_ early days, no-one really wanted ICBMs that _big_). The solid boosters would certainly have a military heritage, though.

Ariane was designed from scratch (mostly), it's just that everyone involved first cut their teeth on military use.

The previous Europa rocket had parts from ICBM.

As for liquid-fueled ICBMs - Soviet Union invested much longer into liquid-fueled ICBMs, including very heavy ones, something that paid off in keeping their space sector in expertise.

Nuclear energy is an offshoot of bomb development. We still differentiate between civilian and military nuclear though.

Computing got its start in the military, is Apple a military company?

I'm differentiating mostly on who paid for the development in particular company, and would that development exist without military. Apple doesn't fall under that (even though they survived 1990s heavily thanks to federal sales, iirc) - they build the company on top of consumer market.

Compare this with SpaceX where DoD funding was crucial or most of other US launch vehicles that trace directly to early ICBMs. Ariane was built by companies from defense sector continuing development started from ICBM work - but Arianespace was purposeful pivot into pure commercial, civilian vendor (though subcontracting to defense industry still).

As for nuclear, civilian reactors aren't much of offshoot of bomb production except for using the same physical processes underneath.

Civilian nuclear reactors exist to keep 50-200kg of weapons grade plutonium on hand and ready to separate at all times. It's not shelf stable and a pure Pu manufacturing program is much harder to get social license for.

Majority of reactors in civilian use (outside some research ones) are really, really incapable of properly breeding plutonium, partially because of fears by "nuclear haves" that "have nots" would be able to produce weapons even if under NPT they have inspections etc. to notice that.

In fact, civilian nuclear reactors are just as much likely to consume plutonium in MOX fuels. All warhead manufacturing countries have separate, optimized production chains for plutonium.

Hah.

What's the Pu240/Pu239 ratio in the most recently loaded set of fuel rods in any given moment?

Unless the fuel rods were highly enriched, below usable for reprocessing.

It's literally why USA had been more or less legally trying to stop everyone from running highly-enriched fuels in reactor (or generally make itself a nuisance for projects that in turn require no enrichment at all, because that stops dependency on limited enrichment facilities).

You're conflating two things and applying them to a third unrelated situation.

High enriched U is a proliferation risk because it's easier to enrich to weapons grade.

Fuel rods that have been through a full fuel cycle are 'useless' because of the Pu 240.

Fuel rods that have been in a reactor for 1-2 years (present in every 'civilian' reactor at all times) are neither of these things. And contain weapons grade Pu that can be used if you have Pu separation facilities.

@p_l Can't respond to your comment directly.

Spacexs first dod contract was in 2016. Spacex successfully landed their first falcon in 2015. They were already the company we know and 'love' prior to them getting any dod contracts.

While Falcon 1 was developed on internal funding, the first two launches were paid for by DoD through DARPA. There was also a 15 million USD contract to launch a military satellite in 2005, that ultimately fell through (unknown how much was paid to SpaceX by the time of cancellation, but definitely not 0). In 2005, SpaceX boasted USAF as customer lined up for Falcon 1 launches.

Ultimately, first 2 launches the customer was purely military, and third launch by SpaceX was shared military / NASA / civilian client.

Why doesn’t this header use the article’s not incorrect actual title rather than a clearly incorrect line from the article written by a journalist who does not seem to know the meaning of the word “civilian”?

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Suborbitals?

As someone who lived close enough to watch their work live, they used to be my heroes. Until their leader came out as a total sociopath.

He was thrown out of the group 8 years ago, well before the murder. Pretty weird holding them responsible for that.

Pretty cool school project!

I find it confusing how much large corporations can accomplish vs groups of hobbyists. They’re both just groups of people.

With orders of magnitude differences in money and work hours they can bring to bear on problems.

Is that surprising?

And sometimes the hobbyists will beat out the corporations a la open source software.

But yes money + fear of being fired can be a powerful motivator.

Strange use of the word civilian. Aren’t private companies similarly civilian?

That being said, if they truly beat out Kestrel (or are they referencing Merlin 1A?) that’s no small feat.

All these needle shaped rockets by students/amateurs make me wonder since I've seen flat shaped drones go vertical at incredible speed if there might be another way to use vertical lift at least within the atmosphere using millisecond reaction controllers.

The needle shape really limits payload. If it could be wider but use the outer surface as some kind of physics trick to multiply lift, that could change everything.

Mass weight still is a factor but would allow a wider range of payload shapes.

Drones generate lift by pushing against the air, rockets are trying to get past as much of the air as possible because orbit involves going sideways so fast that, even though the satellites are always falling, they keep missing the ground.

That necessary speed is such that even air too thin to generate helpful lift[0] is ram-compressed to be thick and hot enough to cut exactly, non-metaphorically, like a blowtorch.

[0] Maximum heating during re-entry is 55-80km, less than the Karman line but still higher than non-rocket-powered aircraft. Not exactly the same thing, but gives you a useful comparison point.

Okay, but will they finally settle the Earth curvature debate? :)

China will be happy. We learned yesterday that they work hand in hand.

"Canadian universities conducting joint research with Chinese military scientists" https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-chinese-mil...

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