Flight Dates...

I can finally be public about our flight attempt dates.
We will be flying the last two days of the contest.
October 30 and October 31st at FAR. This gives us the maximum time to prepare and guarantees that we know what we are aiming for for given any tie breakers.

You can see the Xprize press release here
(I could not find it on the xpf site so I linked to Space transport news instead.)

Some notes on the other dates:

Masten has reserved October 28,29 so that means any not-yet registered teams could
fly on the 26t/27th in the Mojave area or earlier else where.

This in effect moves the registration deadline for any other teams up to
September 9th or September 12th

Update:
If Armadillo fails on the 12th-13th they can register to try again and just sneak in under the time window. In talking to others it somewhat clear that Armadillo choose the latest date that would allow them to try again.

Rocket parts and fruit

In spite of the whimsical picture and title this is a serious post.
I can make rocket parts, or I can buy rocket parts. I can grow my own fruit or I can go buy fruit.

I design embedded electronics as my primary profession. When I first started I built elaborate breadboards and test circuits, I even played with etching my own PCB's. Now I order pcb's from the prototype PCB vendor for everything. Even test circuits. What changed?
I'm much more experienced and my designs have a lot more experience behind them. I've learned what works and what does nott I can read a data sheet (including what is not in the data sheet, often the most important part.) I've also learned that spending the money getting a proper prototype PCBs and assembly is a more cost effective use of my time.

At home we have a peach tree, it grows wonderful peaches to the point that we are all tired of peach pie by the time it drops the last peach. There is a sense of satisfaction from growing your own. All the rest of our food we purchase.

When I started working on rockets it my attitude was more hobby and satisfaction from doing oriented. You can see from the old blog posts we built valves, gearoxes and even weird tanks.
As the project has matured and we've started actually doing work for customers I'm starting to realize the value in off the shelf stuff. My attitude is becoming more business like.

For a number of years now we have been sending drawings and material to thunderbird waterjet here in San Diego and having them cut out parts. We had the hemispheres for our tanks spun by AMS industries. Yet the vast majority of our parts have been fabricated by us for us. We don't generate elaborate 3D models and then fabricate the parts, we build a little, scratch our head and build some more. If we did not have in house machinging capabilities it would significantlyy impede our progress, having to wait for an outside vendor to fabricate every bracket and doodah would take forever. I think this lack of inhouse capabilities is one of the things that has slowed Masten down. Yet fabricating everything in house does not make sense either . Some things like the regen rocket motor I documented on this bblog were fabricated in house from detailed drawings. I think that was an error. I'm in the process of fabricating a new regen motor from stainless. I sent the drawings out for quote on MFG quote and was astonished at the price quote I got. The stainless part among the fruit is the first signifcant custom part we have not fabricated in house. Several more parts of that assembly are due soon. I can't imagine the nightmare of machining that part out of solid stainless, yet the vendor did a really good job for a very fair price. (I'll talk more about the vendor and ordering process when I get the full set of parts, so far I'm pleased.) One of the down sides is that our welder is going on vacation for 10 days and the ordered parts are going to just miss his departure, so we won't be testing much for about two more weeks.

Its not always easy to know what to build and what to contract out, I think its really important to have in house fabrication skills and equipment, but I also think we have erred in not sending more work out.

A final question for the peanut gallery, I'm 90% sure the vendor making these parts underbid the job. They had a couple of programming problems and probably scrapped more metal than their profit margin. As a business man I feel strongly in win win arrangements with vendors.
If the business is not win win then eventually the vendor won't be there next time you need him. Would you bring this up with the vendor and offer to cover some of their loss?
(Clearly by the terms of the quote I don't have to)

Another Long Day.

The Day Started at 5:30 I spent the first hour planning my weekend. the next hour I laid out the parts and peices for the days and figured out what I was missing. Then I was at Marshals Industrial hardware store at 8:am and the IMS Metal supply at 8:30.
... Its 10:30 PM I'm done for the day.

I Fabricated two beefy bearing holders and gearbox adapters for to the ball screws that will be the gimbal actuators on the silver beast. I also machined the ball screw ends and made a planetary spider to ball screw adapter. Its going to be a light, strong, fast and brush less gimbal actuator.
They are about 1/2 the weight and cost of the bug actuators everyone else is using. (assuming my time is worth zero, any realistic valuation of time and there insanely expensive.)

I also spent about 4 hours at Flometrics testing injector concepts for the Bi-prop and Steve an I built a flow visulization test setup. Many thanks to Steve! We used Flometrics Pistonless Rocket Pump as the drive the injectors, we could dial up any pressure from 50 to 400PSI and it just worked. It was flawless. Some of the misting spray nozzles have a maximum pressure, we discovered that one of the tested spray heads had unstable flow above its rated pressure. It was a swirl nozzle and it had cavitaion where the flow was really erattic. That was about the only real supprise everything else tested as one would expect it to.

I'll post some pictures of the tests. Sunday I hope to turn what I learned from the testing into a set of drawings to Fabricate the injector. I also ope to compeltly finish my actuators.
It was nive to spend the weekend making stuff rather than driving out to the desert/FAR.

Why Space Matters

Why does space matter?

I'm lucky in that I was born in the united States. Our family has multiple cars, a house to our selves, more food than we should eat. Our standard of living by any real measure is better than any group in history. The United States has about 5% of the world population and consumes about 30% of its resources. Personally our family is probably above average in resource consumption even for US citizens. So I'm going to ask and answer a series of questions.

1)Are citizens of China, or Sub Saharan Africa inherently inferior to my family?
NO they are not,I believe all humans are born with certain inherent value.

2)Do they have a right to aspire to what I have.
Yes they do.

3)Do we think that global terrestrial resource production can be increased 6 fold from what it is now?
No I don't think that is reasonable outcome.

4)Is there any process where U.S citizens will voluntarily reduce there standard of living by a factor of 6. No I don't think that will happen.

5)Do we the U.S have the right to use force to prevent others from having what we have?
No we do not.

6)Will some combination of conservation and increased production create a factor of 6 when adjusted for the ongoing population growth in the world?
This is the option that all the traditional "Greens" or environmentalists are betting on. They naturally feel that if we just cut back a little bit everything will be better. I just don't see it. It is such a violation of natural human striving tendencies I can't see getting to a factor of 6.


So unless you want to change the answer to one of the 6 questions above "we" the population of the world are in a no win scenario. Some things like good batteries and low cost fusion power could help significantly, but its not enough. Just imagine how much steel it would take to give every family on earth 2 cars? (Recent studies have shown that mass transit when fully accounted over the life cycle of the system are just as resource intensive as a small Car. )

Where will the additional resources come from?
Where can we do dirty industrial process where we don't soil the environment?
Where can we find unlimited energy?
Unlimited expansion space?
Unlimited metals?
Unlimited Organics?
(Don't nit pick Unlimited in this context means several orders of magnitude more than we have now)

The only two answers are a 6 fold reduction in earth's population or expansion into space.

We are spending trillions on the assumed option in question 6 and simple math shows its not possible. Where are the trillions helping us expand in a way that can work?

Just something to think about....

Thats why we test...

We tested again Saturday. This was the first time I was responsible for the FAA notification and not just piggy-backing on the FAR standard waivers. The Airspace at FAR is interesting. From ground from ground level to 1200 feet AGL we are in uncontrolled airspace. From 1200 ft AGL l to 18000 ft MSL we are under the FAA jurisdiction, from 18000fto to 50K ft we are under the jurisdiction of the Edwards 2508 restricted area. Since I’m under 1200 ft AGL for tethered (or free) flights I don’t need a waiver or authorization to enter controlled airspace. Since I’m not entering controlled airspace. Yet the new FAR 101.27 requires I notify the nearest ATC facility between 24 and 72 hours before the event. A lot of the stuff flown at FAR goes above the 18K limit so when I asked FARS primary Pyro op who to notify I was given the 2508CCB contact. They did not want the notification because we aren’t in their airspace. When I called the loacal High Desert ATC facility

ATC: how high,
ME: 45ft
ATC: Why are you telling me this.
ME:Can I have your Fax number.
ATC:Here it is xxx.xxx.xxxx
ATC:What am I supposed to do with the document your faxing?
ME:I don’t really know I just know I have to send it to you. It does not effect your airspace were chained to a 10000lb forklift.
ME: FAR 101.27 says I have to tell someone. I’m crossing my t’s and dotting my i’s.
ATC I see.

So I faxed the notification required of 101.27 to the High desert ATC facility.

A few weeks ago our FAA representative asked if he could come out a watch us fly so Wynn came out to observe our flights and flight preparation. We were all setup by 9 am and were attempting to do a 90 second Tethered hover. We had never successfully flown at that weight. We didn’t do it on Saturday either. You can see the heavy takeoff video here our vehicle is VERY light without payload or propellant we weight less than 100 lbs. Since we are using a low performance propellant so we need a lot of it so our weight with payload and full fuel is about 400lbs. This means that we have a 3:1 weight change in flight. From the video its obvious that with a 3:1 weight change we need to do some gain scheduling as we had plenty of thrust, plenty of control authority we just weren’t stable. We continued to do short hops until we had dissipated enough propellant to fly stably. We eventually got an absolutely perfect 65 second flight but that happened after the one remaining video camera ran out of battery. So no video. We will try again soon.

I think that Wynn (our FAA rep) was impressed with how remote the FAR site is. You just can’t get a feel for how remote things are by looking at google earth. Standing on site and seeing the total desolation in every direction gives you a better feel. I think Wynn enjoyed the show, I’m glad we got at least one successful flight off for him.

Thoughts on the stability issue: With a gimbals system the forces generated by the thrust vector scale directly with the motor thrust. With vanes the relationship is not so clear as one increases thrust one increases the density of the gasses within the cone that the vanes act in. So its not clear if the vector forces are linear with thrust (thrust is a good stand in for weight and a marginally good stand in for rotational inertia) or if they increase or decrease? Looking at the video this looks a lot like earlier problems where the differential gain was too high. I don't really know if I should just lower all the attitude gains or if I should vary the P,D terms differently.

I have not yet reviewed the data, I hope to do so this week.

I also added another wiggles video from onboard.

Update...

Friday was propellant day, I was out at FAR all day.

• I received an order of 85% from XL Space.
• I built the forms for the base of the generator that will complete my processing facility.
• I fixed a leaky valve on the safety water supply pump.
• I built a frame to hold the Refrigerated air dryer up on a shelf off the ground to give more floor space.
• I cleaned up around the site a little bit.

One more long day to finish my processing facility and I’ll have three sources of propellant.

180 second status: I’ve put together both an order and a RFQ for stainless versions of the regen biprop motor to replace the dead aluminum one. After examining the dead motor its really clear that something bad happened in the region of the pressure port. It was more than a a bad weld. We either had the port through the wall leak fuel rich stuff into the cooling jacket or we have some kind of contamination there. On the next motor this is going The new motor will have an uncooled section thats identical to the top of the blue ball motor and will weld to a cooled lower section. There will be no joints through the cooling jacket wall.

Realistically we get one more shot at the 180 second motor and the way rockets go that has to be considered a hail mary.

Observations from the fireing

As shown in the camera death video we ran the H2O2 Kerosene motor last weekend. The chamber pressure port failed causing local loss of coolant and subsequent failure.

Even with the short run it answered several questions I've had about H2O2 Kerosene motors.

The Motor was built around 3 1"x  7" metal monolith platinum coated catalysts.

This gives it a large contraction ratio 7" to 1.9" . It was also designed with an L* of 60.

Test conditions:
~200 PSI chamber pressure.
~ 6:1 O:F by weight
90% H2O2


Observations:

From the previous mono-prop runs its clear the cat pack is not working very well The metal monolith seems like it needs finer channels.

Even with a partially working cat pack ignition was almost instant. Reading the available literature ignition seems to be a strong function of  contraction ratio.

One of my personal questions was can you run an H2O2 motor like a traditional bi-prop where the peroxide is thermally decomposed in the chamber?  With a generous L* of 60 and contraction ratio of  almost 4 at a chamber pressure of 200 psi the answer is no.  There was clearly undecomposed peroxide in the plume.

This camera gave its life to provide you with this video.

3 Months to go and beyond.

The 2009 NG-LLC ends on October 31^st, just over three months from now. Seems like a long time but it will go by in a flash. This week I’m cleaning up the blue ball  removing some excess wiring, freshening the cat pack etc. If all goes well we will try a 90 second Tethered hover on Saturday.

I think we can be ready for the 90 second flight before the deadline. getting ready for the 180 second flight will be harder. If the current silver ball does not have the necessary performance we are basically done for the year.

What happens after 2009? If the any of the 180 second prizes are un-won we will obviously attempt that. Beyond that we want to work toward a reusable sub-orbital vehicle.  Anything that can do the 180 second flight should be able to get to over 100K ft with just a tiny bit of Aerodynamic cleanup. Or success of failure at claiming the prize $ will set the pace on that effort.

Looking forward low cost access to space is a civilization changing event. Today you have a few well funded efforts in that direction SpaceX Blue Origin , Virgin Galactic/Scaled. You have a bunch of bootstrap organizations, Armadillo, Masten, Xcor, JP Aerospace etc... You have a few that failed along the way, Kistler, Beal(I really like Beals technical approach), and some that were absorbed into the edges of traditional aerospace such as  orbital.

  As a somewhat successful business man  with a passion for space I’ve burned a lot of hours thinking about how to build a space company that makes business sense.  It is a significant chicken and the egg problem. No matter how well thought out my business plan is no one is going to hand me a 100M blank check to go chase after spacex.  Yet without real commercial market driven, bare knuckle no holds bared competition in space access we are all stuck on this rock.

  It may be possible to slowly build up and bootstrap a company from marginally profitable sub-orbital to something orbital, but it will take tens of years and I’m just not sure I have the energy to put 200% into this for that long.  On the flip side I don’t see anything else that is really worth doing. That dilemma, understanding the magnitude of the task and at the same time seeing it as a truly worthy task actually has me a bit depressed.

Some days I see the people sitting on the beach with a beer in hand and ’m jealous, other days I see that as a waste of human potential. My wife thinks this whole project has driven me over the edge from committed to obsessed. What can I say, I’m an unreasonable man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Strings Attached

(Thanks to Kevin Baxter for the Photo)
The Landing was perfect, more later in the week once I recover from the 111F days in Mojave.
Video onboard
A Video from Ben Brockert
VideoFrom the ground.

Going to FAR

Just finished packing for an early AM departure. I started the day at 4:45 its 11:21 I plan to leave at 4:00 am 18+ hours, . I’m tired.

We have four major projects for this trip in order of importance.

• Large Customer Project that dwarfs the other three.


• Static fire H2O2/Kerosene silver ball.


• Tether fly blue ball. (If this goes really well might try first free flight)


• Work on Propellant Production.

There will be a TV crew on site Saturday and all the FAR regulars have been asked to bring their best “show and tell.”

 

 

 

 

 

The ... is connected to the ...

My basic control loop is as follows:

• 1)I have an actual and  desired position.-> I use that to generate a desired velocity.


• 2a)I transform the desired velocity into a desired right and forward velocity with current yaw/heading.


• 2b)Transform the actual velocity into right and forward velocity with current heading.


• 3a)I use  actual and desired right /left velocity to set desired roll* angle.


• 3b)I use actual and desired forward/back velocity to set desired pitch angle.


• 4a)I use the actual and desired roll angle to set the aileron or actuator position to cause roll.


• 4b)I use the actual and desired pitch angle to set the elevator  or actuator position to cause pitch change.

I reality steps 1,3 and 4 are PID loops(proportional integral differential) , I’ve been running for a while with  Step 1 P,I step 3 p and step 4 pd. For hovering this works just fine as what I really care about is holding position. Any bias in the system is taken out with the integral term in the position hold. When I start navigation from place to place that does not work so well. It’s beginning to look like I need properly distributed I and D terms on each loop. For example a helicopter does not hover with the frame level, my current helicopter hovers with a 12 degree to the right and 5 degree nose up from its resting position on the skids. I could carefully tune the centers of all the loops so these biases don’t effect the control laws, but they seem to vary with somewhat randomly.

I’m in the process of trying to change to 1:PI,3:PI,4:PID as I get each loop under control I have to turn down the gain in the outer most loops as the gain was cranked up there to handle the biases not taken into account with the integral terms.   I have a simple utility that runs on the laptop and allows me to tweak gain constants without recompiling things in the field. It also allows me to assign one constant to a trim lever on the RC transmitter for tuning. I’ve flown  about 30 times in the last week trying to get all this sorted out on the helicopter.  I’m going to have to tune the rocket as well, but hopefully I’ll be more efficient with that after learning on the copter.

I started with 10 variable slots, and have now moved to 16 variable slots. I was having a hard time making sense of it all until I discovered today that when I did a cut copy and paste on the UI that sets gains, the channel being assigned to the “trim” lever was the wrong one, olny  if I was trying to set one of the 6 new channels, so the trim lever made things change, but not what I though it was making change so it was all very confusing arghhhh…

I’ve fixed that tonight and I’ll try again after work on Tuesday, or maybe not, I’ve been reading some David Weber snipits aka “book crack” and amazon tells me the book in question has been shipped and I will get it on Tuesday. no more rushing to the site to see the latest installment on Mon,Wed,Fri ;-)

 

*Since I started on a helicopter I’m using that coordinate convention, where what is typically done for rockets is to call “roll” rotation around the nominally vertical actuator.

NGLLC news etc...

Several items of interest in the NGLLC news. Masten Space has announced they are  planning both a Level 1 and Level 2 attempt, and Armadillo flew the super Mod for 178 seconds. It looks like there are presently three teams with flyable vehicles in active testing. It should be interesting.

I’ve spent the last week working on navigation and control with the helicopter. I’ve been chasing things like the natural frequency of the rotor interacts badly with the Z axis accelerometer for some interesting aliasing. (The vibration on the rocket looks like white noise, the vibes on the helicopter don’t.) I’m also working to improve the navigation accuracy as that will be key to winning if there are multiple successful LLC teams this year.

This coming weekend the 11th we will be out at FAR and hope to fly the blue ball and static test the silver ball again. I think this will be a big FAR weekend with a number of interesting things going on.

 

Propellant Progress..

It looks like we have secured another source of 50% peroxide.

The process of turning 50% food grade into 85–90% rocket grade is as follows:

1)Filter the peroxide through ion exchange resin to remove stabilizers.

2)Sparge from 50 to 70%

3)Sparge from 70 to 85%

Step 1 needs to be conducted with the bulk temperature below 70F or the resin tends to catch fire. The low temp at FAR is presently >70F with a high > 100. This leaves the bulk peroxide temperature too hot.  So we took a dewar of Lquid nitrogen out to the desert and cooled and then filtered about 1500lbs of peroxide. We cooled the ulk peroxide by bubblin Ln2 throu from the bottom. We started at 11PM and finished about 6:30 am just as ths sun was comming up. Everything worked exactly as desined and according to the TDS meter we removed the bulk of the stabilizers.  We got back home at about 11:30 am this morning. Its just after 6pm and I just woke up. This all nighter thing worked so much better 25 years ago in college.

We have about 30 minutes more work and we are ready to try step 2. We will proably do this next weekend. I can’t do the final step until the generator I ordered arrives. The 50 to 70% step can be done with filtered “desert” dry air, the 70 to 90 step needs the air to be dryer than that and our big oiless compressor and -100F due-point airdryer system needs more power than we presently have on site.

Wind blown and dried out

Just got back from the desert. I spent two days on site at FAR, I went out Thursday night, I was there to help unload some deliveries of steel and concrete block Friday Morning.  The deliveries are for new viewing bunkers as the existing viewing bunker has been over full and crowded for a couple of recent launches.

I also got 3000 lbs of 50% peroxide delivered. I think I’ve resolved my propellant supply.

I spent most of the day Friday working on our refining equipment. Saturday was a general FAR work party.  I’d hoped to run the first de-ionization steps on the new propellant, alas it was really hot and the temperatures were just too high to do this safely.  I’d also hoped to fly the blue ball under tether but it was too windy. I did fly the helicopter in 25+ MPH gusty winds and it did just fine.

I spent two full days working hard and accomplished one of my three primary goals for the trip. There are always lots of secondary goals to accomplish. Often simple things like: we now have 5 large  bottles of compressed nitrogen on site and I had no way to tie them all down properly. I’d been laying the bottles on their sides. Now the bottles are standing up and properly restrained  to the container wall.

 

Things that work are important.

This project is a big project and its important to have some success along the way.  Its easy to get mired in a bunch of problems such that you experience no successes that you can celebrate.

So in a project this large its important to schedule small successes to keep the motivation up while you slog through the details of 10K things.

I went out and flew the helicopter again tonight. For the first time I turned on the integral term in the gps position hold. It made a huge difference. A helicopter flies with a slight tilt, the tilt is such that with purely proportional position gains it has to build up some error to stop moving. Then it also moves around as the wind changes and the proportional error grows to the point to counter the wind.  I’d been doing: Start where you are, climb vertically, hover for awhile and land.  I also like to be behind the helicopter when playing safety pilot as its easier to stay oriented and try a save if needed.  Well it just so happens that in proportional mode every time you do one of these cycles the helicopter backs up and to the left about 2m. Do it 5 times and you have  moved off the edge of the field and over the embankment. With the integral gains turned on I flew it 6 times and the final flight landed within 8 inches of the original take off point.

Its cool when everything works. I also fired up the helicopter flight data review system and it just reminds me how much detail work has gone into this project:  (The position hold accuracy plot is uninteresting as the errors are so small the lines look straight, so here I show the auto takeoff.)

Click on the picture for a bigger view  and you can figure out where I test ;-)

 

Some updates

When I started this project it was really fun. Its now been almost three years and its gotten a bit more serious and not as fun.  I’ve got the perpetual internal battle about do I lighten up a bit and have more fun, or do I drive to completion with the thought that I may eventually be able to monetize what we have done. I don’t have an answer, but the struggle is still there.  One runs a risk turning something you enjoy doing into a business. Will you still enjoy it when its a have to?

Long time followers know that we started our software development with an RC Helicopter. Then we ported the software over to the blue ball and did some hovering. While a hovering rocket is cool the LLC task requires more than hovering. We need to navigate and sequence through the 3D way points with time delays etc… We also need to be be able to soft abort  allow some manual steering to try and hit the exact target. Its much easier to develop this stuff on the helicopter that does not require a 4 hour trip to test. So Today I spent the day putting the helicopter back together and checking it out. This entailed putting a new processor board on the helicopter and installing  a new GPS as I’d stolen the originals for the silver ball. I just returned from flying it about 20 times. Its currently set up to takeoff, hover for 15 seconds at 2m then land.  Here is a picture I took tonight of it sitting in the back of the truck after the flights.

 

We also are now using a new tool that was first tested with last weeks blue ball flight. The FAR desert is really hard on things like laptops. So when we setup the vehicle and then cycle valves, read voltages, check out the GPS and telemetry links we had been brining a laptop out to the vehicle. The Laptops are hard to read in the Sun and the sand gets every where. So I built a little box that had a daylight readable 4x20 reflective LCD two twist and push knobs and allows us to do all the checkout. Its about 1/3 the size of a normal laptop  and has enough battery in it to run for 48 hours. Its in a solid aluminum case and is pretty rugged. It also worked tonight with the helicopter, we did all the heli flights without setting up the main telemetry station and the computer.

Here is a picture: (Its about 8” long)

 

I also upgraded the laptop when the spare laptop died.  Ebay is your friend, I picked up a semi rugged Dell for 25% of what a new rugged dell would cost:

All the damage on the Silver ball from the eventful truck ride has been repaired and it should be back together for more static firing next weekend hers a picture of the motor and the ball.

This coming weekend we are going to have a busy weekend, we hope to:

• Tether hover the blue ball.


• Static test the silver ball.


• Fly the full LLC profile from the pads with the Helicopter.


• Do the first steps of the peroxide processing with the 1 55 gal drum of 50% food grade we got months ago.

This will probably take two full days. I’ll keep you all posted.

Business ethics and cuts by a thousand lawyers.

A long time ago a normal mortal  could buy rocket grade peroxide. Then someone crashed their rocket pack and sued the  peroxide supplier.They won and the supplier lost more on that suit than they had erver made on the small rocket grade perxode sales. So they did the smart thing and stopped selling rocket grade peroxide to anyone that did not have a government contract.

Three or four months ago I was very worried about peroxide availibility as peroxide propulsion was not running and xlspace systems had stopped producing. So I set about to refine my own. Stabilized 50% hydrogen peroxide is a widely used industrial chemical, and seemed to be generally availible.  I consulted with an expert that had been in the usiness of refining rocket grade perixude and decided to follow his reccomended process.

I got a sample 55 gal drum of 50% food grade from the local chemical supplier and built the plant to do the process. If you can get 70% semiconductor grade you cut out two steps from the process.  There are only two chemical suppliers doing bulk proixde distribution in the U.S. One got burned as described above and will not sell to anyone that is doing “rocketry”. the other suppleir does not produce rocket grade peroxide, they do produce 70% semi. so we started the process of having them review our facility and procedures so they would sell us 70%, rather than the commonly availible 50%. After a number of weeks and many exchanges we got the following response:

First thank you for your time and patience as XXXXX reviewed your request to purchase hydrogen peroxide.  As outlined in your information, your process would concentrate the material to 85-90% for use in rocketry.  You forecast an ongoing use of ~ 10K lbs per year of 70% product.

Our review involved the technical aspects of your work, product stewardship, regulatory affairs, and a legal & liability review.Everyone was impressed with your facility and apparent knowledge of hydrogen peroxide handling.

We have made the decision not to supply Unreasonable Rocket directly or through distribution.  Our decision was really made based on our perceived risk of exposure for a very small volume of business.   We will also communicate this to XXXXXX(the distributor we were buying 50% food grade from.)

We wish you well in your future endeavors and look forward to reading about your successes.

So if I had hidden what I do, or been dishonest about where the peroxide was going I could have continued to buy the 50% food grade. Now niether peroxide supplier will knowling sell even the 50% food grade if it is going to Unreasonable Rocket.  I know of others using peroxide for rockets that have set up shell companies “bozos chemical safety systems” or the like, buy peroxide under an assumed use and then refine for their rocket belts, drag cars or whatever. Others have “friend companies” buy it for them etc.. My personal business ethics don’t feel comfortable with that. As a result of being honest and upfront about what I’m doing the  door is closed.

No discussion of what insurance do you carry, what sort of liability release will you sign etc… Just no. People should be allowed to take risks. My familiy knows that if something happend to me it was my choice. They also know how strongly I feel that lawsuit lottery is destroying the fabric of what made the USA  great. Americans were once risk takers.  

What we are doing is far enough outside the normal industrial processes that any one doing business with us is not following their carefully coregraphed ISO9000 script. As a result the system is not perfect. That is why when I get a valve that supposed to have compatible materials in it I TEST IT. If I asked for viton and they sent buna-n then they screwed up, in the normal  events that sort of screw up would cause a leak. With 90% peroxide it could cause an explosion.  This is my responsiility, a larger  organization would have a detailed incomming inspection for anything that critical, I don’t so its my responsibility.  Its why we test things at FAR were we have a bunker to hide in. Its whey we presurize and fly the vehicle remotely, its why we make people at FAR seek shelter in the viewing bunker when we are trying something untested.  What we do is risky, but we try not to take stupid risks.  When I started going to FAR I looked around  and saw a bunch of 40+ year old guys that normally drive a desk out in the hot desert sun doing hard physical lablor. One of my very first donations to the place was an AED automatic defibulator and a breathing  oxygen bottle. At the time it was the largest check I had yet written for my new rocketry hobby. 

If I screw up amd blow my self up, it was my choice to take the risk, its not the fault of whatever other things happened in the chain of cauasality, I knowlingly put myself in that position.

Damm the lawyers.

BTW we flew the blue ball tethered in high winds today and got mixed results, no damage, but control problems in the winds. more later.

Testing

We went out to FAR and tested our H2O2 and Kerosene regen Motor.We ran it in Mon0-prop mode then in Bi-prop mode. It took a awhile to light in bi-prop mode, but We ran to about 80% throttle without damage in biprop mode. The Video does not really do it justice as it seems to have “sampling” effects. The Monolithic cat pack is clearly not getting good decomposition, probably leading to slow ignition. We need to rework the system test software so we can independently vary the proportions rather than have a fixed schedule. I have not yet reduced the data, but I’ll do that in the next 24 hours and post the result. You can find the you tube video .

It was a long day and when we packed up we failed to notice a melted spot on one of the vehicle tie down straps and being tired we did not double up as we usually do. So the front strap failed and the vehicle left the truck on the dirt road leaving FAR. The road is really rough and we were going about 40mph, we did not notice the vehicle depart. We noticed it was gone and had to drive back 1.5 miles to find it. Other than a cracked mounting tab and broken fitting on top of two the small stainless spheres it was largely undamaged. We were lucky.

This past week...

I did zero rocket work in the past week. I spent most of the week taking care of my Dad. My Step Mom was out of town and Dad has pretty much lost contact with reality, so I was parent sitting. My Father was a Coast Guard pilot and later a bush pilot in Alaska. I thought he might enjoy some airplanes so I took him to the Chino air show this past weekend. A lot of really cool WWII flying machines, but he barely noticed them flying by.

With a very young child you see progress every day so the level of care and attention have an expected end/reward. Taking care of an elder person is just hard.

Chase your dreams NOW as you never know whats comming.

On the Rocket front we hope to static test the silver ball again this weekend.