Testing

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

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

This past week...

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

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

Chase your dreams NOW as you never know whats comming.

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

News and Things..

As heard on the NASA prizes blog the new LLC rules have been approved by NASA. The draft rules had a feature that put a premium on being ready early. After reading the new rules I’m personally feeling a little less time pressure. I like the new rules and think they are a fair way to address the economic issues that prevnt xprize from holding a centralized contest. (I can’t provide more info than that so don’t ask)

We tested the silver ball this past weekend as well  as a customers system and all went fairly well.  We had issues with the silver ball fuel valve so we could not get a good biprop run, but we did run the motor in regen mode where the peroxide cooled the aluminum motor as it went in to be decomposed the motor worked well in this mode.  The catalyst we used was the stainless/platinum monlyith we got from armadillo, the decomposition was not as good as our NDA catalyst, but it was at least as good as our liquid catalyst  systems were. In the brief instant we did get some kerosene into the flow it lit immediately. We did not get to do the test we really wanted, but for a brand new vehicle and brand new engine design we ended the test with ZERO hardware squawks.

The electronics sensor suite is not really complete and hacking out the code for the not yet there parts and trying to turn it into test stand code had some issues. I partially lost control of the vehicle on the test stand and we have not yet added the redundant depressurize safety system so we had few moments with a pressurized loaded vehicle and no way to control it. Fortunately the problems were all in the application layer and gremlin’s were not bad enough to crash the Netburner RTOS core so I forced a remote reboot that safed the system.

It was the very first time we tested a brand new vehicle or rocket motor that did not end in broken hardware of some kind.

Ben Brocket (of Masten space) took a bunch of pictures and video of the test and gave me a copy of the video. I hope to post it some time this week. 

Silver ball is on the way to FAR.

We should do a static test of the new vehicle and motor this weekend. Still does not have gimbal actuators or roll thrustors, but the propulsion system is complete and shop tested.

Still 90%

Worked really hard this week:

• Fabricated electronics for and checked out Main Valve assembly.


• Fabricated all of and tested 1/2 of the main system electronics.


• Fabricated Electronics box.


• Wired top end of the vehicle.


• Assembled 100% of the plumbing.

One more long day and the silver vehicle /regen motor will be ready for a static test.

We had hoped to test this weekend, alas its not going to be. We still have to drive out to FAR on Sunday as we have committed to a customer test(Can’t talk about)  and we have a U-haul trailer attached to the truck with 1250 pounds of compressor and air drying equipment. I’ll try to show some pictures in the next few days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

90% done 100% left to do aka trying to get the silver ball ready...

Trying to get the silver vehicle and the new motor ready to test. Its at that very frustrating 90% point. It looks like its done, and all you have to do is assemble everything. In the past I would say we will test on Saturday the 18^th then scratch that the 25^th scratch that the 2^nd. etc… after 4 weeks of this everyone thinks I a flake. I know better now it will be ready to test when its ready to test. (My son still has a fantasy that it will be ready on the 18^th)

Some days its slow.

I spent all day Saturday working on the gimbal systems for the silver Ball. On Sunday we went out to the site to work on the peroxide systems. We spent most of the day getting the auxiliary door welded into the container. We also tried to setup the water tank and had water delivered to the site. Unfortunately a storage container that can support 60K lbs+ on the proper stacking points can’t support 3600 lbs of water on one end. The container was showing signs of structural stress so we drained the water.  A full 16 hour day and we accomplished almost nothing.  We now need to put together a better reinforcing frame to support the water. We will try again this weekend to get the water tank in place and start wiring the peroxide system container.

I took the aluminum motor to a flame spray vendor to get a thermal barrier coating sprayed on and alas the same shop had larger regen motors chambers  being treated. They looked like the Spacex merlin, but it was hard to tell without getting closer to them. 

As I work on the peroxide system I’m re-learning something I’ve known for all my professional life, if a vendor charges X for and object or service Y, the odds of you building a Y for less than X are almost zero.  Two examples:

Now that I’m getting close to being able to produce my own propellant, both peroxide propulsion and xl space systems look like they will be back in production arghhh!  I’m going to go ahead and finish the project so I have a back up plan. I will have to use many thousands of pounds of peroxide to reclaim my investment, even if my time is worth zero. 

A  part of the peroxide project requires  I make very dry air. I’m shooting for a dew point of around -40C, basically no water. The industrial way to do this is to use a commercial air  dryer. Most commercial systems with low pressure drop are refrigerated air system that won’t get the dew point below about 5C. The self regenerating system that will get all the water out have large pressure drops, 50 to 75 PSI or so. Since I want about 50CFM of air for my sparging column (at less than 1 psi) I would need a monster compressor to make 50CFM at 50 psi I choose to try a method that cost 50% as much as a commercial system and is turning into a monumental hack. Its quite likely that I will go back and pursue the proper industrial method with the help of ebay. Lesson learned.