High Power Rocketry

Can a lighter-than-air spacecraft enter orbit?

2012-01-28T10:01:00.006-05:00

Among many other relevant technologies, JP Aerospace is investigating the use of low thrust, high ISP ion thrusters to accelerate their spacecraft from near space to orbit. These are not traditional rockets made out of metal, but rather lighter-than-air spacecraft which float to high altitude (over 100,000 feet) and then slowly accelerate and climb to orbit using propellers and later plasma rockets. This kind of flight is slow, but also gentle and quite inexpensive once the system gets working. A minimal amount of fuel is required because much of the lift and propulsion is done using lift gas and solar power. When fuel is consumed, perhaps xenon for the plasma engines, it is burnt at a very high isp, so that only a few kg are required to orbit payloads. In addition to orbital craft, there are plans for massive high-altitude stations where astronauts can live for extended periods. Payloads can be held here for staging to orbital craft as well. Once in orbit, the craft can drop payload, and slowly return to the Earth. Because reentry is gradual, there may be ways to prevent the high-energy reentry with the requisite heat and deceleration. If this can be done, the spacecraft can reenter deep space, rendezvous with the large floating station, and pick up a new payload. Refueling can be accomplished by transferring minimal amounts, dozens of kg perhaps, of propellant.

See more about this specific project here.

Reaction research society two stage rocket

2012-01-27T11:40:00.004-05:00

One problem with having over 1000 posts is that I can't remember if this is a repost or not. I think this rocket was mentioned previously, either while talking about the never flown 4 O 10,000 to 1 O 10,000 Kosdon project, or perhaps talking about Project Farside. If anyone can remember, post in the comments. Flying such a configuration helps if you want to stick to smaller, more reliable motors rather than giant motors of new design. This comes at the cost of reduced mass fractions and increased drag.

"On 17 October, 2009 a two stage rocket consisting of a cluster of four standard RRS “class” motors in the first stage and a single “class” motor for the second stage (Figure 1) was flown at the Mojave Test Area. Pre-flight modeling suggested a peak altitude of about 45,000 feet and a maximum velocity of about Mach 2.5. Available data indicate that a partial failure of the nose cone attachment resulted in “cocking” of the nose cone and subsequent “coning” of the vehicle as it accelerated. The coning in turn resulted in a trajectory that headed approximately southeastwardly rather than in the planned southwest (downrange) direction. Analysis of video of the second stage burn allows the performance of the rocket to be constrained to a probable burnout velocity above 1700 feet / second at about 6900 feet altitude. Six DOF modeling suggests a maximum altitude of at least 13,000 feet."

More here.

Vesta!

2012-01-27T10:29:00.002-05:00

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Project High Jump Boosted Dart

2012-01-26T15:40:00.006-05:00

How do I always miss the great projects?

Here is video footage of the attempt:

The motor failed during burn, resulting in a shred and recovery failures. This flight was one of several proposed Carmack 100kft projects. You can read more about these projects here.

The specs for Project High Jump are:

Boosted Dart configuration
4" dia 36,000ns Booster
Case bonded
Double Taper Core
Booster 7' 4" Overall length
Welded Fin Can

Dart Configuration
1.5" dia
40" Length
Fins Welded to tube

Raven Altimeters in booster and Dart
Big Red Bee 2 meter high power GPS telemetry

A boosted dart is a small, dense dart that is attached to a larger booster. On burnout the dart flies free, and is optimally designed to coast very well. Darts are dense, thin, and usually have a boat tail on the bottom. Boat tails greatly reduce base drag in the lower atmosphere, and are something like a backwards nosecone. When a rocket has a built-in motor, there is severe base drag because the bottom is typically a flat, abrupt ending to the rocket.

Boosted dart apogees can be twice as high as a regular rocket of similar impulse, perhaps higher. In one example, the Reaction Research Society (RRS) launched an R motor boosted dart that hit nearly 100 KM altitude despite burning out at about 10,000 feet. That tiny dart coasted at 4,500 fps in dense lower atmosphere, yet almost made space despite that. The dart coasted for about 50 miles! A full-sized R motor would have been lucky to get as high as 100,000 feet if it had to fly as one unit simply because drag is so serious at low altitude. By comparison, rockets typically need to hit mach 5 and 40,000 feet to get space. Darts can do it from miles lower.

It is logical to use a boosted dart for a "simple" goal like getting electronics over 100,000 feet. It is cheaper than a giant motor (the Q motor that did break 100,000 feet) and less complex than a two stage rocket. The N5800 motor is a bit slow burning for a dart, but it would certainly be enough to get a dart above 100,000 feet under the right conditions. In this case, the booster was a thin O motor that could have done a bit better than the N5800, but reliability matters also.

More images here

Solid Propellant Burn Rate Enhancement in Rocketry

2012-01-26T15:38:00.001-05:00

A REVIEW OF SOLID PROPELLANT BURN RATE ENHANCEMENT BY MECHANICAL METHODS

DAVID REESE

Abstract. The inclusion of metal fibers in a solid propellant grain has been shown to increase its bulk burning rate dramatically, and is a technology that was applied in several early sounding rockets. This review covers historical and current applications for the technology, as well as the theoretical basis for burning rate enhancement. Though technically successful, the use of wires to achieve high burning rates has largely been replaced with the use of reactive catalysts and other high burning rate energetic materials. However, recent concern over the sensitivity of such propellants is generating interest in other means of accelerating burn rates. As such, several practical research topics involving wire enhancement of burning rates are presented to reintroduce this technology into the motor designer’s toolbox.

TDK Propulsion

http://www.aame.in/

2012-01-24T21:18:00.001-05:00

Aerospace news from India

1959 - Missile designed with HITCO in mind!

2012-01-24T07:51:00.001-05:00

Thing is, this missile has a very strange design including "blast tubes" and plastic fins.

On Ebay Now

Test your vision

2012-01-23T16:52:00.001-05:00

Try the test

RS-25 SSME

2012-01-22T05:32:00.000-05:00

The Libya Rocketry Association

2012-01-21T19:38:00.005-05:00

"I am working on a plan to make (tourist rocket sport) in Libya and open the door for the world amateur rocketry to come over and shoot their rockets with me on the Libyan desert and by the sea side..."

I have to admit that I get bad flashbacks when I think about amateur rockets in Libya considering the violence last year, not to mention the typical role of rockets in northern Africa, but if the goals of this association are to practice rocketry for the sake of science and exploration, it is a good thing. Before I hold Libya to excessively high standards, let's not forget that American rocketry started (and remains) largely a military matter. Maybe if more people flew rockets for hobby, the World would be better.

http://rocketlibyan.blogspot.com/

Post number 1000

2012-01-19T14:22:00.010-05:00

Despite being around for many years, this blog has only today arrived at the 1000th post. Most of these posts have come in just the last three years. Thanks to all the loyal readers; without your interest, the minuscule Google payments alone would not justify maintaining a regular post rate. The picture above may perhaps be the best in the history of rocketry. It is a 4 stage, 10 motor rockoon, accelerating with something like a 75 to 1 thrust ratio on it's way to space. The rocket has just flown directly through a giant helium balloon, piercing it in two places the way a bullet would pass through a soap bubble. The rocket is so fast that the balloon has not yet collapsed. This image encompasses all that is great about rocketry. The farside project was complex, risky, expensive, and damn fast. The upper stage was expected to hit more than 17,000 mph, and top out at an apogee of thousands of miles. That giant balloon contained 3.75 million cubic feet of lift gas. After getting this rockoon to work, there was a tentative plan to use an extra stage to launch payloads at the Moon!

This is the substance of rocketry. This is why rocketry and space exploration will always have a central place in my life. In other words, get ready for the next thousand posts. Soon enough, I will start a new rocket project and attempt level 2 certification in the spring.

Just because this picture is so great, I decided to throw in a Hayden Planetarium (the sphere within the glass building) for scale. It is a bit less than half the diameter, and 1/10th the volume of the balloon used for this project. (Spheres are so strange.)

You can read more about Project Farside here, here, and here.

March to the Moon image archive

2012-01-18T19:08:00.002-05:00

Gemini images
Mercury images

Google+ Hangout: Phobos-Grunt re-entry

2012-01-18T16:34:00.002-05:00

On January 15, 2012, the Russian spacecraft Phobos-Grunt re-entered over the Pacific ocean and burned up. During this time, I reported the event live with Planetary Society science journalist Emily Lakdawalla on a Google+ Hangout.

So what has Phobos-Grunt been up to?

The final landing zone was in the Pacific. If you were the gambling sort you would tend to guess the Pacific for any object crashing into the Earth simply because it is the largest single target. On an unrelated note, if you are the gambling sort and want to borrow money at 10 points vig per week, let me know.

Onboard footage from N altitude flight

2012-01-17T18:51:00.003-05:00

Video footage - lots of spin!

I bet this rocket would have broken 50,000 feet, possibly 10 miles even, without the conning and spin.

Phobos Grunt has crash-landed back to Earth

2012-01-15T19:43:00.001-05:00

The odds of recovering any pieces are slim.

Phobos-Grunt plunged to Earth into the Pacific Ocean on Jan 15, 2012 - Predicted Crash Zone

Maps shows orbital track of Phobos-Grunt on Final Orbit before crashing to Earth in the Pacific Ocean west of South America on Jan 15, 2012. Atlantic Ocean was at the center of the predicted crash zone after fiery reentry of Russia’s Phobos Grunt spacecraft. Credit: Roscosmos

The Restart Page - Reboot under different OSes

2012-01-15T16:06:00.000-05:00

http://www.therestartpage.com/

Soviet lunar landing

2012-01-15T11:45:00.001-05:00

Giant Leap Mariah 38 on Ebay

2012-01-15T11:26:00.005-05:00

This is very tempting, particularly to buy and use for my first dual deploy experiments, but even a lowball offer ($120) seems like too much. I plan to build a level 2 cert rocket next month - and it will be a 3" x 78" all fiberglass rocket for a total cost of about $140.

Ebay Listing - ending in only 9 hours.

Saturn V

2012-01-14T17:29:00.001-05:00

Al the rage?

2012-01-13T19:26:00.002-05:00

This typo has resulted in thousands of hits, possibly because people are searching for "al the rage" by accident, and this comes up first. I have since fixed the title of the post, but to keep from losing the hits, I have made the title of this post "al the rage" as in "al the rage in Japan."

Candle burning in space

2012-01-12T14:48:00.000-05:00

Explorer Aquarius Upscale

2012-01-12T14:08:00.001-05:00

More at http://www.starleopard.com/

Massive MLRS salvo

2012-01-10T21:19:00.001-05:00

USB pen camera

2012-01-10T19:11:00.002-05:00

This camera was $16 shipped from Ebay. It comes with an 8 gig internal card, and actually works as a pen if you would want to be a spy. The size of the thing, and the fact that it has a bunch of holes all over the side, may get you in trouble with the KGB or Mafia to be honest. But since my brain does rocketry most of the time, I see this as a great little parasite camera. More aerodynamic than my other keychain camera, if somewhat heavy. But better still, it points sideways while my other camera points down. So they really complement each other. Indeed it would be fun to get two videos from one flight, and run them side-by-side in a youtube video.

Two issues remain. First, it is heavy and made out of metal bits. I wonder how the RSO will feel about that? And also, there is a power switch at the top that may be engaged during flight. With some testing, it should become clear how well it works.

PS check out the two "Gum-sticd Recirder Manual" packets included! The instructions are usually very hard to follow for these cameras, but clearly that is because the person making them does not speak English as a primary language. It is still better than my guides in mandarin...

Building the SLR

2012-01-09T14:01:00.001-05:00

Fireman Rocketry

Computer parts have arrived!

2012-01-07T20:53:00.003-05:00

After a few hours, the basic hardware has been installed and Windows 7 is in also. Tomorrow I will have to get the networking up and do all of the updates, downloads, etc. The Antec Sonata is exceptionally quiet, as is the stock cooler from Intel. Things were not perfect, and as always there are some issues. Antec included the usual MOBO pegs, but one of the four pre-installed had a flaw and basically got jammed, unscrewing itself as the mobo screw went in. After installing the board, and the cpu, I had to remove the MOBO and use pliers to get the faulty peg off! That is not exactly what one wants to do with a motherboard and cpu.

Antec has added an SSD mounting point, as have other case companies. This is too close to the side, and is utterly incompatible with the two SATA cables from MSI. The cables just don't fit when the drive is installed in either configuration, so for now it is just hanging out. Lastly, the mounting clips for the optical drive had two nice holes to line things up, but they were blocked with plastic. This was fixed by melting the plastic with a small screwdriver. Again not really the way things should be, but this last problem was expected because most of the Newegg reviews mentioned it.

For anyone who is looking to install Windows 7, consider the advice here. The author talks about optimization as well as tweaks that prove useful if you have an SSD. For example, windows started out with an 8 gig hibernation file (I turned hibernation off and got it all back) as well as 8 gigs of pagefile (I took that down to 1 gig.)

Once things are all set, I will have to copy a ton (about 1.2 TB) of files. This will take days and will require swapping HDDs back and forth between two computers, and probably actually erasing one HDD and using it over again to move from an old ATA drive that cannot work with the new motherboard. And then when the computer is completed, I will post some stats, benchmarks, and maybe calculate pi for a spell and see how it does. The computer should be able to do pi to 1 billion places in about 10 minutes, using nearly 5 gigs of ram!

This Girl Snuck Into a Russian Military Rocket Factory

2012-01-06T09:42:00.002-05:00

"Her name is Lana Sator and she snuck into one of NPO Energomash factories outside of Moscow. Her photos are amazing, like sets straight out of Star Wars or Alien. Now the Russian government is harassing her.

It was easy to get in. She just went there, jumped over the fence and got right into the heart of the complex through a series of tunnels and pipes, which was very surprising. After all, this is an active industrial installation that belongs to one of the top manufacturers of liquid-fuel rockets in the world. Their engines power the modern Soyuz, the Zenit 3SL, and the Angara and Baikal launch vehicles. Heck, their RD-180 engine powers the first stage of the Atlas V, an American rocket. More importantly, they have specially strong ties to the Russian military.

And yet, she found nobody. No guards, no security. Nothing. Just a few CCTV cameras here and there in rooms packed with huge machinery."

From Gizmodo

Thanks to Derek for finding this one!

North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie engines

2012-01-05T15:10:00.003-05:00

This image from Up-Ship.com

The Valkyrie is one of the most insane jets ever made, in some ways more extreme than the SR-71. It was expensive, huge, dangerous to fly, and ultimately not particularly useful as a weapon because of ICBMs. But those are just minor reasons in the face of this:

Stats:

* Length: 189 ft 0 in (57.6 m)
* Wingspan: 105 ft 0 in (32 m)
* Height: 30 ft 0 in (9.1 m)
* Wing area: 6,297 ft² (585 m²)
* Empty weight: 128,000 lb (58,100 kg)
* Loaded weight: 534,700 lb (242,500 kg)
* Max takeoff weight: 550,000 lb (250,000 kg)
* Powerplant: 6 × General Electric YJ93-GE-3 afterburning turbojet
* Dry thrust: 19,900 lbf (84 kN) each
* Thrust with afterburner: 28,800 lbf (128 kN) each
* Internal fuel capacity: 300,000 lb (136,100 kg) or 46,745 US gallons (177,000 L)

Performance

* Maximum speed: Mach 3.1 (2,056 mph, 3,309 km/h)
* Cruise speed: Mach 3.0 (2,000 mph, 3,200 km/h)
* Range: 3,725 nmi (4,288 mi, 6,900 km) on combat mission
* Service ceiling: 77,350 ft (23,600 m)

More XB-70 images:

Silver Spur 3

2012-01-04T16:53:00.004-05:00

I think there was a post about this rocket including the video below, but I can't find it right now. What is new to this blog are some of the images from before the flight. The Silver Spur 3 flight employed some interesting construction techniques, particularly the use of ablative leading edge material on the fins. This may be considered excessive, or nearly so at "just" mach 3.3, but that is around the threshold where severe composite delamination has been occurring. As always, I push for aluminum fins in these circumstances, but there are good reasons to test out the composite fins. It is taking on extra risk for the benefit of the community. It remains to be seen how far high temperature epoxy can go (that means above the 500 degree epoxy used to date) but I have reason to expect that really smart application of high temperature epoxy should be good for sustained flight over mach 3, and even short periods above mach 4 below 50,000 feet. Beyond this, ablatives or metal parts are required. I frequently wonder about either a metal leading edge, or even a thin sheet of titanium or aluminium attached with some high temp. epoxy. But at no time can the metal be below a composite layer because, obviously, that layer would fail anyway. The huge slug of titanium on the nosecone is certainly excessive, but very cool.

"Launch of USCRPL's Silver Spur 3 at Balls 19 in the Black Rock desert, Nevada. It features an all carbon fiber motor case, ablative fin leading edges, and a titanium nose cone tip. Flying on an O5000, it flew to about 50000 ft and reached a maximum speed of about Mach 3.3."

Images at Picasa

The cosmic energy inventory

2012-01-03T09:18:00.001-05:00

Zeiss 200mm giant binoculars

2012-01-03T08:47:00.002-05:00

These were probably made by Zeiss during WWII, so that means they were made on behalf of the Nazis. It falls among a plethora of other giant things like guns, probably made with slave labor.

Ebay is actually working!

2012-01-03T08:43:00.003-05:00

Selling a minor item, mostly to get more rocketry money, and the results are a bit shocking... By the end of the listing I expect about 80 watchers and 250 views, hopefully they bid the item up to $200. I had soured on ebay recently because of items that did not sell well, and the fact that most rocketry items are overpriced, but perhaps there is reason for hope.

AVIATR

2012-01-02T13:46:00.002-05:00

AVIATR

Post rate may be slower for a while

2012-01-02T09:35:00.003-05:00

Because the following items are arriving soon:

Antec Sonata III
Antec Earthwatts 500W Power Supply
MSI P67A-G43 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s
GIGABYTE GV-R667D3-1GI Radeon HD 6670 1GB 128-bit DDR3
OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-90G 2.5" 90GB SATA III MLC
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Profile
Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX 2TB SATA 6.0Gb/s
LITE-ON DVD Burner - Bulk Black SATA Model
DYMO LabelWriter 450 Turbo High-Speed Postage and Label Printer
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM
TRENDnet TW100-S4W1CA 10/100Mbps DSL/Cable Broadband Router
Intel Core i3-2130 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz LGA 1155 65W

Alternatives for Boost-Phase Missile Defense

2012-01-01T11:55:00.000-05:00

From Google Books

Learning to fly with helium balloons

2011-12-31T10:48:00.003-05:00

Cluster Balloon.org

Forgive them lord, they know not on what kind of science blog they doth advertise...

2011-12-30T21:57:00.005-05:00

New digital scale

2011-12-30T18:25:00.003-05:00

Just picked up this digital scale, a 200 gram capacity .1 gram precision unit. There are many uses for this, but I mostly wanted it to help with the mixing of epoxy. It seems pretty good, calibrated well with 1 dollar bills (1 gram on the mark every time) and coins - a dime is supposed to be 2.27 grams give or take. Like any good scientist, I want to start weighing all kinds of things now. It would be interesting to weigh all of my D motors to check for any variations.

Thermonuclear bomb physics package

2011-12-29T22:11:00.005-05:00

I cannot confirm that this is a correct schematic for a modern fusion bomb, but it looks interesting enough to consider. Compare it to the actual image above.

The Hayden Letters

2011-12-28T18:05:00.003-05:00

"In 1950, the Museum's Hayden Planetarium began accepting reservations for the first trip into space as part of a publicity campaign for its exhibition Conquest of Space. Letters poured in from around the world with requests to book trips to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and beyond, capturing the public's passion and curiosity for space exploration. View a selection of letters from enthusiastic would-be space travelers here."
At Flickr

Phobos Grunt will reenter atmosphere in about 2 weeks

2011-12-27T11:23:00.003-05:00

That is not too shocking; we have been expecting this sad day for a while now. But the expected location of the landing is pretty interesting:

Freaking Afghanistan!

What happens when some of the most advanced technology (though perhaps not advanced enough) in the World lands in one of the most backward, ignorant countries in the World? Will they blame the jews this time, or perhaps some woman who was caught with her ankle showing?

KH-9 Hexagon - Declassified in Sept. 2011

2011-12-26T19:32:00.001-05:00

Specifications

Data source: The Encyclopedia of US Spacecraft and NSSDC
Launch vehicle: Titan IIID/34D
Total weight: 11,400 kg (25,000 lb), with mapping camera 13,300 kg (29,000 lb)
Reentry weight: 5,330 kg (11,800 lb)
max. Diameter (main body): 3.05 m (120 in)
Length (with mapping camera): 16.21 m (638 in
Orbit: elliptical, 100 miles by 150 miles
Scanners: television, radio, and high resolution camera

Yahoo

Wiki

Soyuz reentry over Europe (not a comet)

2011-12-26T09:26:00.000-05:00

Space Shuttle launch at night

2011-12-25T10:21:00.001-05:00

Unknown explosion

2011-12-25T09:04:00.000-05:00

NASA video from ISS of comet and Earth

2011-12-23T20:34:00.002-05:00

"International Space Station Commander Dan Burbank captured spectacular imagery of Comet Lovejoy as seen from about 240 miles above the Earth’s horizon on Wednesday, Dec. 21. Burbank described seeing the comet as “the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space,” in an interview with WDIV-TV in Detroit."

- NASA

The full story of Stig-A from Armadillo Aerospace

2011-12-23T18:45:00.010-05:00

"On Sunday morning, 4 December 2011, Armadillo Aerospace launched the tube rocket "Stiga" (aka STIG-A) to approximately 140,000 feet above sea level from Spaceport America. The rocket took just under 2 minutes to reach apogee and landed twelve and a half minutes after the launch. The landing point was 2.87 miles away from the launch pad and conveniently on a road, well within the 4.35 mile range established before the launch."

How great is this rocket? Only mach 2.87 and 140,000 feet! The efficiency of a slow burning rocket with active guidance is very clear. The rocket shut down more than 10 seconds early because it had passed a pre-arranged downrange distance. That is a great safety feature, and also means that it could have broken mach 3 and gotten closer to 200,000 feet if it burnt the tanks dry. (The last 10 seconds would, assuming no throttle or great loss in motor isp at high altitude, be the best 10 seconds of all.) In fact, with a bit of optimization, this rocket could carry payloads to space. That could be as simple as a slightly lighter air frame, a bit more fuel, or a better ISP.

This would be an idea booster stage to a dumb solid rocket motor, say a Q, if they are interested in getting payload to 500,000 feet + at some point. Lighting a Q at 90,000 feet and mach 2 would be more than enough to get 10kg of cameras to 500,000 feet. But that is just my gut reaction, always being obsessed with altitude. It is quite possible that they have other things in mind (such as larger payloads.)

The recovery worked well enough (damage was noticeable but not fatal) but the parachute systems are going to be redesigned in future. The drogue stage is based on a large ballute. Ballutes are ideal for high-mach conditions, but in this case the drogue was damaged, resulting in a high speed deployment for the main chute, also resulting in damage. For my 2 cents, I suggest a 6 ft rocketman kevlar 'chute or the 8 foot ballistic mach II 'chute for this purpose.

www.armadilloaerospace.com

Source:
http://rocketdungeon.blogspot.com/

High speed footage - Crossroads shot Baker

2011-12-23T16:45:00.001-05:00

Note the initial hypersonic shockwave, a dark circle propagating through the water. This hydraulic shock, initially many miles per second, was powerful enough to crush the hulls of ships nearest to the blast.

Robot

2011-12-21T18:40:00.001-05:00

Hey check out this cool robot.

Christopher Hitchens Tribute

2011-12-20T21:16:00.001-05:00

Desorption-Assisted Sun Diver Missions

2011-12-20T16:08:00.002-05:00

"Desorption-Assisted Sun Diver Missions

Gregory Benford1 and James Benford

Abstract.

Solar-driven sails which can also accelerate by "boil off" of coated materials offer new high-velocity missions. These can take advantage of high temperature characteristics of the sail by using the large solar flux at perihelion. For the near term use of beamed power, beam illumination at ~kW/cm2 in LEO can simulate conditions any solar grazer mission will experience to within 0.01 A.U. Sublimation (or desorption) thrust from LEO into interplanetary orbit can omit the several-year orbits conventional solar sails need to reach ~0.1 AU. A second "burn" at perihelion, the highest available orbital velocity in the inner solar system, and thus optimum point for a delta-V, then yields high velocities of ~50 km/s for >40 A.U. missions. The mission begins with deployment in Low Earth Orbit by conventional rocket. Then the launch begins, driven by a microwave beam (and much smaller solar photon thrust) from nearby in orbit. Beam heating makes a "paint" (polymer layer #1) desorp from the sail. Under this enhanced thrust, in repeated shots at.perihelion in steepening elliptical orbits, the sail attains ~15 km/s velocity, canceling most of its solar orbital velocity, and so can fall edge-on toward the sun immediately. (This is far faster than using solar pressure to spiral down, which takes years.) It approaches the sun edge-on, to minimize radiation pressure on it in the inward fall. At perihelion the spacecraft rotates to face the sun. Under intense sunlight ~20 times Earth insolation, the sail desorps away polymer #2, getting a ~50 km/s boost at its maximum (infall) velocity. It then sails away as a conventional, reflecting solar sail, with the final Aluminum layer revealed. Its final speed is after leaving the solar potential well is ~ 10 AU/year. Within ~5 years, it sails beyond Pluto, giving high velocity mapping of the outer solar system, the heliopause and interstellar medium."

Full paper here

Tiny fan and coin vs current

2011-12-20T15:59:00.002-05:00

"Single phase submicro brushless motor, made from rewound wristwatch coil wire and the A1442 speed controller ic chip. Magnet is .5mm x 1mm, smallest available, shaft from .007" music wire, hypodermic tubing for bearings. Propeller is 8 mm diameter, made from basswood."

"5 cents vs 200 amps"

The Shadow - a water rocket built with HPR components

2011-12-18T09:46:00.004-05:00

"This is the build log of our next rocket project called "The Shadow". This water rocket doesn't use PET bottles or FTC tubes as the basis for a pressure chamber. Many of the construction techniques are borrowed from the model rocketry world. Rather than scattering the development details of this rocket all over the flight log updates, we have decided to keep a dedicated page for this rocket's development. The flights of this rocket will still be in the regular flight log updates along with our regular development."

I would be interested to see just how fast and high a water rocket can go. For example, how about supersonic flight? Or a flight over two miles?

More about Shadow at Air Command Rockets

First posted over at The Rocket Dungeon where rocketry bloggers go to read rocketry blogs when they are not blogging.

Photography of Nuclear Detonations - High Speed - Nuclear Explosion Induced Lightning

2011-12-17T22:55:00.007-05:00

"This is an old Lookout Mountain Labs production which highlights some EG&G films of US nuclear weapons testing in Nevada and the Pacific during the 1950s.. Of special note are two views of the CASTLE BRAVO shot (I think) which show nuclear explosion induced lightning effects. Originally hosted on an MIT server. Color (cruddy). Length: ~11:33. Unrestored. Year unknown (probably mid to late 1950s). No sound. Not classified."

I have never heard of nuclear lightning, but there is some great footage in this video that is new to me, including what is clearly lighting around the early fireball of test shot Ivy Mike. (At that time, it was by far the largest explosion ever.) Here is information about this lightning phenomenon:

"We report the results of a unique study of the lightning like phenomena that were seen to accompany the MIKE shot of operation IVY on October 31 1952. MIKE was a thermonuclear surface burst yielding 10.4 MT, which took place on Enewetak Atoll. During the period of approximately 10 ms after detonation, five discrete luminous channels were seen to start from the ground or sea surface at a distance of approximately 1 km from the burst point and to grow up into the clouds. We have reexamined the original photographic records of IVY-MIKE, obtaining effective brightnesses (optical powers per unit length) for the luminous channels at different altitudes as functions of time. The absolute calibration for the MIKE records was deduced by comparison with the photographic records of other events of that era, laboratory measurements of film sensitivity, and use of atmospheric transmission data taken just prior to the MIKE event. Errors in this analysis lead to an uncertainty of a factor of ~2 in the brightnesses of the luminous channels. In the laboratory we have used laser-guided electric discharges to create long (100 cm), arclike plasma channels to simulate the observed luminous channels and to allow determination of an empirical relation between the brightness of the channel and the electric current flowing in the channel.

These laboratory discharges had peak currents up to 100 kA and periods of ~2 ms. Spectroscopic analysis showed that the luminous channels consisted primarily of normal air plasma with typical ground-level contaminants. Photographic studies showed that these long-duration discharges are unstable to the m=1 magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instability and become severely distorted in less than 1 ms. By direct comparison of the luminous channels seen at MIKE and the laboratory discharges, we deduce:(1) the peak current in the prominent (brightest) channel at MIKE was between 200 and 600 kA. Here the most likely value of the peak current was 250+/-50 kA, but potential systematic errors in the film calibration and the comparison of MIKE and laboratory data make higher currents possible. (2) The rapid decline in the brightness of the luminous channels seen at MIKE is caused by a combination of the effects of the MHD instability, which eventually leads to a broadening of the current-carrying channel, and channel cooling by turbulent convective mixing."

An empirical study of the nuclear explosion-induced lightning seen on IVY-MIKE - Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 92, Issue D5, p. 5696-5712 - Colvin et. al.

Lots more information on nuclear tests found here:

http://glasstone.blogspot.com/

I cannot confirm, and honestly do not agree with many of the points in this blog. Like a certain aerospace blog, I find the posts very useful even if they are mixed evenly with a political agenda. To their credit, the agenda is never really denied. The author goes to great lengths to explain why the damage cased by nuclear blasts is actually minimal compared to what we have all come to expect from the media, government, liberals, or whomever. From years of research, I have found that sometimes the popular perception overstates the damage caused in a nuclear war, and sometimes the military and government underestimate it instead. Most interesting is the statement that attacks on urban areas would not result in a firestorm as in Hiroshima. I feel this ignores the amount of oil, natural gas, various other flammable liquids, and paper in an urban environment. Clearly a city-wide firestorm is unlikely. How could a fire spread across the hundreds of square km of a city like New York? But widespread fires of somewhat smaller-scale (yet still hugely damaging) would occur. Direct attacks on New York City would certainly damage and probably ignite the refinery oil-in system across the river in New Jersey, and possibly tankers in queue there. These fires wont kill many people, but they will have important ecological and climatological impacts.

I shudder to imagine the impact of a 100 kt attack on the Jamnagar Refinery in India, the largest in the World. Not only is such an attack more likely, due to well known problems with Pakistan, now on the verge of being taken over by Islamic terrorists, but it is also the kind of "local exchange" or "regional nuclear exchange" that can have global repercussions in climate. Cities in India are much closer to Hiroshima of 1945 than one would hope, and they are still candidates for widespread fire of very dirty fuels such as wood, coal, textiles, various oils and flammable liquids, and paper. The amount of smoke and ash created in a "local" war (with perhaps 25 detonations from each party) is staggering. There would be millions of kg of dust and ash produced as a result, not to mention fine soot particles that can be lofted into the upper atmosphere with larger detonations. I won't even get into the nitrogen oxides and ozone.

Going back to World War III, the risk of firestorm is a minor concern because a full-scale attack on a large city would physically destroy most of the city with between 3 and 15 warheads of 200 - 900 kt yield, in the instance of New York or Chicago. Not only would most buildings be damaged directly (all structures being exposed to at least one 200 kt blast at a distance of only a mile or two, followed by other blasts at greater distance) but the amount of fallout that is likely to occur after such a disaster will indeed render the urban area fatal to anyone who remains above-ground for days at the least. There is simply no way to deny this, and one can assume that anyone who has not escaped the city before or just after the blast, or who is not indoors (with intact windows and a supply of water) or underground will eventually die as a result of radiation exposure. Remember also that there will be no medical care, so LD/50 exposures will be bumped up to mostly fatal.

This is a complex topic and there are many different factors to consider. In reaction to the claim that nuclear weapons are not as deadly for civilians as expected, and are mostly a military weapon designed to target strategic forces of the enemy, I have to disagree. Nuclear weapons always have been and always will be a credible threat to civilians. Nuclear weapon strategy will never again work as a counter-force only strategy (even if, for a short time, it did.) It does little good to deny the fact that nuclear weapons are designed to kill as many civilians as possible, and in that they achieve the primary purpose of any large scale war; to destroy the social and economic structure of an enemy. Nuclear weapons achieve this in a simple way; by killing a vast number of individuals and destroying the infrastructure of their society. There is no reason to doubt the fact that a carefully executed nuclear strike would achieve this goal.

Zooming in on the center of the galaxy

2011-12-17T10:48:00.000-05:00

"This zoom sequence stars with a view of the Milky Way. We zoom in towards the crowded central region, in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). By shifting to an infrared red view we see through the dusty clouds in this direction and get a close up view of the objects orbiting the supermassive black hole that lies at the centre of the Milky Way. The final views show the motion of a newly-discovered gas cloud that is falling rapidly towards the central black hole.

Credit:ESO/MPE/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/VISTA/J. Emerson/Digitized Sky Survey 2"

Comet Lovejoy survives a swing around the Sun

2011-12-17T10:37:00.003-05:00

This is remarkable not only because of the intense amount of heat at .25 solar radii, but also because of the strong gravitational gradient involved. But there is no reason why a large object, made of ice and rubble, should not have a shot at surviving this flight. Imagine melting 10 meters of ice, for example, even with an acetylene welding torch. Clearly it takes time to get the job done. Additionally, the non-volatile solids may help insulate deeper collections of ice.

Mohr Rocket - Boosted dart system

2011-12-16T14:02:00.003-05:00

"Engineer Ernst Mohr of Wuppertal, under the auspices of the German Rocket Society, developed a sounding rocket that was designed to reach altitudes of 50 km. A solid rocket motor with 7800 kgf would take the separable payload section to a speed of 1200 m/s. The booster had a diameter of 0.30 m, a length of 1.7 m, a total mass of 135 kg including 75 kg of solid propellant. The payload dart was 56 mm in diameter, 1.25 m long, and had a total mass of 15 kg.

Payload: 5.00 kg (11.00 lb) to a 50 km altitude.

Status: Retired 1959.
Gross mass: 150 kg (330 lb).
Payload: 5.00 kg (11.00 lb).
Height: 2.95 m (9.67 ft).
Diameter: 0.30 m (0.98 ft).
Thrust: 76.00 kN (17,085 lbf).
Apogee: 50 km (31 mi). " - Astronautix.com

I love the shape of that booster. It is obviously not a modern looking rocket, but for a boosted dart, the extra drag imposed by the stubby first stage is minimal, particularly if there is a fast burn.

Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T09:58:00.002-05:00

Christopher Hitchens dies at 62

Also at NY Times

More Rapatronic Camera Images of Nuclear Tests

2011-12-14T21:55:00.003-05:00

"The rapatronic camera (a contraction of Rapid Action Electronic) is a high-speed camera capable of recording a still image with an exposure time as brief as 10 nanoseconds (billionths of a second).

The camera was developed by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s and was first used to photograph the rapidly-changing matter in nuclear explosions within milliseconds of ignition. To overcome the speed limitation of a conventional camera's mechanical shutter, the rapatronic camera uses two polarizing filters and a Kerr cell. The two filters are mounted with their polarization angles at 90° to each other, to block all incoming light. The Kerr cell between the filters, which changes the polarization plane of light passing through it depending on the level of voltage applied, acts as a shutter when it is energized at the right time for a very short amount of time, allowing the film to be properly exposed.

For a film-like sequence of high-speed photographs, as used in the photography of nuclear and thermonuclear tests, arrays of up to 12 cameras were deployed, with each camera carefully timed to record a different time frame." Wiki

Helium balloon from California to Mediterranian

2011-12-14T13:26:00.003-05:00

The California Near Space Project launches conventional high altitude flights, as well as long range attempts (where the balloon travels at lower altitudes for long durations.) It appears that the latest launch is still going strong, now south of Italy. You can track flight K6RPT-11 here.

Some of the high altitude flights, those that end in a balloon burst at altitude due to expansion and UV degradation of the rubber, have gone into the upper 120,000 foot range. As always, this kind of performance gets me thinking about rockoons again. An N 10,000 at 100,000 feet would probably be good enough for a camera payload to space. But that is going to take quite a few balloons to get the job done. (Or a zero pressure balloon of massive size.)

Stratolaunch - the largest airplane ever

2011-12-13T16:39:00.003-05:00

"Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering innovative solutions to revolutionize space transportation. Watch the video or visit http://www.stratolaunch.com to learn more."

It looks like a large Pegasus. The real question is the cost per launch, and they really need to get it down to a few million per launch. (At 15,000 lbs payload, I would like to see $5,000,000 per launch, compared to $30,000,000 per Pegasus at 1,000 lbs payload.) Short of a drastic decrease in price, or increase in launch rate, this type of complexity and the serious limitations imposed make it hard to justify. As always, the best solution is probably the big dumb rocket way with solid propellant in the booster stage. Reusable rockets, SSTO systems, or hybrid systems like this tend to cost too much money. The Shuttle is a key example of that problem.

This jet is unable to carry a rocket bigger than about 500,000 lbs. Will it impart enough additional altitude and forward velocity to make that worthwhile? Or are you (as is often the case) just better off going with a 1,000,000 lbs rocket from the ground?

Visitors from around the World

2011-12-12T11:47:00.003-05:00

This page, initially only a modest side project, has taken over most of my blogging time. High Power Rocketry has a daily post rate of greater than one, and is closing in on 1,000 posts. Most of the readers are from North America, but a significant number are from other parts of the World. Here are the visitors from other nations during the past 12 months:

United Kingdom 5,382
Germany 4,675
Canada 3,964
Australia 2,913
France 2,024
Russia 1,885
Netherlands 1,450
India 844
Brazil 698

Phobos Grunt update

2011-12-12T11:23:00.005-05:00

The almost inevitable end is near: Phobos grunt will be destroyed upon reentry as seen in this artist rendition. But questions remain - will Russia try again? When will humans recover a sample from the Mars system?

December 8, 2011

Dear Colleagues,

As you may already know, the launch of the Phobos-Soil spacecraft was a failure. On November 8, 2011 the spacecraft was put into the near Earth orbit, however, the booster did not turn on, and, therefore, the spacecraft did not manage to change this initial orbit and transfer to the interplanetary trajectory. The reason of this failure has not been determined yet.

Immediately after this unpredictable event all forces of the mission control team were concentrated in order to attempt to establish communication with the spacecraft. Several foreign organizations, in particular, ESOC-ESA, DSN-JPL-NASA, NORAD-STRATCOM, numerous amateur observers tracked the spacecraft to establish communication with it and determine parameters of the orbit, its orientation and attitude. However, despite people being at work 24 / 7 since the launch, all these attempts have not yield any satisfactory results. We are grateful to our foreign colleagues, who provided us with every list of information about the spacecraft which was crucial at the time.

Currently, the spacecraft is rotating [tumbling] at the near Earth orbit, lowering every day, and we expect that it is to entry the atmosphere in several weeks. Lavochkin Association specialists will continue their attempts to establish connection with the spacecraft and send commands until the very end of its existence. We are working nevertheless on the issue of re-entry and probability of where and which fragments may hit the ground (if any). There is a sensitive matter that one of the scientific instruments (Messbauer spectrometer) contains radioactive material Co-57. However, the amount of Co-57 is about few (less than 10) micrograms, so that, according to our evaluations, no significant problems are is anticipated.

At present, the next steps of the Russian space science program on the Solar system exploration are being discussed. In accordance with the current plans, the next missions are Luna-Glob and Luna-Resource. As another possible additional step, at the moment ROSCOSMOS, ESA and NASA are discussing the collaboration on the ExoMars and Russian Mars-NET missions. Moreover, the Russian Academy of Sciences would like to prepare a new mission to Phobos. However, no decision has not been taken yet.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to You and all the scientists and specialists for collaboration on the Phobos-Soil Mission, preparation of scientific instruments and provision of ground support. We are deeply sorry about the failure of the Phobos-Soil Mission. We hope in future to continue our collaboration on space science projects.

Academician Lev Zelenyi
Director, Space Research Institute
Chair, Solar system exploration Board
The Russian Academy of Sciences

P.S. Please, convey this letter to members of your team. Thank you.

The Whirlpool Galaxy

2011-12-12T10:34:00.001-05:00

A composite image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as M51). The green image is from the Hubble Space Telescope and shows the optical wavelength. The submillimetre light detected by SCUBA-2 is shown in red (850 microns) and blue (450 microns). The Whirlpool Galaxy lies at an estimated distance of 31 million light years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici Credit: JAC / UBC / Nasa

Nuclear fireballs, rope-tricks, and isothermal spheres

2011-12-11T08:48:00.001-05:00

Many of these images were taken with rapatronic cameras.

Mythbusters cannonball trajectory map

2011-12-10T15:36:00.003-05:00

Via: PerceptionBuilder.com

Giant ship propeller

2011-12-10T09:46:00.001-05:00

Parachutes with retro rockets

2011-12-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

Shake table testing of JWST mirrors under various vibration stresses

2011-12-09T13:44:00.001-05:00

"The James Webb Space Telescope will experience intense forces as it launches into space. To ensure that the different parts of the observatory won't suffer damage during this stage of the mission, engineers shake them rigorously. These two- to three-week-long vibration tests are performed on each of Webb's 18 primary mirror segments and the secondary, tertiary, and fine-steering mirrors. Engineers test the mirror's optics before and after each vibration test to confirm that the simulated launch left the mirror surface unscathed, without deformation or structural changes."

The astrovan

2011-12-08T21:24:00.001-05:00

Two nice CF rockets

2011-12-08T21:18:00.004-05:00

G motor altitude attempt @ The Rocketry Forum

29mm 2nd stage @ The Rocketry Forum

Armadillo Aerospace launches "Stig-a" to near space

2011-12-07T18:53:00.005-05:00

"The launch of Armadillo Aerospace's reusable suborbital sounding rocket Stiga. Fueled by liquid oxygen and denatured ethanol, the rocket reached close to 140,000 feet above sea level."

What a great flight this is! And the footage is particularly nice. It is cool to see just how little drag the rocket experiences at apogee. The 'chute came out and barely caught any air.

I think the rocket is called Stig, and this is Stig model A. If I am wrong, please correct me. A bunch of other sources keep calling it "Stiga" as in the title for this video.

'Mythbusters' cannonball busts through house

2011-12-07T18:24:00.002-05:00

"Strangely, it missed the trash cans, tore through a cinder-block wall, bounced its merry way down a hillside, barreled 700 yards through a suburban California neighborhood, smashed through the front door of a house, bounced up the stairs of the house and, without knocking, penetrated a bedroom door where a man, woman, and child were sleeping.

They were only woken after the cannonball had passed through. There was a little rubble and dust.

Was it done? Of course not. The cannonball then bounced its way out through the wall of the house, crossed a road, smashed a few tiles that were carelessly lying around on the roof of another house and finally took a seat inside the Gill family's Toyota Sienna, which they had thoughtlessly parked in the driveway of their home."

Cnet

Mythbusters has always been a bit of a tease show, light on science, but generally they are safe to a fault. It is hard to imagine how this cannonball could have maintained enough inertia to do so much damage.

STS-51C Launch IMAX Camera Footage

2011-12-06T21:02:00.001-05:00

A ton of balsa nose cones

2011-12-05T16:42:00.001-05:00

Sunward

NASA losing one astronaut every two months

2011-12-05T16:20:00.004-05:00

Commander of final shuttle mission to leave nasa

And why should they stay? Under the, as the French say, craptastic space leadership of President Obama, manned space exploration from America has basically been forced in a 5 - 7 year dead zone. No American space missions of any import should be expected in that time. It would not be shocking to see 10 - 15 years elapse before any really ambitious steps are made forward to deep space. And all this in the 2010s, 40 years after the plans for deep space missions were worked out and the capability to make good on the missions was first available. There is no greater indication of our failure to innovate and inspire than the decline of NASA. You can eat your seed corn this year, and eat well, but you will surely starve next year. The NASA budget should be pegged to 1% of the federal budget. That alone would get us manned asteroid and Mars missions. There are plenty of reasons to hate Nixon (the war on drugs and for-profit medicine are two hallmarks that liberals like myself see right off the bat) but the worst thing he ever did was drastically cut funding for NASA at a time when the agency had just pulled off the greatest single achievement in human history. Because you know, once they do that, why would you want to see what they can do next?

Four (quad) barrel shotgun

2011-12-04T09:17:00.001-05:00

Flight line at Balls 20

2011-12-04T09:12:00.001-05:00

Huygens thermal multilayer insulation

2011-12-02T14:32:00.001-05:00

Schwerer gustav and dora railway siege guns

2011-12-01T16:18:00.002-05:00

Close to 10,000 people have visited this post, making it by far the most popular. Over 100 views today alone! If you were searching for this topic, please leave a comment and let us know what you are working on.

MSL Parachute Test

2011-12-01T16:03:00.002-05:00

This is a huge 'chute that will apparently take the entire payload (minus heat-shield) from the end of the ballistic entry sequence, to before the operation of the skycrane system. I keep thinking this would go great with a S motor project. Maybe a full scale V2?

Iranian anti Ship missiles destroying their target in the Persian Gulf

2011-12-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

Ultralight nano metal material

2011-11-30T16:41:00.002-05:00

"Ultralight (<10 milligrams per cubic centimeter) cellular materials are desirable for thermal insulation; battery electrodes; catalyst supports; and acoustic, vibration, or shock energy damping. We present ultralight materials based on periodic hollow-tube microlattices. These materials are fabricated by starting with a template formed by self-propagating photopolymer waveguide prototyping, coating the template by electroless nickel plating, and subsequently etching away the template. The resulting metallic microlattices exhibit densities ρ ≥ 0.9 milligram per cubic centimeter, complete recovery after compression exceeding 50% strain, and energy absorption similar to elastomers. Young’s modulus E scales with density as E ~ ρ2, in contrast to the E ~ ρ3 scaling observed for ultralight aerogels and carbon nanotube foams with stochastic architecture. We attribute these properties to structural hierarchy at the nanometer, micrometer, and millimeter scales."

Science Mag

Visitors to Mars

2011-11-28T10:02:00.004-05:00

And now we can add MSL to the list:

The square kilometer array

2011-11-28T08:23:00.002-05:00

This will be one of the most important leaps in astronomy to date. Sadly the USA was not even a serious contender for hosting this project, as we continue to fall behind in high technology and science. It is worth mentioning that a similar, highly ambitious project was planned here called "Cyclops" way back in 1971. It goes without saying that funding never arrived.

Beer in (near) space

2011-11-27T23:23:00.001-05:00

Meh, every balloon flight that goes up without a rocket is a waste :)

Amateur astronomer captures disk around distant star

2011-11-27T19:35:00.003-05:00

This is a very challenging thing to do, particularly with a 10 inch reflecting telescope. Impressive indeed!

Fourth generation nuclear weapons

2011-11-24T08:54:00.005-05:00

"The fourth chapter is devoted to fourth generation nuclear weapons. These new fission or fusion explosives could have yields in the range of 1 to 100 ton equivalents of TNT, i.e., in the gap which today separates conventional weapons from nuclear weapons. These relatively low-yield nuclear explosives would not qualify as weapons of \emph{mass} destruction. Seven physical processes which could be used to make such low-yield nuclear weapons, or to make compact non-fission triggers for large scale thermonuclear explosions, are investigated in detail: subcritical fission-burn, magnetic compression, superheavy elements, antimatter, nuclear isomers, metallic hydrogen and superlasers (i.e., ultrapowerful lasers with intensities higher than 1019 W/cm2).

The conclusion stresses that considerable research is underway in all five nuclear-weapon States (as well as in several other major industrialized States such as Germany and Japan) on ICF and on many physical processes that provide the scientific basis necessary to develop fourth generation nuclear weapons. Substantial progress has been made in the past few years on all these processes, and the construction of large ICF microexplosion facilities in both nuclear-weapon and non-nuclear-weapon States is giving the arms race a fresh boost. The world runs the risk that certain countries will equip themselves directly with fourth generation nuclear weapons, bypassing the acquisition of previous generations of nuclear weapons."

Nuclear Weapon Archive

And if you can read with a heavy grain of salt, here is some extreme speculation on what various future nuclear technologies may bring including nuclear shaped charges:

Physics Forum Keep in mind that several posts here fall into the realm of pseudo-science.

10, 15, 20?

2011-11-23T08:46:00.001-05:00

Explosion underwater

2011-11-22T22:30:00.003-05:00

The source calls this a shaped charge underwater.

LR91-AJ-11 rocket engine - thrust chamber - Titan IV

2011-11-21T19:51:00.003-05:00

105,000 lbs of thrust.

Sonic testing on soda-can rocket airframe

2011-11-20T11:35:00.001-05:00

Read more at http://nprize.blogspot.com/

BALLS 2011 - State of Decay On Board Video

2011-11-19T21:50:00.000-05:00

Not sure what the specs are here, and if there was supposed to be an upper stage as well. Looks like an airstart in there.

CTI O 25,000 Vmax motor

2011-11-16T16:11:00.003-05:00

"Static firing of an O25,000 Vmax motor. Single-use Pro130. 6,000 pounds for 1.2 seconds."

An O25,000 staged to an N 10,000, if such an arrangement could ever be made strong enough, could realistically be expected to break mach 4 no problem. A great way to test new high temperature composite builds, as standard high power rockets seem to be getting badly burnt every time they break mach 3. This would also be great for a boosted dart - it is comparable to a Super Loki Dart in power. If you go with a bare motor and some TIG welded fins, mass fractions would be decent. Throw a 7 lbs 38mm boosted dart with a camera on there, I bet you could hit 50,000 feet with an initial boost of mach 2.4 or so.

How to make aerogel at home - but it is not so easy...

2011-11-15T17:48:00.002-05:00

.50 BMG Flechette anti-tank round - DU (Depleted Uranium)

2011-11-13T20:50:00.007-05:00

"The auctioneer claims that it is only one of twelve built and the only other known example resides at the Ford Benning sniper school.

The .50 BMG Flechette rifle project was contacted out by DARPA in 1960′s. The projectile consisted of a saboted depleted uranium dart weighing 11.9 gram ( 183.6 grains ).

.50 BMG Flechette round cross section. © Paul Smith (Used with permission)

The sabot was fired out of a smoothbore barrel with the dart achieving 4500 feet/sec velocity. That is more than a 32 grain .204 Ruger!"

Just to be clear, 12 grams is VERY heavy, and 4,500 fps is insanely fast. The energy at impact would be huge, and focused on a tiny point. I doubt this would be effective against modern tank armor, but it certainly will work against even heavy armor on all other vehicles including apcs.

Compare this to a 5 mm/35 SMc - a 39 grain round at 4,250 fps yielding about 1,564 foot-lbs on impact. If we can trust the (absolutely massive) mass above, this round exits the barrel with Just over 8,000 foot-lbs. This is insane considering the tiny nosecone on that dart, but still 4,000 - 6,000 less than a .50 BMG.

By comparison, the Gau - 8 fires a PGU-14/B armor piercing incendiary that is about 425 grams at 3500 fps. This results in 175,000 foot-lbs. That is more than 20 times greater than the DARPA rifle.

The Firearm Blog

Model rocket onboard footage

2011-11-13T20:50:00.001-05:00

News coverage of JP Aerospace "space chair" footage

2011-11-12T09:25:00.001-05:00

Dauphin full scale on an O5100 and two L motors

2011-11-12T09:19:00.001-05:00

"Team-O-Canada launched a full scale model of a French sounding rocket called the Dauphin on one CTI O5100 and two L2100's."

What's new at JP Aerospace?

2011-11-11T07:59:00.001-05:00

Rockoons and high-altitude airships