The December 2013 Firing went well. It was attended by 8 members in addition to a group of students from USC RPL.
Except for a few spots on the road right after the asphalt ends it was in pretty good shape. There were some light rain early in the day and strong winds persisted all day. This kicked around a lot of sand. And again I’ll be dismantling my camera to remove all the sand. (At least the wind was kind enough not to shatter one of my car windows with a rock this time like it did last time.) The video quality suffered because of the winds. I had to film from inside the blockhouse and through the not so clear windows. tapentadol without prescription
There were 6 static firings for the day. Three where from the USC group. These tests where designed to test additives to their basic AP-Aluminum propellant formula. All three were fired successfully. (I only captured footage from the first and last test.)
Chris Lujan, brought and static fired another one of his Potassium Nitrate/Sucrose Rocket motors, with some modifications from his previous designs. Unfortunately in exploded upon ignition. The casing was made of PVC and in disintegrated into pretty small pieces.
The firing of my Gaseous oxygen and Propane rocket went well save for a few issues. The buzzing sound that can be heard in the video was being caused by the check valves. They didn’t quite have enough flow to keep them fully open. Also debris from the ablative liner partly obstructed the nozzle canting the plume to one side. xanax online
My second firing was another Potassium Nitrate/Sucrose rocket. This was a build of one of Richard Nakka’s design (his website http://www.nakka-rocketry.net is a great resource for sugar based propellants) This time we mixed the propellant there at the MTA. Chris was really helpful with this and he showed us how to prepare the propellant. This propellant type “rocket candy,” while being one of the most widely used armature propellants, has never caught on strongly at the RRS. Our three Pyro-Ops who where there that day, (Jim Gross, and Richard and Maryann Butterfield) where keen to observe the process and be satisfied that the propellant could be safely made at the MTA. When we fired the rocket the bolts retaining the nozzle sheared clean off and the nozzle was launched upwards at high speeds. We couldn’t find it afterwards. This happened because the bolts needed to be steel but when I originally put it together I forgot to check and used some bolts I happened to have laying around that turned out to be zinc and they could not stand the load. http://www.headandneckassociates.com/getting-prednisone-without-prescription/
Mark Smith a USC alumni showed up with a solid propellant aerospike rocket motor with a molybdenum spike. He hopes to research ways of reducing erosion of aerospike. We didn’t have time to get to his rocket, maybe next time.
The launch was very well attended and we got some good video. The launched got started right after the tallest dust devil I’ve seen in person was kicking up dirt over at FAR but thankfully kept its distance from us. I didn’t feel like cleaning sand out of my camera again.
We had two beta launches and both parachute recovery systems failed. Neither of the rockets were recovered. Osvoldo’s rocket’s parachute ripped on deployment. Frank’s rocket had the instrument section separated shortly after takeoff. Larry had a static test of a class composite motor. It was buried in the ground aka “poor man’s vertical test stand” which was good since it exploded upon ignition. The nozzle was recovered and did not show signs of erosion. Chris had two sucrose/potassium nitrate motor static tests. He was testing two different configurations. The first one fired for about 13 seconds, but the nozzle was ejected part way through. One of the things he was testing was nozzle material and construction methods, it was found that that particular bonding agent being used as a nozzle was not strong enough for nozzle retention however it appeared to work satisfactorily as an ablative. The second test happened latter in the evening and I, unfortunately, was unable to film it but thankfully Frank filmed it with his phone. The second motors grain cracked and ejected some of the propellant and it finished burning on the ground.
The USC team had a large 2 stage rocket named the “Texas Two Step” painted like one of those red white and blue rocket popsicles. One of the goals of the test was to use the same launch tower they intend to use on their suborbital launch. After working on it all day and after some delays (they had missed some parts and had to send people to go and get them) they finally launch just before the sun went over the mountain. Sun down, incidentally, was the cut off for scrubbing the launch for the day, so they made it at the last minute. The 2nd stage did not ignite but was recovered from its GPS signal. The first stage was not recovered. The powered portion of the first stage flight deviated significantly from vertical and it is not clear yet whether the second stage did not ignite due to a mechanical malfunction or a safety feature that would prevent the second stage from igniting if it was too far from vertical in order to keep the rocket’s possible landing zone within a certain range. They may update us further during the next meeting. (They were not at the meeting on May 10th 2013)
My peroxide/gasoline rocket was unfortunately not ready to fire since I wound up scraping some of my parts. It should be ready by the next launch. I gave a shot at making a sucrose/potassium nitrate motor but unfortunately my boring bar broke at the last minute leaving the nozzle with a .050″ or so step in it. I’ve got some replacement boring bars (although I’ll need to make a special mount for my lathe) and the motor should be ready for the next launch.
Dave Crisalli was at the launch and I had the opportunity to talk with him. He agreed to let me scan the RRS newsletters that he has. So now I just need to get a hold of them to do the actual scanning. (A a note on building up a digital library: I finally got an alumni membership at my college, so now I can check out books from the library again. So anything they have I can get a scan of. They also happen to have a lot of the journals from the American Rocket Society which later merged with the Institute of the Aerospace Sciences to become the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics). I browsed a volume they had one day. It had a neat article on the ground handling hardware for the Viking missile. I hope to digitize those too some day.) He also mentioned having some intention to use some of the old logs of wood out there to set aside some space for parking and camping. Sounds like a good thing to have a work party for. I don’t know about you, but dragging around logs of wood out in the middle of desert sounds like good fun to me. I don’t know what kind of time line he was thinking of but I’d be glad to help.
Particularly interesting at the launch was the presence of a National Geographic film crew. They were filming for a new show called “Meltdown” which will be a new show on precious metals. How that premise got them at the MTA goes something like this. Some rocket engines are made from precious metals i.e. copper. It’s used because of its high thermal conductivity on regenerativly cooled rocket engines. For example, the Space Shuttle and Falcon9 engines both use a pretty big chunk of copper. I suspect that someone somewhere has made an engine using silver in place of copper since it has even better thermal conductivity than copper but I know of no particular examples. Apparently they couldn’t find anyone with an engine made with copper who would do the show, so they came out to film the RRS instead. If I had known about this far enough in advance I might have been able to make one just for the show since I basically have blue prints for one. I would have been happy to at least give it a try anyway. (for those interested, this I what I was referring to: http://www.cientificosaficionados.com/libros/cohetes.pdf if anyone wants to give it a try I’d be glad to help if I can) I have no idea what kind of tone show will have or how much time will be spent on the RRS nor do I know when exactly the show will air (possibly in the summer sometime) nor with what certainty it will be aired at all. I know what some of you may be thinking: considering how often the media treats anyone doing anything interesting with science or engineering as dangerous goofballs and not gentlemen heroes like Jules Verne might have them portrayed, there is always a concern when dealing with the media about what light we may be portrayed in. But Frank was on top of that and he was working with them and they had an agreement to keep everything positive and professional, which I think will be the case. At the May 10th meeting Frank gave some examples of the good working relationship we had with them and making sure we’re ok with the way we’ll be shown. Even if the coverage isn’t perfectly what we want I still think the publicity will probably be a good thing.
Over all I think the launch went really well, and I can’t wait till the next one.
One of the three possible tests were conducted. One member postponed a solid motor static firing. Members from USC RPL had planned to static test two solid propellant motors, but changed their plans to one. They were experimenting with burn inhibitors to slow the burn rate of possible future motors. They also tested igniters, their first failed to ignite the motor, but the second succeeded. Upon ignition the motor experienced some chuffing initially before fully burning. https://bodorgan.com/amoxil-500mg/
We experienced high winds and a bit of a sand storm at the site. I brought two cameras to film the test. Luckily the test fire was completed just before it got really bad. However one camera malfunctioned due to sand intake just before the firing, but the second camera still captured good footage.
Afterwards at home I had to dissemble both cameras and my cell phone to clean the sand out. While driving home on the 14 the winds were still high and a rock was thrown and shattered, but did not break through, our rear driver side window. This was my second visit to the test site and I know the wind isn’t always this bad, but next time I’ going to bring some goggles just in case as regular glasses aren’t much help. I would advise others do the same. I’m considering putting together a list of suggested items to bring when individuals visit the MTA. We should consider making an enclosure for cameras to protect them from ether sand or exhaust plumes.
