Progress...

This morning I had a conference call with the FAA to talk about getting started again.  With the rapid progress we are making on the simple vehicle there is a very real possibility that the ability to get a burn time waiver will become a limiting issue. So I need to go back into paperwork mode, the most fun part of the project!

Based on some feedback from John Carmack and some personal experiences trying to get Large fittings to seal we are switching to sanitary fittings for all of our large plumbing. We have always wanted to use a butterfly valve for better throttleing and less hysteresis, this is hard to do with lox as no seal material is soft at Lox temps. With peroxide its a bit easier, we found a 1 inch butterfly valve with built in sanitary connections and hydro tested it to 500 PSI. It held fine and operated correctly. Its nominal commercial rating is 150PSI, we are going to run it to 300 PSI. My son designed and machined a two peice aluminum housing to hold the valve and connect one of our servos to it.

Its a fast 1” valve.

 

How come we spend so much time on valves? Here is the dual igniter valve we made last year…

 

This weekend we are going out to FAR to rerun the L* test with sodium permangenate. We are also going to do a bunch of site improvement work, trenching, running power and data wires and boring the big hole to put the foundatiuon in for our tether crane.

 

Stunning Rocket news: at 8:10 PM everything is packed and I might get a full nights sleep before a test!