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$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

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Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#311

Post by crtified »

ralferoo wrote: post #238

I remember an anecdote our robotics lecturer told our university class in 1995, which was about how in the west we try to make expensive things that are the absolute best of technology and how the other side didn't have that luxury and relied on ingenuity. He described a cold war Russian missile they had somehow obtained and were tasked with trying to reverse engineer. Ostensibly, it was thought to be a heat seeking…

That frugal, creative mindset is also the default for people of modest income everywhere in the world - borne of necessity.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#312

Post by Mars008 »

dgroshev wrote: post #230
pjc50 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. I wonder how much of that Ukraine is bothering with. Or Iran. Certainly Hezbollah are building down to a budget.

Ukraine does bother with all of that when they can afford it. I'd even say that FPV drones are the main exception, and only because Ukraine was so pressed for immediate results and had stockpiles to repurpose. There are only so many old RPG warheads you can reuse with a detonator made of live wires, and maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day un…

> Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation

That depends from which side you are looking. From the other side they are patriots and defending their people and land, sacrificing their lives. Looks like in NATO you haven't seen that. The same in Vietnam, Iraq,.. there is a long list of 'terrorists' of this sort. Almost like 'suffering minorities'.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#313

Post by dzhiurgis »

ralferoo wrote: post #238

I remember an anecdote our robotics lecturer told our university class in 1995, which was about how in the west we try to make expensive things that are the absolute best of technology and how the other side didn't have that luxury and relied on ingenuity. He described a cold war Russian missile they had somehow obtained and were tasked with trying to reverse engineer. Ostensibly, it was thought to be a heat seeking…

> That still didn't explain how this was able to guide a missile

That does explain why it lands on civilian areas tho

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#314

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

dgroshev wrote: post #115
vidarh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be sweating, because if the other side can fire 100 rockets for $10k that are close enough to not immediately and obviously be off target, and you don't know whether a more expensive one with actual explosives is hiding within that barrage, you now have 100 targets to try to intercept, and suddenly your costs have gone up dramatically while the other sides costs has barely moved.

100 rockets for $10k is not happening. The price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to sp…

> propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.

The further down the list you go, the more optional the requirements get in a sufficiently dire scenario.

Shelf life doesn't matter if you are firing them as quickly as you can make them, especially if you actually can make them as quickly as you need them because they're so simple. QA and traceability may matter less if you just accept that you'll occasionally lose a launcher, and even occasionally have a stray missile land in someone's living room because that's better than having a non-stray Shahed in said living room.

In terms of safety, I bet it'll still beat "cutting open existing munitions and literally duct taping random other fuzes to them", which seems to be the bar for "good enough".

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#315

Post by dzhiurgis »

gos9 wrote: post #265
redgridtactical wrote: post #13

The engineering is genuinely impressive for $96, but naming the repo "MANPADS-System-Launcher-and-Rocket" on GitHub is going to attract exactly the kind of attention you don't want. ITAR implications aside, the interesting part is the mid-flight trajectory recalculation on a $5 sensor. That's the same basic problem military guidance systems solve with hardware that costs thousands. The gap between consumer electronic…

AI slop comment

Bingo. Against guidelines.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#316

Post by numpad0 »

mothballed wrote: post #150
mikkupikku wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MANPADS are certainly covered by ITAR. It could probably be effectively argued by his lawyers that what he has created isn't truly MANPADS but rather just an edgy toy that superficially resembles a weapon system but isn't actually capable of performing as one. Maybe that would work, but I think his chance of getting dragged into the legal system for this or for some chickenshit like weed possession are very high, par…

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332g states that just having a system "intended to launch or guide a rocked or missile described in... [description of MANPAD type rocket]" carries life imprisonment. He calls it a manpad and then shows a system intended to launch it. There is no consideration in the law whether he actually plans to use it or ever meant any violence, nor any consideration of whether it viol…

The theme is guidance systems. Especially guidance computers. That's the big big big no-no. I'm surprised this still hasn't been taken down and house flashbanged and all.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#317

Post by dgroshev »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #314
dgroshev wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 rockets for $10k is not happening. The price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to sp…

> propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. The further down the list you go, the more optional the requirements get in a sufficiently dire scenario. Shelf life doesn't matter if you are firing them as quickly as you can make them, especially if you actually can make them as quickly as you need them because they're so simple. QA and traceability may matter less if yo…

I don't understand your point. Sure, Ukraine can cut a few corners that western militaries are unwilling to cut. They still can't produce a domestic ballistic missile at scale, because it's genuinely hard, and simple terror weapons like Qassams are useless for militaries. "100 rockets for $10k" is off by orders of magnitude.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#318

Post by mosura »

dgroshev wrote: post #240
vidarh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA is literally about a $96 rocket. > propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. You're entirely missing the point. These do not need to be reliable for the scenario I hinted at. They also do not need to be armed. They need to be large enough that if one of them is a higher quality rocket (not part of the $10k) that contains actual explosives, you have serious destru…

> TFA is literally about a $96 rocket It's a firework-grade rocket with no payload that can't even ignite reliably. To imitate even a TBM or a MBRM, you need similar kinematics, even if you're running without a payload. Maybe your solid rocket motor would be a touch smaller because you're not delivering hundreds of kilograms of explosives, but it still has to be large because of the rocket equation. With a large moto…

> The US and the UK spent vast amount of money chasing exactly your line of reasoning with nuclear warhead decoys. Chevaline is a culmination of the effort, and it's retired for 30 years.

OTOH if you built a successful decoy system that is exactly what you would want people to believe.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#319

Post by infinitewars »

muyuu wrote: post #304
infinitewars wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are the "right" people to kill? What happens when govt decides to aim your weapons at the "wrong" people?

the people who are invading another country in a war of conquest, for instance you seem to believe we live in a world where there no longer are such wars of single-handed aggression we don't live in that world

> a war of conquest

Israel invading Gaza is kind of proving the point? Those are American weapons bombing civilians.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#320

Post by dgroshev »

esseph wrote: post #309
dgroshev wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fairly important to distinguish what kind of drones are we talking about [1]. Iran's using Group 3 drones. The GP is confusing Iran's neighbours not being ready to counter group 3 drones with the drones being inevitably effective. These drones are by necessity large and slow, because they need a lot of energy and aerodynamic efficiency to get their range. That means that they are vulnerable to cheap counters, wh…

> Iran's neighbours would need to intercept only a handful of drones, which is hardly an insurmountable challenge. It's a big challenge when you run out of interceptors...

We're absolutely not running out of APKWS. They are manufactured by tens of thousands, and Hydra 70s are even more numerous.
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