Monday, May 17, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Three days in the desert.
The Friends of amateur rocketry is the site where we do most of our testing and flying.
It is both a registered non-profit and a largely volunteer organization. In the last year of our LLC I felt we had become more of a user than contributor to the organization. This week FAR had a three day work party and I spent three days on site. All in all we did a bunch of trenching and in the end buried over a mile of Ethernet and power cable. It was three days of very hard physical work with as much time spent using a shovel as any other implement.
A large part of our culture probably doesn't understand why we as a group chose to spend our personal vacation time waist deep in a trench operating a shovel in the hot sun. The Majority of the people on site (self included) could afford to spend vacation time sitting on a tropical beach with a frozen drink, and choose otherwise.
On Saturday we had an active flight waiver so I took a break and did some experimenting. I'm evaluating sensors for high G use in rockets. I modified the Nose cone of the Liberty 2 I built a month or so ago.
You can see the stock nose cone on the bottom and the modified one on top. The electronics bay slides into the aluminum sleeve and screws in around the base with 10 counter sunk #4 flat head screws. The GPS antenna is on top and sticks up just above the metal/plastic transition. I am using this to evaluate IMU, GPS and telemetry components. It has an analog devices ADIS16350 6 DOF imu and a Spark fun 9DOF IMU (I know its really 9 measurements not 9 dof) A low cost 10hz GPS and a 100Mw Xbee-900 telemetry radio with non-optimum antenna. (The antenna is the white wire sticking out of the base) and 2Gb of micro SD data logger. The goal was to launch it and see how the different sensors compared. Alas the GPS worked at home and never got lock in the field so I got one flight with dual IMU data and on the second flight I pinched a wire reassembling and only got data from one IMU.
I'll review and commend on the data collected later. The flights were around 4000 ft with 8 or so G off the pad and the system seemed to have no telemetry glitches. On the ground I used a simple rubber duck antenna. At this point the IMU data is just one hour of raw numbers, but I'll locate the flight in the data stream and reduce it to something useful in the next week or so.
The CTI pro54 solid HPR motors are really easy to use, the flights themselves were pretty uneventful.
When I flew the vehicle at plaster city I bought a tracker/beeper to help find it. I did not purchase a receiver as the club had one. I put the tracker on with a fresh battery when I flew at FAR thinking that if I could not find the rocket I could go find a tracking receiver and come back in the next week to locate it. On the first flight it did not land with the rocket, the deployment was about 4 seconds late and had some speed so I guess I did not tape it on well enough.
So if someone is a real glutton for punishment there might be a tracker at 220.470 (ch 247) beeping away somewhere in the desert south of FAR.
Lastly on the 25th of this month the local San Diego AIAA chapter is having an awards dinner and Unreasonable Rocket's LLC effort is getting an award,that's kind of cool.
It is both a registered non-profit and a largely volunteer organization. In the last year of our LLC I felt we had become more of a user than contributor to the organization. This week FAR had a three day work party and I spent three days on site. All in all we did a bunch of trenching and in the end buried over a mile of Ethernet and power cable. It was three days of very hard physical work with as much time spent using a shovel as any other implement.
A large part of our culture probably doesn't understand why we as a group chose to spend our personal vacation time waist deep in a trench operating a shovel in the hot sun. The Majority of the people on site (self included) could afford to spend vacation time sitting on a tropical beach with a frozen drink, and choose otherwise.
On Saturday we had an active flight waiver so I took a break and did some experimenting. I'm evaluating sensors for high G use in rockets. I modified the Nose cone of the Liberty 2 I built a month or so ago.
You can see the stock nose cone on the bottom and the modified one on top. The electronics bay slides into the aluminum sleeve and screws in around the base with 10 counter sunk #4 flat head screws. The GPS antenna is on top and sticks up just above the metal/plastic transition. I am using this to evaluate IMU, GPS and telemetry components. It has an analog devices ADIS16350 6 DOF imu and a Spark fun 9DOF IMU (I know its really 9 measurements not 9 dof) A low cost 10hz GPS and a 100Mw Xbee-900 telemetry radio with non-optimum antenna. (The antenna is the white wire sticking out of the base) and 2Gb of micro SD data logger. The goal was to launch it and see how the different sensors compared. Alas the GPS worked at home and never got lock in the field so I got one flight with dual IMU data and on the second flight I pinched a wire reassembling and only got data from one IMU.
I'll review and commend on the data collected later. The flights were around 4000 ft with 8 or so G off the pad and the system seemed to have no telemetry glitches. On the ground I used a simple rubber duck antenna. At this point the IMU data is just one hour of raw numbers, but I'll locate the flight in the data stream and reduce it to something useful in the next week or so.
The CTI pro54 solid HPR motors are really easy to use, the flights themselves were pretty uneventful.
When I flew the vehicle at plaster city I bought a tracker/beeper to help find it. I did not purchase a receiver as the club had one. I put the tracker on with a fresh battery when I flew at FAR thinking that if I could not find the rocket I could go find a tracking receiver and come back in the next week to locate it. On the first flight it did not land with the rocket, the deployment was about 4 seconds late and had some speed so I guess I did not tape it on well enough.
So if someone is a real glutton for punishment there might be a tracker at 220.470 (ch 247) beeping away somewhere in the desert south of FAR.
Lastly on the 25th of this month the local San Diego AIAA chapter is having an awards dinner and Unreasonable Rocket's LLC effort is getting an award,that's kind of cool.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Catching up....
A bunch of Random thoughts... Business is picking up and if we can manage the many parts shortages I should be able to fill in the LLC $ hole I dug in 2009 and even do some modest development.
Toward that end I've been working on several things.
The four motors shown in the back of the rocket two blog posts ago are meant to be 3D printed with built in cooling passages. I had a plastic version I was showing at Space Access, the Metal version I ordered arrived today and it looks really good until you try to pass fluid through the cooling passages they are all plugged with sintered metal. Its a really pretty $400 paperweight.
I may have to build in a conventional way or change to a more expensive 3D printing process.
I used a supplier that uses the Prometal R1 and would really like to have the work done on a
EOSINT 270 M, but that process is about 5 or 6x as expensive.
Last weekend I went out to the San Diego Tripoli club launch and Joined Tripoli and successfully flew my Level 1 and Level 2 Qualification flights using the poorly painted Liberty 2 I discussed earlier. I'm in the process of building some test hardware to evaluate several lower cost IMU and GPS solutions that I will fly on the Liberty next FAR weekend (the 15th)
I'm working at doing some development work to lower the overall cost of things. One of the areas I'm working on is a lower cost IMU based on MEMs sensors. The Mems Sensors are getting much better and lower cost. The area I'm sort of stuck on is doing the drift bias correction stuff. The guys at www.diydrones.com have been working on IMU drift correction for aircraft and have generated some really good stuff. I just started a discussion topic over there that I hope will help me make some progress in extending some of this work to highly accelerated rockets. (http://diydrones.ning.com/forum/topics/rocket-imu-thoughts)
Toward that end I've been working on several things.
The four motors shown in the back of the rocket two blog posts ago are meant to be 3D printed with built in cooling passages. I had a plastic version I was showing at Space Access, the Metal version I ordered arrived today and it looks really good until you try to pass fluid through the cooling passages they are all plugged with sintered metal. Its a really pretty $400 paperweight.
I may have to build in a conventional way or change to a more expensive 3D printing process.
I used a supplier that uses the Prometal R1 and would really like to have the work done on a
EOSINT 270 M, but that process is about 5 or 6x as expensive.
Last weekend I went out to the San Diego Tripoli club launch and Joined Tripoli and successfully flew my Level 1 and Level 2 Qualification flights using the poorly painted Liberty 2 I discussed earlier. I'm in the process of building some test hardware to evaluate several lower cost IMU and GPS solutions that I will fly on the Liberty next FAR weekend (the 15th)
I'm working at doing some development work to lower the overall cost of things. One of the areas I'm working on is a lower cost IMU based on MEMs sensors. The Mems Sensors are getting much better and lower cost. The area I'm sort of stuck on is doing the drift bias correction stuff. The guys at www.diydrones.com have been working on IMU drift correction for aircraft and have generated some really good stuff. I just started a discussion topic over there that I hope will help me make some progress in extending some of this work to highly accelerated rockets. (http://diydrones.ning.com/forum/topics/rocket-imu-thoughts)
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Calculating...
I've written a very simple simulator to try and do some vehicle optimizations.
Using a very simple drag model... I used the data from page 16 of
http://www.jmrconline.org/Drag_Coefficient_Prediction.pdf built a table of mach number and Cd and interpolated. (This is actual data from a 5" rocket, were building a 6" rocket so it seems reasonable)
One of the interesting results is this graph:
It shows peak altitude achieved (y axis in meters) piloted against the equivalent peak drag. The peak drag units here are equivalent velocity at sea level in m/sec. The peak is at 50500m and 303m/sec (165Kft and 677mph)
Another interesting result (from a slightly different run) I'm not using any real fancy integrator and the results vs time steps don't change much:
So this means for very crude integration steps you get reasonable results, thus allowing one to use the model for optimization seeking. Right now there are a number of limitations, the model assumes that the ISP does not change as the motor is throttled for peak drag limiting etc... so as I add more detail to the model it will be interesting to see what happens.
Using a very simple drag model... I used the data from page 16 of
http://www.jmrconline.org/Drag_Coefficient_Prediction.pdf built a table of mach number and Cd and interpolated. (This is actual data from a 5" rocket, were building a 6" rocket so it seems reasonable)
One of the interesting results is this graph:
It shows peak altitude achieved (y axis in meters) piloted against the equivalent peak drag. The peak drag units here are equivalent velocity at sea level in m/sec. The peak is at 50500m and 303m/sec (165Kft and 677mph)
Another interesting result (from a slightly different run) I'm not using any real fancy integrator and the results vs time steps don't change much:
| Time Step | Alt |
|---|---|
| 1 | 47458 |
| .1 | 49532 |
| .01 | 49576 |
| .001 | 49593 |
So this means for very crude integration steps you get reasonable results, thus allowing one to use the model for optimization seeking. Right now there are a number of limitations, the model assumes that the ISP does not change as the motor is throttled for peak drag limiting etc... so as I add more detail to the model it will be interesting to see what happens.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Space Access 10
I had a great time at space access. It was strange to be showing a space access regular the plastic model of the 75lb motor I'm having 3D printed in stainless and the CTO of Lockheed interrupts and asks for my business card. The motors is a 50 to 75 pound regen peroxide hydrocarbon biprop. I've ordered one from the 3D printer and I'll show pictures when I get it. This drawing shows 4 of these tucked into a 6" airframe:
For those of you that follow the blog that was actually the only 100% new picture in my entire presentation. I also talked about restarting my composite tank work that I started in 2006 at the very begining of the blog. (Go back and reread the first few months)
The Technical plan going forward is in several steps. Working on a smaller scale I can do 100% of this plan within my current budget.
1)Build a 4 engine gimbaled monoprop that uses irrigation tubing and HPR style recovery. I expect this to take two months to get ready for first flight attempt, this puts it in the middle of summer so first flight might be delayed until september as FAR in summer is miserable.
1a)In parallel test the bi prop motor I'm having printed.
1b)In parallel develop composite polyethylene lined tanks.
1c)Build some small canards for the 6" airframe and see if we can make it glide with tanks empty.
In no particular order do the following:
Trade out the mono prop motors for the bi-prop. (I'll Probably crash the mono-prop so its probably a series of mono-prop then bi-prop.)
Substitute the composite tanks for Irrigation tubing tanks.(or alternatively put one of Steves Flometrics pistonless pumps in instead of the composite airframe.)
Fly the whole assembly to 100K ft
Fly the vehicle to 100K ft twice in one day.
Seems like a simple list its probably two years work.
The first unpleasant step is to clean up my Garage so I can actually work on anything.
For those of you that follow the blog that was actually the only 100% new picture in my entire presentation. I also talked about restarting my composite tank work that I started in 2006 at the very begining of the blog. (Go back and reread the first few months)
The Technical plan going forward is in several steps. Working on a smaller scale I can do 100% of this plan within my current budget.
1)Build a 4 engine gimbaled monoprop that uses irrigation tubing and HPR style recovery. I expect this to take two months to get ready for first flight attempt, this puts it in the middle of summer so first flight might be delayed until september as FAR in summer is miserable.
1a)In parallel test the bi prop motor I'm having printed.
1b)In parallel develop composite polyethylene lined tanks.
1c)Build some small canards for the 6" airframe and see if we can make it glide with tanks empty.
In no particular order do the following:
Trade out the mono prop motors for the bi-prop. (I'll Probably crash the mono-prop so its probably a series of mono-prop then bi-prop.)
Substitute the composite tanks for Irrigation tubing tanks.(or alternatively put one of Steves Flometrics pistonless pumps in instead of the composite airframe.)
Fly the whole assembly to 100K ft
Fly the vehicle to 100K ft twice in one day.
Seems like a simple list its probably two years work.
The first unpleasant step is to clean up my Garage so I can actually work on anything.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
I hate painting...
I have done a bunch of stuff at FAR, but I've never done the traditional HPR rocket thing.
Some of the next steps (glide back, aerodynamic canard controls) will be done a bit easier with that sort of propulsion. So to be able to order/fly traditional HPR stuff I though I ought to get my Tripoli certification so I can just order HPR motors. Toward that end I built a Giant Leap Liberty 4 kit to do the L1 and L2 qual flights. The Local Tripoli club flew Sat and Sun this week, so I was trying to get it ready for Sunday. On Friday it was done, it just needed paint.
Did I remember to say I hate paint? I put a nice coat of high build auto primer on sanded it all off, repeat three times, its looking pretty nice in its gray primer. Then two coats of white base followed by florescent orange about 10pm last night. Then I went to bed, alas this morning it looks like on the those crinkle paint jobs the white was not dry enough and the orange crinkled.
I took my painting embarrassment out to plaster city to do the qual flights only to discover the motor vendor was only on site Saturday. Arghhhh! Oh and did I remember to say I hate paint.
Some of the next steps (glide back, aerodynamic canard controls) will be done a bit easier with that sort of propulsion. So to be able to order/fly traditional HPR stuff I though I ought to get my Tripoli certification so I can just order HPR motors. Toward that end I built a Giant Leap Liberty 4 kit to do the L1 and L2 qual flights. The Local Tripoli club flew Sat and Sun this week, so I was trying to get it ready for Sunday. On Friday it was done, it just needed paint.
Did I remember to say I hate paint? I put a nice coat of high build auto primer on sanded it all off, repeat three times, its looking pretty nice in its gray primer. Then two coats of white base followed by florescent orange about 10pm last night. Then I went to bed, alas this morning it looks like on the those crinkle paint jobs the white was not dry enough and the orange crinkled.
I took my painting embarrassment out to plaster city to do the qual flights only to discover the motor vendor was only on site Saturday. Arghhhh! Oh and did I remember to say I hate paint.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Blue is dead...
We had a perfect tether flight on Saturday, followed by a bad free flight.
The vehicle started well, but as airspeed built up it started to spin.
It got to about 1Kft then started down. It went unstable probably due to the high rate of spin.
and started to leave the area of the pad and was heading toward the spectator area so I aborted. Both the software driven and RC only vent abort worked.
The vehicle is totaled.
The micro sd flash chip from the vehicle physically looks ok, but gets very warm when power is applied so I've gotten no data from the vehicle.
I had a camera pointed at the bottom of the motor with a good view of the vanes and if I can recover data from the video camera SD card it should provide some information.
The camera was destroyed on impact, the SD card is fine but the camera did not close the video file before impact. So it shows zero length.
Any advice on how to fix this?
My approach:
I've got some utilities for manipulating bare SD sectors that I use for my data logging cards.
Using this I wrote a utility to copy all the sectors off the Cameras SD card into a big file.
So the original card is safe and I won't mess with that.
I then wrote a short utility to copy the exact same sectors contents back onto a equal sized SD card. I'll then run chkdsk on this duplicate SD card.
One rub is that while the SD cards are the same brand and size they report slightly different numbers of physical sectors, will this mess up the FAT table accounting? The card I'm copying to has more sectors than the one off the camera.
The cards is formatted as FAT16 so I can start tracing clusters by hand and reassembling file chains, but its been along time since I did FAT table stuff by hand with a hex editor.
Any recommendations on good tools to do this?
If that does not work,
any other ideas on recovering the video data from the SD card?
The vehicle started well, but as airspeed built up it started to spin.
It got to about 1Kft then started down. It went unstable probably due to the high rate of spin.
and started to leave the area of the pad and was heading toward the spectator area so I aborted. Both the software driven and RC only vent abort worked.
The vehicle is totaled.
The micro sd flash chip from the vehicle physically looks ok, but gets very warm when power is applied so I've gotten no data from the vehicle.
I had a camera pointed at the bottom of the motor with a good view of the vanes and if I can recover data from the video camera SD card it should provide some information.
The camera was destroyed on impact, the SD card is fine but the camera did not close the video file before impact. So it shows zero length.
Any advice on how to fix this?
My approach:
I've got some utilities for manipulating bare SD sectors that I use for my data logging cards.
Using this I wrote a utility to copy all the sectors off the Cameras SD card into a big file.
So the original card is safe and I won't mess with that.
I then wrote a short utility to copy the exact same sectors contents back onto a equal sized SD card. I'll then run chkdsk on this duplicate SD card.
One rub is that while the SD cards are the same brand and size they report slightly different numbers of physical sectors, will this mess up the FAT table accounting? The card I'm copying to has more sectors than the one off the camera.
The cards is formatted as FAT16 so I can start tracing clusters by hand and reassembling file chains, but its been along time since I did FAT table stuff by hand with a hex editor.
Any recommendations on good tools to do this?
If that does not work,
any other ideas on recovering the video data from the SD card?
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Getting ready part N..
I've made my cat pack. I've built new tethers, the only thing left on my list is re zero the one vane I had to take apart and do final electronics checkout. In the next day or so I'll modify the software to match what I'm flying in simulation.
I'll probably leave for FAR Friday night and do a tethered flight very early Saturday. I've done a lot of simulations and a flight to the 1200 ft limit of G airspace. (1000 ft to give me some margin) and back to the pad is easily within the most pessimistic performance parameters. So if the tether flight goes without problems I'll make that attempt on Saturday.
Higher than that and I'll need FAA authorization to enter controlled airspace. (Which they are unlikely to grant me until I actually stop being lazy and formally ask for it. )
When I get that I'll try the flight to 11K ft and back to beat DCX. With out some aerodynamic drag on the way down it has ~3% margin. As a result I've ordered a parachute from Fruity Chutes (blue of course) and I will setup to deploy the drogue at apogee and basically fall back to 1200 ft or so before powering up to land. The purpose of the chute is to keep the vehicle upright and limit the speed to 60mph or so. This will either require a very calm day or compensation for winds aloft. I need to mdoel this. I can just use forecast winds, or I have to study the FAA rules to learn what I need to do to release a small balloon to measure the winds right before launch.
(A small Xbee transmitter and GPS cost less than $100 and is very light so I can actually fly a small instrumented balloon.)
Rough calculation says 11K ft to 1K ft at 60mph takes 113 seconds. So a 10mph wind would cause 1600 ft of displacement. I'll need to be very close on the wind calcs to land back on the pad. I might be better off to fly from the lake bed near FAR.
I'll probably leave for FAR Friday night and do a tethered flight very early Saturday. I've done a lot of simulations and a flight to the 1200 ft limit of G airspace. (1000 ft to give me some margin) and back to the pad is easily within the most pessimistic performance parameters. So if the tether flight goes without problems I'll make that attempt on Saturday.
Higher than that and I'll need FAA authorization to enter controlled airspace. (Which they are unlikely to grant me until I actually stop being lazy and formally ask for it. )
When I get that I'll try the flight to 11K ft and back to beat DCX. With out some aerodynamic drag on the way down it has ~3% margin. As a result I've ordered a parachute from Fruity Chutes (blue of course) and I will setup to deploy the drogue at apogee and basically fall back to 1200 ft or so before powering up to land. The purpose of the chute is to keep the vehicle upright and limit the speed to 60mph or so. This will either require a very calm day or compensation for winds aloft. I need to mdoel this. I can just use forecast winds, or I have to study the FAA rules to learn what I need to do to release a small balloon to measure the winds right before launch.
(A small Xbee transmitter and GPS cost less than $100 and is very light so I can actually fly a small instrumented balloon.)
Rough calculation says 11K ft to 1K ft at 60mph takes 113 seconds. So a 10mph wind would cause 1600 ft of displacement. I'll need to be very close on the wind calcs to land back on the pad. I might be better off to fly from the lake bed near FAR.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Working on Blue and....
Last week I fixed the landing gear on the blue ball in preparation for taking it to spaceup last week for show and tell. (You can see a picture of it there on its new gear here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dizee/4395476515/)
Last night I worked on building up a new cat pack. I started with the cat pack from silver and added some new disks. The top third of the cat pack was stripped and dead, I'm not sure what is going on. If I'm overheating the cat pack I'd expect the bottom third to be bad, not the top third. This leads me to believe I have some kind of contaminate in the h2o2. The new pack is ready to install.
My prep list looks like:
I have almost no traditional HPR experience with things like recovery high speed airframes etc... to remidy that I've been contemplating building a really simple H2O2 monoprop out of 4" or 6" aluminum tubing. Something that could go supersonic and reach to 20k ft or so. I'd use conventional dual stage recovery just like the big HPR guys do. This is something I can do with today's budget. Making the same basic vehicle bi-prop would make it capable of 100K ft.
It would probably be three increasing complex projects:
decomposed biprop h202 and RP-5 motors. Dr London had some cool video of it fireing on his phone. The motors were interesitng for both the construction and the thermal decomposition.
The were constructed out of stacked photo etched plates diffusion bonded together.
Getting a reliable thermal decomposed h2o2 motor to work would also be a really cool project.
Last night I worked on building up a new cat pack. I started with the cat pack from silver and added some new disks. The top third of the cat pack was stripped and dead, I'm not sure what is going on. If I'm overheating the cat pack I'd expect the bottom third to be bad, not the top third. This leads me to believe I have some kind of contaminate in the h2o2. The new pack is ready to install.
My prep list looks like:
- Remove the bottom half of the motor.
- Grease lube and inspect bearings on the vanes.
- Install cat pack in motor.
- Replace seals in all the sanitary fittings. (This is preventive)
- Reassemble the motor.
- Replace the GPS antenna cable. (It has a kink at one of the ends.)
- Inspect the wiring.
- Build new Tethers.
- Do a full electronics checkout.
- Charge all the batteries . (computer, actuators, abort rx, telmetry box, laptop,2x rc transmitters, 3x cameras )
- Do a tethered flight (on the 20th)
- Do a free flight to about 1K ft. (maybe on the 20th)
- Do a higher free flight???
I have almost no traditional HPR experience with things like recovery high speed airframes etc... to remidy that I've been contemplating building a really simple H2O2 monoprop out of 4" or 6" aluminum tubing. Something that could go supersonic and reach to 20k ft or so. I'd use conventional dual stage recovery just like the big HPR guys do. This is something I can do with today's budget. Making the same basic vehicle bi-prop would make it capable of 100K ft.
It would probably be three increasing complex projects:
- Unguided simple blow down mono prop to learn recovery.
- Fin guided pressurized mono prop.
- bi prop.
decomposed biprop h202 and RP-5 motors. Dr London had some cool video of it fireing on his phone. The motors were interesitng for both the construction and the thermal decomposition.
The were constructed out of stacked photo etched plates diffusion bonded together.
Getting a reliable thermal decomposed h2o2 motor to work would also be a really cool project.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Watching STS-130
I'm in Florida to watch the STS-130 Launch. I have NASA Guest tickets and the Launch viewing area is next to the Saturn V display at the Cape. The Temps for last nights scrub were a tad below 50F but the wind was blowing and damp. I did not really pack appropriately for these temps, it was really cold. I left the hotel at Midnight and got back to the room at 7:15 am. My internal clock is saying WTF?
Once again I'm stunned by the scale of the Saturn V, the size of the launch vehicle necessary to put 2 men on the moon in one shot is just staggering. I post and tweet my observations of the launch when it happens. The couple sitting behind us on the NASA bus has come out for 9 shuttle launches and has seen 9 scrubs and zero launches. It looks like they will try again Tonight but Tuesday Mornings Forecast is for worse weather so they probably won't even make the attempt.
Once again I'm stunned by the scale of the Saturn V, the size of the launch vehicle necessary to put 2 men on the moon in one shot is just staggering. I post and tweet my observations of the launch when it happens. The couple sitting behind us on the NASA bus has come out for 9 shuttle launches and has seen 9 scrubs and zero launches. It looks like they will try again Tonight but Tuesday Mornings Forecast is for worse weather so they probably won't even make the attempt.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Non-rocket but fun...
EDN published a short "Tales from the Cube" of mine.
This happened along time ago ~1990
This happened along time ago ~1990
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Notional Next Rocket...
Its still going to be six months or more before I can really start working on this, but its my next notional rocket. It uses the motor valves and actuators from the Silver vehicle in a more aerodynamic shape. The Green tanks are Wellmate WM12 tanks with the air bladders removed, and the blue tank is the WM-6 that was the fuel tank on the silver. With a 16" diameter and 380 liters of light weight 500 PSI tankage it should go to 100K ft +. Its basically 20 ft tall.
The tanks would be joined together with carbon fiber barrels bonded to the tanks.
The tanks would be joined together with carbon fiber barrels bonded to the tanks.
Bucket List Item....
I've always wanted to watch a shuttle launch.
I saw the very first shuttle land at Edwards, but I've never seen an orbital launch of any kind.
After a little contact fishing I just received a VIP invite to watch STS-130. Thank you Will and Andrew!
This is a night launch so it should be spectacular.
I saw the very first shuttle land at Edwards, but I've never seen an orbital launch of any kind.
After a little contact fishing I just received a VIP invite to watch STS-130. Thank you Will and Andrew!
This is a night launch so it should be spectacular.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Fate of the Blue Ball....
The Blue ball has minimal development value for where I want to go with Urocket.
I was going to donate it to the Xprize to hang in their lobby. I talked to my accountant today and learned that I can't have an increase in basis for a self created asset, that's CPA for I won't get any kind of deduction if I donate it. Its basically intact, it would be 100% ready to fly with less than 8 hours of work so next time I'm out at FAR I will bring it home and fix it. Then I will fly it.
Without doing any paperwork I can fly it to 1199 ft AGL and back. To go higher than that I'll need an FAA waiver. So in the next few days I'll do a detailed model of what it can do and write a waiver request. I'll probably fly it in 60 to 90 days to max altitude (more than 10K less than 30Kft) and back to the pad. If anyone wants to fly an experiment on it when I fly it let me know.
I'll probably let people on the blog vote for their favorite if I get more than one request.
I was going to donate it to the Xprize to hang in their lobby. I talked to my accountant today and learned that I can't have an increase in basis for a self created asset, that's CPA for I won't get any kind of deduction if I donate it. Its basically intact, it would be 100% ready to fly with less than 8 hours of work so next time I'm out at FAR I will bring it home and fix it. Then I will fly it.
Without doing any paperwork I can fly it to 1199 ft AGL and back. To go higher than that I'll need an FAA waiver. So in the next few days I'll do a detailed model of what it can do and write a waiver request. I'll probably fly it in 60 to 90 days to max altitude (more than 10K less than 30Kft) and back to the pad. If anyone wants to fly an experiment on it when I fly it let me know.
- less than 5Kg,
- self powered ,
- 100% open public results
I'll probably let people on the blog vote for their favorite if I get more than one request.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Tiger, Jaycee Dugard ,Me ,darwin, and motivation.
(Stick with this it will really end up almost on topic)
Tiger
The current fascination people have with the Tiger Woods is interesting because the image he projects is perfect, he is a gifted athlete, smart, well spoken, respected, rich, married to a super model, his life is perfect in every way. Yet we learn that at some level he is not satisfied with what he has.
Jaycee
Jaycee Dugard is captured as a little girl raped and held captive for 18 years, yet we read that she had adjusted to her life and even felt some attachment to the monster that did this to her.
Un-happiness in the perfect life and happiness in the horrible life, whats going on?
Me
I think its human nature to adjust your expectations to your situation. Last year my business had the best year ever, I had the time and budget to pursue the LLC dream and work on a really interesting project, I was truly fortunate to have that. It was a great year. In the Month after the contest I've not yet come to grips with the fact that the economy is in the pits and I really can't afford to work on the rockets for awhile. I've got to go work really hard to maintain the business in this climate rather than seeing it grow. (We're down 36% year to date yet we have not laid anyone off) My personal setpoint had adjusted to the thrill and success and its really depressing to try and adjust it back. The vast majority of humanity would be ecstatic to trade places with me, yet I'm depressed about it. 5 years ago I'd be ecstatic, I think we really only react to the changes, not the absolute level of things in our life.
Darwin
When I stop and ponder this I come it an interesting question. What is the natural state of humans? From an evolutionary standpoint I can see that sit in the corner depressed is not effective and would be selected out of the gene pool. However I can also see that a slight unease or paranoia could have benefits. If one group of humans is satisfied and happy and settles in for the winter, they would be at a disadvantage to another group the was just a little bit uneasy and focused that energy at being more productive and gathering a few more nuts and animal skins for the winter. So what is the natural state of the most productive humans?
Motivation
What drives productive motivation? Is motivation bordering on obsession good or bad for production? Should I just rest and relax for awhile, or shoudl I try and get fired up to work on the things I can actually do, like clean the workshop, develop a simulator, do a peper design for a nanosat vehicle? What purpose does recharge and satisfaction setpoint "reset" have in the process? My wife has studyied a lot of Buddhist philosophy, IE live in the now and be happy with what you have. Any really productive Buddhist scientists and engineers? Is society better served by the hedonist pursuing things in the free market where he is driven to create value so he can have pleasure? I've always though Maslow's hierarchy of needs was a better gage that pure hedonism. The happiest times in my life have been associated with creating something , or bringing an idea to realization. I've posed a lot of hard questions all much less clear than the rocket equation, yet more important when trying to accomplish things in the world.
Tiger
The current fascination people have with the Tiger Woods is interesting because the image he projects is perfect, he is a gifted athlete, smart, well spoken, respected, rich, married to a super model, his life is perfect in every way. Yet we learn that at some level he is not satisfied with what he has.
Jaycee
Jaycee Dugard is captured as a little girl raped and held captive for 18 years, yet we read that she had adjusted to her life and even felt some attachment to the monster that did this to her.
Un-happiness in the perfect life and happiness in the horrible life, whats going on?
Me
I think its human nature to adjust your expectations to your situation. Last year my business had the best year ever, I had the time and budget to pursue the LLC dream and work on a really interesting project, I was truly fortunate to have that. It was a great year. In the Month after the contest I've not yet come to grips with the fact that the economy is in the pits and I really can't afford to work on the rockets for awhile. I've got to go work really hard to maintain the business in this climate rather than seeing it grow. (We're down 36% year to date yet we have not laid anyone off) My personal setpoint had adjusted to the thrill and success and its really depressing to try and adjust it back. The vast majority of humanity would be ecstatic to trade places with me, yet I'm depressed about it. 5 years ago I'd be ecstatic, I think we really only react to the changes, not the absolute level of things in our life.
Darwin
When I stop and ponder this I come it an interesting question. What is the natural state of humans? From an evolutionary standpoint I can see that sit in the corner depressed is not effective and would be selected out of the gene pool. However I can also see that a slight unease or paranoia could have benefits. If one group of humans is satisfied and happy and settles in for the winter, they would be at a disadvantage to another group the was just a little bit uneasy and focused that energy at being more productive and gathering a few more nuts and animal skins for the winter. So what is the natural state of the most productive humans?
Motivation
What drives productive motivation? Is motivation bordering on obsession good or bad for production? Should I just rest and relax for awhile, or shoudl I try and get fired up to work on the things I can actually do, like clean the workshop, develop a simulator, do a peper design for a nanosat vehicle? What purpose does recharge and satisfaction setpoint "reset" have in the process? My wife has studyied a lot of Buddhist philosophy, IE live in the now and be happy with what you have. Any really productive Buddhist scientists and engineers? Is society better served by the hedonist pursuing things in the free market where he is driven to create value so he can have pleasure? I've always though Maslow's hierarchy of needs was a better gage that pure hedonism. The happiest times in my life have been associated with creating something , or bringing an idea to realization. I've posed a lot of hard questions all much less clear than the rocket equation, yet more important when trying to accomplish things in the world.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Cleaning the workshop.....
My Son and I spent the better part of Saturday trying to clean up the workshop.
On Sunday I took 180lbs of scrap metal to the recyclers.
It was hard to scrap things I'd put hundreds of hours of work into, but that is what is needed.
The stuff I did for LLC is larger than the scale I intend to work on going forward so very little of it is presently useful.
Trying to return to a normal life, but I still find the end of the LLC leaves a big hole.
I'm putting some focus and effort into work to try an make up for the last few months of neglect and to rebuild the rocket fund.
I'll be the guest on the Space Show this Friday the 27th.
On Sunday I took 180lbs of scrap metal to the recyclers.
It was hard to scrap things I'd put hundreds of hours of work into, but that is what is needed.
The stuff I did for LLC is larger than the scale I intend to work on going forward so very little of it is presently useful.
Trying to return to a normal life, but I still find the end of the LLC leaves a big hole.
I'm putting some focus and effort into work to try an make up for the last few months of neglect and to rebuild the rocket fund.
I'll be the guest on the Space Show this Friday the 27th.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Its a bird, its a plane its a drag!
The LLC vehicles have had almost no aerodynamic constraints. The Rocket Racers of Armadillo and Xcor used off the shelf airframes with established functional aerodynamics. Not even spacex has yet dealt with aerodynamics in any complciated way. The Spacex falcon 1 did have aerodyanmic Max Q issues, and probably aerothermal issues, but there were no aerodynamic controls and aerodyamics does not get much simpler than a long round tube with a pointy end.
(The recovery parachutes of the F1 first stage either were not included or failed)
Spacex is about to fly the dragon capsule with hypersonic aerodynamics, aero thermal, and stable parachute deployment and recovery issues. Armadillo is starting to fly to higher altitudes, Masten hopes to soon follow and or surpass what Armadillo has been doing.
Xcor is planing their next rocket vehicle where the aerodynamics include transonic and some aero thermal issues.
From a rocketry stand point the smaller New Space organizations (Masten ,Armadillo and Xcor) are nearing the level of rocketry sophistication reached by the Germans at the end of WWII. Please note that the Germans never flew a supersonic aircraft. (Yes the V2 was supersonic) Get in your time machine fly back to 1946 and ask Chuck Yeager if supersonic is a big deal?
If an LLC L2 vehicle was flown on an airless earth with zero drag and maintained a steady state 4G acceleration (3 g net) it would run out of propellant near 30Km and coast to 119Km before falling back to earth. Using my really simple aerodynamic model... assuming a Masten Glow of 900 lbs, and 25" diameter with very good aerodyamics removing the 25Kg payload and flying the same 4G flight Mastens L2 vehicle would reach about 116Kf or 35Km. Now in practice you would probably have to throttle back to reduce max Q if you picked 300Knots as max Q equivalent then you would have your velocity limited by maxQ until at least 40Kft and one would trade more gravity loss for reduced aerodynamic losses and get to about the same place just over 115K ft.
This not an up and soft land simulation, this is a up up and away simulation with a crash landing at the end. So given the stated goals of both armadillo and Masten to fly payloads to space they will need vehicles that are both higher performing and more aerodynamic than what they presently have.
(A max Q of 300 knots equivalent may not seem like very fast in a world with 500knot airliners, but a skydiver released into a 300 knot airstream would experience more than 8 g of deceleration.)
I vaguely remember Henry Spencer making a comment that the Apollo command module heat shield had an eqiuivalent ISP of 7000. If your going to build reusable vehicles that fly to space and come back its never going to make sense to kill your velocity via propulsion as long as we are using chemical fuels. So when reusable suborbital vehicles start flying to 100km they will need to use aerodynamics to scrub off the energy from the gravitational potential.
Will this look like the space ship 2 shuttle cock? will it look like NASA's hypersonic ring slot parachutes developed for viking and used on every mars landing since? Will it be airplane like?
I think this is going to be a harder problem than many think. Mr Musk of spacex has been quoted as saying that a fly back first stage booster would be a really useful thing to reduce space access costs, but it would cost > $1B to develop. Some solutions look simple like the rocket becomes winged vehicle as shown in Charles Pooley's Microlauncher presentation. I don't think that an easily fabricated simple wing will function well with supersonic shocks, flutter stiffness etc... One wants a shape that can give you decelerating lift at high altitude, does not provide much drag on the way up and is structurally stable at all points in between. This is a you pick any two sort of problem. The U2 had very long thin wings to get get lift at high altitude. Yet it it was a subsonic aircraft and as a result operated in a very narrow box where a few knots faster and it hit Mach buffet and a few knots slower and it stalled.
One can work around these issues by using a combination, like a hypersonic parachute to decelerate you to subsonic followed by rotate open wings to glide back to base.
Whatever features will be used they will require testing. With the exception of xcor all of these vehicles are unmanned. The regulatory environment for testing rockets under the amateur or experimental permit rules are now well defined and reasonable friendly. If one is developing a glide back system one would like to test the basic aero controls, flight, landing etc in an incremental manner. Just try getting the FAA to give you permission to fly such an unmanned vehicle in their airspace? The Aircraft side of the FAA is significantly less understanding than the AST. (Just ask John Carmack) So from a regulatory standpoint one is going to have to fly it as a rocket under AST's jurisdiction. This is not testing that can easily be done under tether, or even at the locations that Armadillo and Masten are currently flying from.
None of this is impossible, its just another layer of problems to be tackled. Anyone have any good recommendations for a good book on supersonic aerodynamics ?
(The recovery parachutes of the F1 first stage either were not included or failed)
Spacex is about to fly the dragon capsule with hypersonic aerodynamics, aero thermal, and stable parachute deployment and recovery issues. Armadillo is starting to fly to higher altitudes, Masten hopes to soon follow and or surpass what Armadillo has been doing.
Xcor is planing their next rocket vehicle where the aerodynamics include transonic and some aero thermal issues.
From a rocketry stand point the smaller New Space organizations (Masten ,Armadillo and Xcor) are nearing the level of rocketry sophistication reached by the Germans at the end of WWII. Please note that the Germans never flew a supersonic aircraft. (Yes the V2 was supersonic) Get in your time machine fly back to 1946 and ask Chuck Yeager if supersonic is a big deal?
If an LLC L2 vehicle was flown on an airless earth with zero drag and maintained a steady state 4G acceleration (3 g net) it would run out of propellant near 30Km and coast to 119Km before falling back to earth. Using my really simple aerodynamic model... assuming a Masten Glow of 900 lbs, and 25" diameter with very good aerodyamics removing the 25Kg payload and flying the same 4G flight Mastens L2 vehicle would reach about 116Kf or 35Km. Now in practice you would probably have to throttle back to reduce max Q if you picked 300Knots as max Q equivalent then you would have your velocity limited by maxQ until at least 40Kft and one would trade more gravity loss for reduced aerodynamic losses and get to about the same place just over 115K ft.
This not an up and soft land simulation, this is a up up and away simulation with a crash landing at the end. So given the stated goals of both armadillo and Masten to fly payloads to space they will need vehicles that are both higher performing and more aerodynamic than what they presently have.
(A max Q of 300 knots equivalent may not seem like very fast in a world with 500knot airliners, but a skydiver released into a 300 knot airstream would experience more than 8 g of deceleration.)
I vaguely remember Henry Spencer making a comment that the Apollo command module heat shield had an eqiuivalent ISP of 7000. If your going to build reusable vehicles that fly to space and come back its never going to make sense to kill your velocity via propulsion as long as we are using chemical fuels. So when reusable suborbital vehicles start flying to 100km they will need to use aerodynamics to scrub off the energy from the gravitational potential.
Will this look like the space ship 2 shuttle cock? will it look like NASA's hypersonic ring slot parachutes developed for viking and used on every mars landing since? Will it be airplane like?
I think this is going to be a harder problem than many think. Mr Musk of spacex has been quoted as saying that a fly back first stage booster would be a really useful thing to reduce space access costs, but it would cost > $1B to develop. Some solutions look simple like the rocket becomes winged vehicle as shown in Charles Pooley's Microlauncher presentation. I don't think that an easily fabricated simple wing will function well with supersonic shocks, flutter stiffness etc... One wants a shape that can give you decelerating lift at high altitude, does not provide much drag on the way up and is structurally stable at all points in between. This is a you pick any two sort of problem. The U2 had very long thin wings to get get lift at high altitude. Yet it it was a subsonic aircraft and as a result operated in a very narrow box where a few knots faster and it hit Mach buffet and a few knots slower and it stalled.
One can work around these issues by using a combination, like a hypersonic parachute to decelerate you to subsonic followed by rotate open wings to glide back to base.
Whatever features will be used they will require testing. With the exception of xcor all of these vehicles are unmanned. The regulatory environment for testing rockets under the amateur or experimental permit rules are now well defined and reasonable friendly. If one is developing a glide back system one would like to test the basic aero controls, flight, landing etc in an incremental manner. Just try getting the FAA to give you permission to fly such an unmanned vehicle in their airspace? The Aircraft side of the FAA is significantly less understanding than the AST. (Just ask John Carmack) So from a regulatory standpoint one is going to have to fly it as a rocket under AST's jurisdiction. This is not testing that can easily be done under tether, or even at the locations that Armadillo and Masten are currently flying from.
None of this is impossible, its just another layer of problems to be tackled. Anyone have any good recommendations for a good book on supersonic aerodynamics ?
Monday, November 09, 2009
Crystal ball gazing....
Its clear that Armadillo and Masten are going to take their lander technology and pursue scientific and other payloads to the ignoreasphere. (IE the space between 100Kft and 150Km). If we had won any LLC $ at all our plans would be similar. This by itself is not going to change the world. (Masten article in AV week)
In an optimistic scenario it allows both Masten and Armadillo to become cash flow positive and continue to develop. From a pure business stand point one can count the number of heads in the masten shop make some educated guesses about rent and insurance etc.. and one would come up with a burn rate some where between 500K and 1.5M a year. So the new found prize money buys them another year of operation. Today's masten press release had a figure of about 100K per flight. Assuming they have good gross margins and get 20 or so customers a year they have an on-going growing business.
Beyond the scientific payloads to the ignorasphere you will have people like scaled/virgin providing man tended flights to this region for prices double what Masten is quoting for a "Brick" When that starts happening Mastens prices are going to have to plummet to compete.
The next big step is some sort of orbital capability. I don't see a clear revenue path for incremental improvements from high suborbital to orbital. The Technology shown by armadillo and Masten (hover for ~200 sec iat 9.8m/sec) give a DV of 1962m/sec. To reach orbit with a small high drag vehicle (small == high drag) one needs at least 8000 m/sec dv. Giving some credit for vac ISP gains and calling the present vehicles the 2nd of three stages one could probably put a 5 lb "brick" in orbit with a gross lift off on the order of 10000 lb. Is there a market?
Clearly spacex has demonstrated there is a potential market for 200Kg payloads, but 50 to 100 times smaller? Can either Masten or Armadillo grow into this spot without significant outside capital? Only time will tell.
I'm a real fan of simple dumb booster. The series LEO on the cheap has a lot going for it. As I've said before I really liked the Beal Aerospace approach, big simple pressure fed. I just think he aimed too high for the first vehicle. Something 10 times smaller would have been a good start.
Even starting there its hard to rough out a plan that does not take $50M+ to get to cash flow positive and profitable. Virgin recently got investments on that order and maybe they can grow into this space.
I've often thought about writing a detailed business plan to seek funding, but I have major personal resistance to becoming another one on the long list of people that say "just write me a really large check and trust me I'll build a spacecraft that owns the market." To properly assemble a plan that could realistically get funding is a lot of work with low probablity of success.
The engineering is not really even a big part of the problem, one has to also build a functioning organization with Management, recruiting, HR, legal, government liaison, etc.... It would be hard to just bring forth such an organization in a timely manner given infinite funds. Space lauunch is such a broad problem covering so many disciplines It would be really hard to find someone to
organize the business part if you had the perfect engineering team already in place. How many people have a sset up a brand new manufacturing facility on that scale in the U.S. in the last 20 years? Not many.
Where do I go from here? The question is a lot broader than the technical topics discussion I wrote last week. Do I want Unreasonable to be a slightly profitable side business?? Do I want to compete against Masten/Armadillo as a the lowest cost provider? Can I contribute something technically to this 'space'? Do I have the chutzpa to try creating a externally funded start up?
I've worked at funded start ups and my current business that was started with zero outside $ in 1998 was a lot simpler to start and has done well. How far outside of my personal comfort zone would I like to stretch?
I've even contemplated sending a resume to Spacex, but I have not figured out where we could live within driving distance to Hawthorne without a reduction in our standard of living.
On a personal level its been a hard week watching the LLC awards ceremony and having tons of people tell me our accomplishments were amazing. Feels a lot like I think 4th place at the Olympics would feel. Amazing results, just not as amazing as gold,silver and bronze. Its really frustrating at some level.
Over the last year my schedule was up at 5am work on Unreasonable til 8:30 take a shower go to work, come home at 6pm work on unreasonable. This last week I've been getting to work before 7 and leaving around 4:30. Coming home and feeling lost. I still have not gotten up the motivation to tackle the entropy in the workshop.
I'm gathering up some data on the technical performance of Masten, Armadillo, unreasonable and several other interesting ideas and some time in the two weeks I'm going to do an ideas with supporting "numbers" post.
In an optimistic scenario it allows both Masten and Armadillo to become cash flow positive and continue to develop. From a pure business stand point one can count the number of heads in the masten shop make some educated guesses about rent and insurance etc.. and one would come up with a burn rate some where between 500K and 1.5M a year. So the new found prize money buys them another year of operation. Today's masten press release had a figure of about 100K per flight. Assuming they have good gross margins and get 20 or so customers a year they have an on-going growing business.
Beyond the scientific payloads to the ignorasphere you will have people like scaled/virgin providing man tended flights to this region for prices double what Masten is quoting for a "Brick" When that starts happening Mastens prices are going to have to plummet to compete.
The next big step is some sort of orbital capability. I don't see a clear revenue path for incremental improvements from high suborbital to orbital. The Technology shown by armadillo and Masten (hover for ~200 sec iat 9.8m/sec) give a DV of 1962m/sec. To reach orbit with a small high drag vehicle (small == high drag) one needs at least 8000 m/sec dv. Giving some credit for vac ISP gains and calling the present vehicles the 2nd of three stages one could probably put a 5 lb "brick" in orbit with a gross lift off on the order of 10000 lb. Is there a market?
Clearly spacex has demonstrated there is a potential market for 200Kg payloads, but 50 to 100 times smaller? Can either Masten or Armadillo grow into this spot without significant outside capital? Only time will tell.
I'm a real fan of simple dumb booster. The series LEO on the cheap has a lot going for it. As I've said before I really liked the Beal Aerospace approach, big simple pressure fed. I just think he aimed too high for the first vehicle. Something 10 times smaller would have been a good start.
Even starting there its hard to rough out a plan that does not take $50M+ to get to cash flow positive and profitable. Virgin recently got investments on that order and maybe they can grow into this space.
I've often thought about writing a detailed business plan to seek funding, but I have major personal resistance to becoming another one on the long list of people that say "just write me a really large check and trust me I'll build a spacecraft that owns the market." To properly assemble a plan that could realistically get funding is a lot of work with low probablity of success.
The engineering is not really even a big part of the problem, one has to also build a functioning organization with Management, recruiting, HR, legal, government liaison, etc.... It would be hard to just bring forth such an organization in a timely manner given infinite funds. Space lauunch is such a broad problem covering so many disciplines It would be really hard to find someone to
organize the business part if you had the perfect engineering team already in place. How many people have a sset up a brand new manufacturing facility on that scale in the U.S. in the last 20 years? Not many.
Where do I go from here? The question is a lot broader than the technical topics discussion I wrote last week. Do I want Unreasonable to be a slightly profitable side business?? Do I want to compete against Masten/Armadillo as a the lowest cost provider? Can I contribute something technically to this 'space'? Do I have the chutzpa to try creating a externally funded start up?
I've worked at funded start ups and my current business that was started with zero outside $ in 1998 was a lot simpler to start and has done well. How far outside of my personal comfort zone would I like to stretch?
I've even contemplated sending a resume to Spacex, but I have not figured out where we could live within driving distance to Hawthorne without a reduction in our standard of living.
On a personal level its been a hard week watching the LLC awards ceremony and having tons of people tell me our accomplishments were amazing. Feels a lot like I think 4th place at the Olympics would feel. Amazing results, just not as amazing as gold,silver and bronze. Its really frustrating at some level.
Over the last year my schedule was up at 5am work on Unreasonable til 8:30 take a shower go to work, come home at 6pm work on unreasonable. This last week I've been getting to work before 7 and leaving around 4:30. Coming home and feeling lost. I still have not gotten up the motivation to tackle the entropy in the workshop.
I'm gathering up some data on the technical performance of Masten, Armadillo, unreasonable and several other interesting ideas and some time in the two weeks I'm going to do an ideas with supporting "numbers" post.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
On Discovery Channel....
We were on the daily planet show on the discovery channel in Canada last night.
You can see the show.
You can see the show.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
16 hrs of sleep (in a single night!) is helpful....
I slept 16 hours last night and I am feeling much better.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words.
Over the next month or two I'll take some time and describe some of the projects on the
"want to do next" list. I'm going to have to pick one or two off the list. The list is large enough that it will have to undergo significant triage. A smattering of ideas:
Do I work on guidance and controls? (I have a magazine that wants me to publish a seires on the helicopter guidance and controls) I'd like to build a full up system to go on existing airframes that duplicates most of the capabilties of the dragon fly
Do I work to build a hardware in the loop simulator tailored to become an open toolkit for others? I have some really good ideas in this realm ,but I really need to find someone that can help with the core math and transforms part of this. I can do all the basic physics simulation in 2D, but when I try to model things like what a 25 lb gimbaled engine deflection does to to the vehicle in 3D IE accouting for the 3D rotational intetias of both the motor and the rest of the vehicle when the momentum transfers between the two peices are constrained to 2 axis by the gimbal joint, add to this that the deflection changes the rotational inertia of the system in the roll axis my head explodes. As the gimbaled mass is more than 15% of the vehicle weight I don't think you can just ignore the effect. My rocket parts bin does not have any spherical frictionless cows so I can't make thoose assumptions. (If that makes no sense to you you probaly had a different college physics class than I did)
Do I finish my electric pumped hi pressure rocket demonstrator.
Do I do work on better catalysts. I got a really good download of information on Beal's catalyst development and would like to pursue this but the basic equipment to do or hire the flame spray metal application is outside the present budget.
Do I go back to permangenate and static mixing tubes to skip the whole catalyst. (I have all the parts on hand for this experiment so the necessary budget is close to zero)
Do I go back to Lox and ignitors? (The helium cost is a killer)
I really like the small pump work done at LLNL I'd like to duplicate that.
The low cost turbo pump ideas described on Charles Micro Launchers site are of interest.
I have a hankering to build a 10K lb tube wall motor that would be usefull as the first stage in a
reusable booster.
Glide back airframes and or parachutes are of interest.
Do I work on full up vehicles?
This is the most expensive option if I do this I think I will use Wellmate WM35WB for peroxide and WM-6LP for fuel as the WM-6 I used for a fuel tank on silver worked really well.
Using a derivative of silvers propulsion system this could go to 50K ft and then soft land, or well over 100Kt and parachute back.
Any customer(s) with $ to spend could push any one of these items to the top of the list....
Thanks to everyone for the kind words.
Over the next month or two I'll take some time and describe some of the projects on the
"want to do next" list. I'm going to have to pick one or two off the list. The list is large enough that it will have to undergo significant triage. A smattering of ideas:
Do I work on guidance and controls? (I have a magazine that wants me to publish a seires on the helicopter guidance and controls) I'd like to build a full up system to go on existing airframes that duplicates most of the capabilties of the dragon fly
Do I work to build a hardware in the loop simulator tailored to become an open toolkit for others? I have some really good ideas in this realm ,but I really need to find someone that can help with the core math and transforms part of this. I can do all the basic physics simulation in 2D, but when I try to model things like what a 25 lb gimbaled engine deflection does to to the vehicle in 3D IE accouting for the 3D rotational intetias of both the motor and the rest of the vehicle when the momentum transfers between the two peices are constrained to 2 axis by the gimbal joint, add to this that the deflection changes the rotational inertia of the system in the roll axis my head explodes. As the gimbaled mass is more than 15% of the vehicle weight I don't think you can just ignore the effect. My rocket parts bin does not have any spherical frictionless cows so I can't make thoose assumptions. (If that makes no sense to you you probaly had a different college physics class than I did)
Do I finish my electric pumped hi pressure rocket demonstrator.
Do I do work on better catalysts. I got a really good download of information on Beal's catalyst development and would like to pursue this but the basic equipment to do or hire the flame spray metal application is outside the present budget.
Do I go back to permangenate and static mixing tubes to skip the whole catalyst. (I have all the parts on hand for this experiment so the necessary budget is close to zero)
Do I go back to Lox and ignitors? (The helium cost is a killer)
I really like the small pump work done at LLNL I'd like to duplicate that.
The low cost turbo pump ideas described on Charles Micro Launchers site are of interest.
I have a hankering to build a 10K lb tube wall motor that would be usefull as the first stage in a
reusable booster.
Glide back airframes and or parachutes are of interest.
Do I work on full up vehicles?
This is the most expensive option if I do this I think I will use Wellmate WM35WB for peroxide and WM-6LP for fuel as the WM-6 I used for a fuel tank on silver worked really well.
Using a derivative of silvers propulsion system this could go to 50K ft and then soft land, or well over 100Kt and parachute back.
Any customer(s) with $ to spend could push any one of these items to the top of the list....
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