Some good news, I’ve gotten a job as a bonafide rocket scientist. I’ve been hired as a propulsion design engineer at a new launch vehicle company, FireFly Space systems. They plan to build a small 2 stage launch vehicle capable of putting up around 300 to 400 kilograms into orbit. It happened pretty quickly, I found out about it the place just a few weeks ago, sent in my resume and now I’m already in Austin Texas, where the company is located. Austin seems like a nice place so far but that bit is of course bad news for the RRS since I wont be able to attend meetings, launches, or do reports on them with any sort of regularity if ever. But that’s how things go. I’ll sill maintain the website and work on the newsletter and collecting materials for the digital library (but more on that in a latter post). I’ll be happy to pass along any info or reports on anything RRS related that anyone wants to get the word out on. Also I’m still interested in setting up the RRS meeting to be webinar capable with a web service like Skype or GoToMeetings, and I’d be willing to put up some cash for hardware, but it would take someone still back in LA to run it. I don’t know how much interest anyone down there has about doing that.

I still plan to work on some amateur rocket stuff, I’ve made the commitment to at least static test some liquid propellant rockets, but it will probably just go at a slower pace, since I will most likely be putting in a lot of extra hours in at this new job. I’d still like to try making it out to launches or other events when I can and I plan to remain active, just farther away.

-Richard Garcia

The meeting was attended by 13 people. The next launch date has been announced for Sunday March 25th. (Edit: this has been cancelled)

The separate Paypal account for the RRS has been created and Paypal has been setup for it. We can now (finally) take donations online. There is now a Paypal donate button on the sidebar. I’m still working on getting membership payments done online, I’m having trouble getting this particular plug-in for paid membership to operate the way Frank and Osvaldo would like it to run. I’ll keep working on it until I come up with something.

John Mariano who has been volunteering as a docent at the California Science Center has been working on getting the RRS represented there for its place in rocketry history. The Science Center being a large and well known museum has a lot of people who want their stuff shown, so the Science Center has requirements and bureaucracy that need to be met. In many cases the science center isn’t interested in adding to it’s permanent collection or taking ownership of the exhibit. But if what you have meets their expectations of merit and quality for display they’ll allow for a sort of middle ground. They are willing to let you show it at the museum at times but you have to take it with you when you leave. So that means they want it to have wheels and be battery powered if it needs electricity.

This is what John has been working on and he has brought the display to show us the progress. The frame is complete with wheels and battery power. He has a monitor set up and an LED marquee. He also has had a poster made with a diagram of most of the worlds launch vehicles past and present on one side. The other side has a large RRS logo and a summary of newtons three laws. He’s still working on completing it, and he’s currently looking for a good place to store it while not in use. He also mentioned that he’s be glad to lend it out for any sort of related presentations RRS members might have. I may take him up on that offer the next time I go to a SpaceUp.

Charles Hoult has a lot of experience in the rocketry industry particularly with sounding rockets and has been mentoring CSULA’s rocketry team, Sonic Eagle. Three members from that team presented there design for this years ESRA’s (Experimental Sounding Rocket Association) Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competitions held in Utah. Their Rocket will use a N2000 motor and is expected to fly at 100 ft/s. It will carry 2 payloads, an atmospheric dust collector and yo-yo de-spin mechanism. They may be pursuing patenting some of their work on the dust collector. The parachute will be released from the side of the rocket just forward of the motor. A drogue will deploy first and the main will be in a cocoon until deployment. They will also have an umbilical to remotely control and monitor the electronics on board the rocket prior to launch. They will be doing a test launch at the March 25th firing.

My contract at work may be coming to a close, and I’m waiting for a reply to a job interview so I don’t yet know where I’ll be living by next month. I may stay here in Perris, or move to Mojave, or stay a while back up in Hanford again. That means I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep doing meeting and launch reports in the coming months but obviously I will If I can.

You can get a hold of me at my new RRS email editor@rrs.org

-Richard Garcia

I’ve heard on occasion that there are some good Russian textbooks on rocketry. I’ve always been curious about them but until recently I was never able to find any. A break finally came on a comment on Amazon about Huzel a Huang mentioning an actual title Design and engineering of liquid rocket engines by GG Gahun. Even with the English title my searches came up with nothing. It wasn’t until I translated the title to Russian and searched in the Russian version of Google that I got any leads. I fond a web site offering a DJVU version of the text which I got converted to a PDF.

I can’t read it of course. I tried an online OCR (optical character recognition) software and an online translator. The combo didn’t work very well the Russian OCR had a lot of errors which significantly hampered the translator winch did an imperfect job itself. Those tool or similar ones could probably be used to create a usable English version of the text but it would take a long time for someone to go through the whole book line by line. Never the less some of the figures are informative. For example these 3 figures on how they make the corrugated regenerativly cooled nozzles. Most figures of the same thing in English texts I’ve seen are less descriptive.

I’d like to add this to the RRS online Members Library. (Even though not many will be able to read it) However I’ll hold off until some of the copyright issues are clarified. From what I understand of copyright law, depending on how we use it, we would be exempt by fair use for educational purposes. But only if we did it the right way. Plus the issue is complicated by the fact that it is an international copyright (that is if it even has a copyright on it, which I don’t know that either.) Investigating this is defiantly hampered by my having no working knowledge of the Russian language or legal systems, or international copyright. If I figure it out I’ll post an update.

-Richard Garcia