June 14th 2013 Meeting Report

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Osvaldo returned to the MTA and found his rocket. (Along with a few other pieces of unidentified rockets) It looked like the parachute tangled on deployment possibly due to the shock cords being too short. His apogee detector broke and the main body tube was bent.

 

Osvaldo also brought the drawings to the RRS Beta and I’ll be scanning them soon, so now we can look forward to having those. Additionally he also brought the accompanying text to the RRS composite motor class, and I will also be scanning that to add to our RRS library.

 

The meeting was attended by an older one of our members John Mariano. He has been active in the past and he is currently working with the Endeavor exhibit at the California Science Center. He has noticed that over the past few years an interest in spaceflight and rocketry that he has not seen since the space race era. He is in an advantageous position to promote the RRS and he is interested in doing so and we discussed some of the possibilities.

 

John also brought a very interesting RRS artifact. It was a Copy of a small news article accompanied by an illustration. In 1948 the RRS proposed to build a 4 stage hydrogen oxygen rocket capable of delivering 100lb to orbit. This obviously never came to be, but I admire the ambition. I haven’t checked their numbers for their vehicle, but I have been working on designing a nano-satellite launcher for the 3D printed rocket engine contest and I do think a small launch vehicle delivering a payload on the order of 5 to 10 kg is doable at the extreme end of the amateur scale. (It would probably be something comparable to Copenhagen Suborbital’s second manned configuration, but with more stages.) He also mentioned some other interesting historical items from the RRS. There was an article about the RRS in a 1960’s edition of an encyclopedia. [Rocket Encyclopedia Illustrated – Herrick] There was also a RRS TV spot that John was in that aired on a local news station in the 1960’s. If you have anything like this from the RRS in your position, let’s get it convert it to a digital format so we can put it up on the website. Send me an email if you’re interested or need any help. (I had someone working at the Gardena recreational center make a copy of it for me but it was too large for him to get on one page so after I scan and edit it back into one image I’ll post it.)

 

We discussed an idea I had recently about trying to use an aqueous solution of potassium nitrate as a liquid oxidizer. I wasn’t sure how we could test if it would burn with a liquid fuel. If we just mixed some with ethanol and took a blow torch to it how we would know whether the ethanol was burning with the potassium nitrate solution or just atmospheric oxygen? Well someone clued me in on the fact that if the potassium nitrate was combusting there should be noticeable color change in the flame. I thought it was a good idea and I gave it a try the other day and I got positive results. I took a video and posted it to the RRS YouTube channel. I’ll be moving forward with a potassium nitrate solution/ethanol test stand engine design to see if this kind of propellant combination is a viable amateur alternative to liquid oxygen, nitrous oxide, Nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide. I plan to write an article about this and hopefully we’ll have a newsletter to put it in by then.

 

I’ve been working on the web site which Eric has set up in its own section of the server the site is currently on. It’s now under development and will not replace the main page until it’s more finished. Here is the address: https://rrs.org/ Any feedback positive or negative is welcome and appreciated.

 

We’re still on for an October 5th firing.

 

The next meeting will be July 12th at the Gardena Recreational Center, 1670 West 162nd Street Gardena, CA

 

3D printed metal rocket engine contest Update

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I’d like to share how the 3D printed metal rocket engine contest is going:

The deadline was moved back to June 30th. The objective is to design an open source 3D printed (in metal) regenerativly cooled rocket engine for use on a nanosatellite launch vehicle (1-10kg payload). 3D printing in metal is an available technology and it has been demonstrated with regenerativly cooled rocket engines before. I’m submitting the design on a second stage LOX/Propane engine with around 800 lb of thrust. (It will be a sea level version for testing.)

I don’t mean to disparage the competition but as far as designing goes our team is pretty much stomping on them. I can say that because before you even look at any calculations for the engine just from a basic configuration standpoint all the other teams are non-starters in their current form. Although some show potential and I commend their effort. For example to make an engine like this you are going to need injectors, regenerative cooling channels, and film cooling, but we are the only team with all three. Only about 4 teams even have injectors designed at all, and only one other team looks like it could work. One team has what is supposed to be a pintle, but from the looks of it they’ve never seen one before. One team has oxidizer inlets but no fuel inlets. Only 2 other teams even have regenerative cooling channels, and we are the only team so far that has film cooling. We’re also the only team so far to mention how we will deal with some of the practical aspects of even just a static test, like LOX valves, flow metering and how to get a hold of cryogenic propellants. I’m no Wernher von Braun but these guys have a lot of catching up to do.
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However this advantage does not assure us we will win for two reasons. First, the design is oddly only worth 40% of the overall evaluation the other parts are 40% collaboration and 20% business plan. So we even if our competition has lousy rockets engines they could win simply by blathering to one another more and writing a convincing business plan. The second reason, which incidentally makes the first more troubling, is that while the judges have technical backgrounds they have no rocketry background that I am aware of, so I don’t know if they would know a good rocket engine if they saw one. One judge is known for having built an IEC fusor in high school. Another is an artist, a biologist, and a “space researcher” whatever that means. The third is the guy who designed the Segway (not the later CEO of the Segway company who fell to his death when he rode off a cliff on a Segway.) Although he has some legitimate engineering background (I mean other than the Segway) he is also the co-inventor of a pneumatic swat team cannon. That’s not a cannon used by swat team members to shoot at things, it’s a cannon that shoots swat team members out of it and onto roof tops, over walls, and to any other hard to reach place that you would like to have a swat team. I don’t know if he will recognize ‘realistic’ and ‘practical’ when he sees it. Maybe I should have gone with a rocket catapult to orbit instead.

This makes our job more difficult and winning uncertain. This means that in our design notes we also need to explain and justify a lot more than if we had judges that we knew were familiar with what it takes to make a liquid propellant rocket engine. We can’t simply state how much propellant we plan use for film cooling. We also need to let them know that if you don’t use film cooling at all you can expect a destructive engine failure. That way they are less likely to overlook our competitor’s flaws.
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I’m confident about our design, and I’m sure our business plan will be good as well, but I could use some help on the collaboration part. Just some back and forth comments on the collaboration site they want us to use should go a long way. Even if you know nothing about rockets the conversation would be beneficial and it would be appreciated.

The prize for winning is 5,000 dollars plus they will print the winning engine for free. For our current configuration at the vendor they intend to use that’s about another $5000 worth of 3D printing. If we win we plan to spend the money on things we would need for a static tests of the engine like a load cell, some tanks, helium, LOX ect. I think that if we won we might be able to have it ready for static testing at the October launch. If there is money left over we’ll put it towards a launch vehicle. (I intend to develop a scalable process that we could use to make pressure vessels from scratch.)

Win or lose, I want to turn some of the worked we’ve done on this into some RRS News articles, should we reboot the RRS News. I’ve done some programming for this that there may be some interest in sharing. I’m working on a program that sizes a launch vehicle based on payload, and another one that will give the basic chamber and nozzle configuration and do a basic thermal analysis. I also hope to work on a program that will analyze the rockets ascent trajectory. If you then take those 3 programs and put it all into an optimization scheme, like the evolutionary optimization program I wrote in college for turbopump design, you would have a launch vehicle design optimizer that can be used to help find the smallest and lowest cost launch vehicle configuration that could reasonably be pulled off. Neat huh!
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-Richard Garcia

May 10th 2013 Meeting Report

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At the meeting we mostly discussed the results of April 27th launch. Regarding safety we discussed the USC launch in particular. Our the pyrotechnic operator for the launch Jim Gross mentioned that the UCS guys did better about reducing the number of people around the loading station. However he also expressed that they could still be more organized in their efforts on launch day. (For example they were speed drying epoxy with a blow dryer prior to launch) Although we are aware that this is a college project and the added constraints, particularly with time, that come along with that. He also noted that he was not made aware of the flight computers safety feature to not ignite the second stage depending on the flight trajectory and felt that this was important information for the pyrotechnic operator to be made aware of. A suggestion was made that some sort of prelaunch presentation or review of the flight software would be very beneficial.

Regarding launches in general it was expressed that we want to be more diligent about having people who are launching fill out a flight data sheets with information like max altitude and the range of the recovery area. This was apparently something we were more diligent about in the past but we have lapsed on its enforcement. I made the suggestion that if we implement this again we should also make as simple guide as possible showing how to calculate those numbers for anyone new to the process.

We also discussed the possibility of having a special meeting in September but the details aren’t set. The USC guys would like to host a meeting at their Lab on the USC campus, so they can show us all the neat stuff they have going on there and how they’ve been building their rockets. That promises to be interesting so don’t miss it.

I also had the opportunity to show everyone my tilt sensor. After seeing Osvoldo’s magnetic apogee detector and hearing about a mercury based tilt sensor for parachute deployment I decided I needed to make something like that for my rocket. It’s just a simple tilt sensor hooked up to an Arduino microcontroller. The Arduino is programmed to check that the device has been armed, and count how long the sensor has been activated. That way any jostling won’t set it off. Only when it’s held on, as when it will when the rocket reaches apogee and leans over, will the parachute be deployed. Based on feedback that I got I will run it in a test configuration first (launched on a rocket but not controlling deployment) to see how it behaves and how long if at all the deceleration phase, after burnout and before apogee, will set off the switch. Based on the results I may need to adjust the programming and have it ignore the first activation caused by deceleration, or I may have to abandon the idea entirely.

Eric Claypool showed up and he gave me a hard copy of the files of the media that are currently on the RRS website.[the previous site] We discussed what to do next with the website; the First thing to do is install WordPress on the server. Once that happens I can start working on a live version of the new site under a different address. Once we’re satisfied we then just switch the address. Eric also brought his LOX/Alcohol rocket engine for us to take a look at.

Next Meeting: June 14th Gardena Recreational Center, 1670 West 162nd Street Gardena, CA
Next Launch/Static test has been set for October 5th at the MTA

Regarding the next launch, I don’t know what anyone else is working on for it but here is what I hope to have ready. Sucrose/potassium nitrate motor static test and flight test with additional testing of an Arduino based flight computer, and a static test of my peroxide/gasoline engine. I also hope to do some testing for a hydrogen peroxide based quasi-hypergolic ignition system (where the heat from the decomposition of the peroxide ignites the propellants.) I haven’t done any detailed design yet but I’ve found a reasonable vendor for 30% peroxide and a lab glassware vacuum distilling kit on ebay, so I may be cooking up some peroxide at some point soon. If you need some let me know, but I don’t plan to make a lot.

 

-Richard Garcia