And Now .... For the Rest of the Story

Thank you Paul Harvey, I was struggling with how to title this.

Altimeter ready to be installed

Where we last left our hero and heroin, they had been tasked with two back to back flights, same day with an hour turn around time. After a scrub in February due to a storm, followed by resuming my driving contract, we made the flights in July 2016 (yes, correct year). The month of driving (previous post) suffice to say was dismal. I'm not going to try and catch everything up but I have to ... finish the story with our black and bright pink rocket named Black Beauty.

The photo album tells the story pretty well, click here or follow along below for more written details.

We always have an astronaut, Leia flies.

Davie and I went out to FAR arriving early and launching the first flight in the first hour.  Click here for the video.  Our brave naut, Princess Leia, flew successfully.  The rocket landed within sight on the next property.  We hike out to recover it for the next flight.  I pulled the data from the altimeter, cleared it and prepared it for the next launch.  We had to make new ejection charges for the chutes, repack them and get the rocket on the rail for a second go. Click here for second flight.  The video isn't as good at the first, jump ahead a minute in and you can hear us talking about it, the chute is jumping in an out of the frame on the lower right hand corner.  Two graceful landings. 

The whole thing went so smoothly that it was anticlimactic.  Sort of like this post almost 2 years later.  In fact in the last month we repeated this twice with another Sonic 3100 with an extended nose for guest altimeter. 

Plan B, C, D, C, B, X, Q.....?

Tax season is over.  It was good, I liked it better than commercial driving.  I worked with great people and enjoyed the work.  I will do it again next year if it works out that way.  I was especially happy to be able to insert some rocketry in the season despite being in Nevada.  We did make it out for the last proposed launch date in late March.  A storm was blowing in and while the rocket can fly okay in it, and even the parachute still works, it works too well..... i.e. carries the rocket far away.  So we scrubbed for weather.  I may still get that blog post up.

Thursday last week,  April 21'st I finished the last of the packing to return to California and finish my driving contract.  Yes, back to driving the truck.  I spent a weekend with Davey and I am back at the Riverside CRST Yard.  I just signed a 1 month contract and will be free to drive with another company if I decide to after May 28th.  I will try to stay on a few months to rack up some bucks but only if they get me on some shorter runs.  Four weeks on the road with 4 days off is not for me.  So we'll see.  I have some irons in the fire, but nothing lined up for sure following this month.

Rocketry postponed until then, too.

The truck was in the shop all week and it is Sunday, Mother's day and we (co-driver and I) are finally getting on the truck to start running this week. 

Dual Flights of Black Beauty

As hoped, Davie and I were able to meet up in Mojave, California the first weekend of February, two days after my birthday.  I drove over from Nevada and he drove down from Lake Arrowhead.  Jerry and Erika were delayed getting out of the cities and stayed in Palmdale for the night.  The four of us met at the Mojave Denny's restaurant for breakfast and drove out together to FAR - Friend of Amateur Rocketry site.  We are still flying the Sonic 3100 and the goal for the day was to make two back to back flights the same day.  Succeeding with that we would go from the 38 mm diameter motors to the 54 mm ones.

Perfect Landing Flight 3

Click here for the Flickr album.

It took us a little while to get the rocket prepped but we got it out to the pad.  There was confusion over the ignition system changes but it worked well.  I took the count and the launch button for the first flight (Flight 3) and gave Davie my new iPhone 6S to take the video.  After a near false start on ignition, it lifts off nicely. The rocket drifted east and into the sun and it was hard to tell what was being recorded.  He did catch a glimpse of the rocket arching over at apogee 1 minute and 15 seconds into the video and then glimpses of it on the final decent including the chute deployment.  Here is the link directly to the video.

We recovered the rocket after a search of the desert shrubs.  As expected from watching the deployment the rocket, the parts were laying out in a line from a perfect parachute landing.  With our second successful liftoff and landing we set about to turn around for the fourth flight.  I was starting to repack the parachute when I noticed some charred spots.  We needed more insulating packing between the charges and the chute.  It took an hour but we were up to launch again.  I resumed doing the filming such as it is.

Parachute took some minor damage.

Lift off was good but the rocket tail kicks to the side momentarily then straightens up.  I do catch apogee in the camera but can't see it at the time.  Here is a link to the second (Flight 4) video.  Then I loose it both in the video and visually and finally, I do see it coming in for a landing without the parachute but it doesn't show well on the video.  It takes a big screen or the ability to zoom the video to see the two sections coming in without the parachute.

When I unpacked the nose cone, I could see where the gun powder did ignite but it was more like it burned than exploded as intended.  I cut the amount of gun powder back a little and then maybe didn't have enough cotton around it so the nose cone didn't get the explosion that it needed to create separation.  The parachute was loose when we put it in, but it had unfolded a bit and it definitely had some friction against the inside of the rocket body when I pulled it out.  Perhaps as a result of the hard landing, we can't really tell.  There are lots of little details to get right.

So next trip (hopefully the first weekend of March) we can have another perfect flight on the 38 mm motors.  Jerry said we couldn't graduate just yet.  And this is after we fix the broken beauty (see the final pictures in the album).

If you want to catch up to the Black Beauty sequence of blogs, click here for the first one.  Then there is a link at the bottom of each one so you can read them in series.  For a review of the FAR site, click here for those blog entries. Enjoy!

Ending the Year with a Whoosh and a bing-bing-bing.

December 19th, 2015 we made a second launch of Black Beauty.  In the weeks prior, Davie had to cut off the burned portion of the tail section and butt together a new piece to restore the section to its proper length.  A little spray paint and a lot of epoxy on the fins (he even reinforced the ones that were not damaged) and the body section was ready.  I replaced the altimeter and installed  a new astronaut, a storm trooper which was both timely with the release of the new Star Wars movie and expendable (one of the bad guys) in the event of another system failure.  We looked again but still no sign of Al, the Tricera-naut from the previous launch.  Click here for last month's posts.  Be sure and check the link at the bottom to the previous flight.

Primary point of failure last month was most likely the lack of an air compensating hole for the cargo bay.  As you know, driving up a mountain makes your ears pop to equalize the pressure.  The rocket is traveling that distance in a few seconds so the inside of the rocket needs to release the air pressure quickly.  We had a hole for the top and bottom sections but not one in the cargo bay where the altimeter, which is using air pressure as one element of its computations, resides.  So it was a big problem for it without and we have correct that oversight.

Patching the Patched Rocket after the Launch Lugs pulled off.

Click here for the link to the Flickr Album for the picture and video story.

Erika was able to join us on this trip to FAR and brought her own rocket to launch. We were all very dismayed when she had other obligations last month so it was great that she could make it.  She made a successful flight while Davie packed the rocket body with the separation charges and I calibrated the altimeter. Click here for a link to a my first post of the FAR facility.

Once we completed the final assembly, we took the rocket out to the launch rail and slid it on.  The top section does not have launch lugs so I was making a video of Davie demonstrating how the final assembly goes with the rocket on the rail. Sadly, the video has no sound and poor image quality so I didn't include it.  The video ended abruptly anyway with the launch lugs pulling off the side of the rocket and it falling away from the rail.  We brought the rocket back inside and patched it some more.

While waiting for the epoxy to set, Erika took a second launch attempt.  After a minor igniter problem, requiring replacement of the delicate igniter, she had a second successful flight with drogue streamer release and parachute opening. But, it drifted off south of the range and despite all four of us looking for it we couldn't find it.

Jerry had some rocket tubes that we unloaded into his storage unit at the range. So now an hour has gone by for the epoxy to set.  We opened the rocket long enough to start the altimeter and took it out to the launch rail - sans video to avoid another problem.  We haven't used the system enough to know how long the battery supplying power to the altimeter will last which is part of why I wanted to start it on the rail last time.  We expected it to last awhile but also we were concerned that at some point does the altimeter still beep while the battery does not have enough juice to fire the electric matches for chute deployment?  So we felt some pressure and when we realized that we didn't have the igniter for the rocket motor so I *ran* back to get it.  I did the count and handed the phone to Davie to video the flight.  I pushed the button and there was a pop and then no joy and no video.  The igniter fired but did not ignite the propellant.  So with the clock ticking on the battery, we replaced it and I do have a video of that in the Flickr album.  Click here for the video.

Just as we finished replacing the altimeter and were ready to try again, another group took their rocket out.  Ordinarily I wouldn't give it too much concern but the altimeter was beeping away draining battery.  I let them know that we were ready and they said they would just be a few minutes.  They were right but it was another 10 or 15 minutes of taking turns posing with the rocket and checking picture quality.  Again, we wouldn't care too much, its the way the place operates and very few people use the altimeters which is a major focus of the project for us but we felt a time pressure on it.  Davie waited by the rocket to make sure it was still beeping when we could finally make a second take.  I had Davie go ahead and call the count and fire off the rocket so I could get the video again.  The flight was perfect and the video is okay.  I loose site of the rocket but Davie doesn't and I pick it up again so be patient as you watch the video and you may need a big screen (verses a phone) to really enjoy it.  Just after main chute deployment I catch a glimpse of a half moon on the horizon with our rocket descending with chutes deployed.  Click here for the flight video.

Perfect Landing configuration, too.

The rocket soared straight up and drifted north over our heads and dropped about about a 100 yards the other side of the back fence.  We scooted under the fence, and found it.  I have a recovery video too.  It is the last thing in the album.  The altimeter was beeping away.  My phone ran out of space on the SD card and cut odd the video just as I was about to check for the altimeter beep.  Sorry for the abrupt end.  Even with the time for rocket recovery and bringing it back to the barn the battery kept right on going. I was even able to extract the data without changing it.  So it is good to know that the battery can indeed last a good half hour before launch and probably quite a while after.  The rocket peaked out a just under 2600 feet so it flew about half a mile.  The rocket can take two different sized motors and we are using the smaller option.  The next goal is to make two back-to-back successful flights and then try the larger motor.  Again you can get your own Sonic 3100 from US Rockets - click here.

I spent New Years in Henderson, NV where I will work the next 4 months.  The next flight is still hoping to be in February as the Mojave Desert is between here and Lake Arrowhead, CA where I had been staying.  For New Years Eve, I stayed up until midnight and watched the uber fireworks on the Vegas Strip via the local broadcast on the TV.  Next year I am hoping to get down closer to see it live.  My folks and I did spend an hour at Joker's Wild Casino and I hit two 5-of-a-kind (one paying 4 times bonus) and two 4-of-a-kind (no wilds) one of which was 4 queens with a face kicker on Aces and Faces paying 160 times my bet.  Betting with nickles and quarters at a time, I peaked out at maybe $15 or less but primarily these are all hard to hit hands so it was a great way to end the year with the video poker machine going bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing....

Update:  Next blog post, Flights 3 and 4 is ready.  Click here.

First Flight of Black Beauty

Readying the rocket.

November 21th, 2015 we headed to the FAR launch site - Friends of Amateur Rocketry - to make our first flight.  The rocket is a Sonic 3100 from US Rockets you can see the performance specs at their homepage.  We used the 29mm mount for our first flight and there will be more where evenutally we will try the 54mm motors too.

We had a little more work to do and you can see that as part of the previous post - click here if you missed it.  It was a very busy day at the Range with multiple rockets by several groups.

Finally we were ready and everyone headed to the bunkers.  See video below or Click here for the photo album to see the story in pictures and videos.

Spoiler alert in the next paragraph if you haven't watched the video:

The flight itself was good but with a less than graceful landing.  The first separation either occurred early or with too much force and the tail section fell separate from the main body and nose of the rocket and we had to go pick up the two separate sections.  You can see the recovery and the autopsy videos in the Flickr album.  The real casualty was Al, the triceranaut and the videos kept cutting off just as we would get to that part.  So we have to rebuild parts and then try again.  Current launch date, Dec. 19th.   Click here for the second flight.

Preparing for Launch

This summer it was time to stop watching the flights and get in on the action.  This was facilitated by US Rockets providing the components in exchange for our help on a larger project.  The goal is several flights with the Featheweight brand altimeter to deploy two chutes, record the flight and to record the performance of John Newman's rocket motors.

The bright pink fins, squares and nose are to improve visibility and to see when it is rotating around the long axis.  Davie took the lead on construction of the rocket and I took the lead on the altimeter.

Rocket Parts

I put the altimeter on a breadboard and used the Featherweight altimeter simulation program to be sure that we understood how to program the altimeter and that it would be firing the squibs on the simulations.  We had some trouble with the Raven 2 units so we swapped them out for the Raven 3's.  Between other obligations we finally assembled the Sonic 3100 rocket in November and set up for our first flight at the FAR rocket range, November 21st.

Click here for the photo albums and videos.

And Click here for the next post, the launch.

Another Day at FAR.

Rain from the Mountains

Another day on the amateur range.  We watched a couple static tests and a couple flights.  A static test means that the rocket is stationary, i.e. static - not static electricity. It is for testing engine performance before flight.

The static tests were from one of the FAR founders.  It was actually two tests of the same hybrid dedicated since the first test failed.  Click here for the videos, first test and the second test.

Student Rocket

A group of students from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, were there with three rockets. Two for testing and a large one, maybe 12 ft. long. The day was getting long so they only flew one of the test rockets.  The purpose of the flight was to test parachute deployment and only one of the parachutes opened.  They proceeded to fly the larger rocket anyway. It flew beautifully, click here for a short video of it, but neither chute opened and it experienced a hard landing.  We did not stay long enough to be the remains but while driving away we could see the students out in the desert brush.  They had the main chute opened in the wind and it looked fully intact so hopefully they have some salvageable pieces.

Earlier in the day one of the local rocketeers demonstrated how the different propellants burned with different colors depending on the ingredients.  I have a short video of one of the propellant scraps burning.  Click here for the complete photo album. 

The next step is to build our own.... already in progress.

Tablet for Blogging.

Overlooking San Bernadino et. al. from Hwy18

Testing blog function from new Android 5.0 Nextbook tablet.

Lost content twice now.

Testing link:  click here for facebook.

make that three times.  The app has a very bad means to attach photos that didn't work on my phone nor here and essentially messd up the post.  First the app couldn't find the picture for the upload and then when I tried to remove it the app crashed!

the link works but I have to type in the whole url which is a pain when it comes to linking to an album.  these issues were with my phone app, too, so google has really dropped the ball on this one.

But at least with the tablet I can us the browser interface which is how I make a post on the computer which is just impossible on the phone.  switching back and forth doesn't work either.

So stop testing here and just bail out on using it for editing.  Very dissapointed and finding some of the image function on the tablet through firefox may not work either.  But I'll give it a go.

Learning to use the app

Album testing how to make a link  the album. Click here

Https://
plus.google.com/photos/100374723369997211944/albums/6105715718938338097

Second Attempt

I picked up a new phone so,  among other things, I can make blog posts from it.  It failed a few weeks ago.  Trying it again.  I was having some speaker problems with the phone so that kept me busy for a while too.

That works.
Posting a picture was the problem before.  Here goes an attempt at that.

Taking a Detour

The truck I drove the first month on the road.

So I started on-the-job training driving on Dec. 9th.  Since then I have crossed the country 7 times.  Generally the cargo is expedited freight,  going 300 or more miles, most of them over  1000.  Most of the time it is "drop and hook" which means we unhook from the trailer and pick up an empty one leaving the consignee to unload it at their leisure. 

In the driver's seat.

I completed a month of training and I will be going out another 2 weeks with another trainer.  I am staying in Cedar Rapids, near company headquarters while the company lines up a new trainer for me.  Hopefully I will be on the road again this week.  We are paid by the mile, not the hour.  Even after training the company has us drive in teams so one of us is driving while the other is sleeping.  This, however, is not conducive to making blog post.  I'll see what I can do along the way.

Early this January, I was drove all the way across Arizona and half way across New Mexico, driving east.  At sunset the moon rose and I was really enjoying cruising along in the moonlight with my CD's playing.  The road was clear but there was some snow on the desert so the moon lit up the landscape very nicely.  Click here for an album and I might keep adding to it since I can do that quickly on the road.

Plan B

Plan B is flowing smoothly.  I have spent the last two weeks in Riverside and Fontana, California getting a Class A drivers license and learning to drive trucks, not small ones, big ones - 18 Wheelers.  So Plan B is to drive around the country to earn some good bucks and on days off, build rockets in the Mojave.  The next step in the process in driving for CRST Van Expedited is attend a few days of orientation followed by 28 days of on the job training with an experience driver.  What CRST offers is company sponsored training followed by a 10 month contract to drive.  Even if someone goes to a driving training company on their own, you still need a year of experience driving before you can get work so this is a really good deal for starting out in this line of work.

New Sideline Career

So how did I get here?  What is Plan A?  Of course the general plan has been to finance OpenLuna and earlier this year Paul and I started the for-profit sister corporation Kepler Shipyards for which we almost had loans for the space suit division by midyear which didn't come through and subsequently messed up the next step.  We have been working another angle that is $25k short of a $60M proposition that would finance the spacesuits at $2M and create an annual revenue of a million dollars or more to finance other tech.  I can not disclose the details at this time and we have a few days yet to still make it happen.  

Additionally, revenue flow since coming to California has been minimal and I was looking for something good to just-show-up that I could walk right into (I tend to find the better opportunities this way vs pounding the pavement).  And truck driving was it.  It was ready to go on a weeks notice so I began the process even though there was still hope for Plan A.  I really like the other students and this company is cranking out drivers a dozen or two at a time.   The first year we only make $2k to $3k monthly but ultimately an annual salary of $70k to $100+k is possible which is what I would make behind the desk.  I doubt I will continue with it that long I just need to get a solid income behind me to operate from and take another stab at, perhaps it is even the leg up to pull Plan A from the ashes.

The CRST Truck Terminal Where I will be Working

A Day on the Range

The range in this case was FAR - Friends of Amateur Rocketry near Mojave, Cantila, and California City.  Since it has been a year and a half since I was here, I will include a link to my previous post for this site, click here (note there are two albums on that page, one for the range and one for that day).

The Second Rocket

The crew consisted of Jerry, Erika, Davey - a good friend of theirs, and myself.  The primary mission was delivering frames made the past month by the same crew, making a batch of solid propellant for them, taking inventory of the storage containers for restock and planning for a liquid motor test fixture.  The latter was my assigned task though we all helped each other and achieved the mission with many breaks to watch the local rocket builders launch their creations into the skies... most of the them.

The main fare for the day were small rockets, 3-4 inches in diameter and a few feet long. Click here for the photo album for the day.


October 4th was a lovely day at the range with mostly clear skies, a light breeze and a comfortable temperature. The first rocket was a smooth firing, the builder tracked the flight to over 20,000 ft and recovered the rocket.  I was able to get a picture of the exhaust right after the rocket left the pad, see album.  The second rocket required three tries, the igniter worked but it didn't set the propellant off until the third try.  The flight was tracked and the rocket successfully recovered.  In between the second and third attempt, the students set up theirs, found a problem and returned to the quonset hut to rebuild it.  Then they were up next, with a nice flight, perhaps not reaching its altitude goal.

Note the 1 foot space, open air, above the mounds.

 

The final test was not to go airborne.  It is called a static test, where the rocket is held down with an exhaust deflector, usually to measure the amount of thrust generated by the particular design and propellant mixture.  In this case, they tried made the sugar rocket of a larger diameter than had been know to work.  A test the prior weekend had exploded.  Despite the fact that we would be watching from the bunkers, image left, we were advised that if we heard a boom, to duck. 

Between the top of the mound seen above, and the top of the bunker is about a 1 foot open space for viewing the rocket launches.  I set the camera on the cement wall holding the mound for my shots.  My camera has a long delay between pushing the button and taking the picture and I have a tough decision to time my shots and I usually miss the action.  I was standing on the very far end (left in the photo) angling my shot back to the right for the static test. 

Got the Shot!  Note the debris above the launch rail.

The rocket builder counted down, 3...2...1... and I pushed the trigger and got the first shot of the rocket ready to fire.  Then just as we all thought ignition had failed the igniter went off and I pushed the shutter button.  I had my left arm deliberately across my head to push the button giving me an even smaller window to watch a potentially exploding rocket.  The next thing I knew I had ducked and a vague sense of something bushing past my arm.  I looked and everyones head was down.  I looked out and saw the smoky remains of their rocket test.  In the end, my shutter went off just as the rocket exploded.

Earth to Debi....Earth to Debi

I'm still here.  I somewhat inadvertently reverted to my naturally introverted state, even dropping off Facebook the last few months.  I enjoy being extroverted when I want to be so I have the best of both worlds.  If I was having a barrel of fun, I would have shared it.  It wasn't a bad time, just mostly normal ups and downs with nothing special to report.

After the space conference in July 2013 I walked into a care-giver position where they were hiring on 50 people in a short period of time.  When I saw the ad for it I expected it to be for the elderly which I had some experience with Helen in taking her places.  The job turned out to be assisted living for adults with developmental disabilities.  I left the conference with some prospects for work in the field but would take some time to follow up and this company was willing to hire me on for an uncertain duration so that was good and I took on the challenge.  Outside the normal ups and down, the biggest challenge of the last year was the yo yo-ing of opportunities opening up and then closing again first for employment in the space industry and then for financing Paul's space suit design.  Each of the latter, just keeps getting closer with two prospects in the works. 

As for my employment at Community Outreach Counseling, I can't say much about it as I am bound by HIPPA regulations for the events that transpired at work.  The limited pay was tough so I didn't get to any more space conferences in the last year.  I didn't need a lot to live on for my circumstances and when I did need to travel for a couple of the Avatar courses, they were able to accommodate that.  And I worked weekends so I had the week to work on these other opportunities.  

January of this year, my long time associate Paul Graham, an engineering friend of Paul's and I formed Kepler Shipyards, LLC to finish development and to commercialize Paul's space suit design.  As eluded to earlier, we thought we had funding lined up at that time and new prospects are in the works for that.

In the mean time, I have left my sister's house in Idaho and my job there.  I am spending a few days in Las Vegas with family and my father's birthday on Wed. of this week.  I will return to California to work with Jerry and Erika on Thursday.

Rocket science..... here we come!

Murder and Mayhem, Idaho City Ghost Tour

Frozen in time, a perfect place for a ghost.

Saturday, October 19th, 2013 I joined a group of young eager believers on the Murder and Mayhem tour in the ghost town of Idaho City.  It is an old mining town up in the mountains.  At one time very lawless with criminals setting fire to one side of town to rob the other.  Many stories of ghost sightings, sensing and photos abound this lovely archaic town where about 700 people still reside.  The proprietors of a gift store offer a guided tour of the town and show the hot spots.  We had a high incidence of ghosts in photos in our group and all had a great time.  To follow the tour, click here to see the album.  To arrange your own tour, click here.

Here and There Simultaneously

I had a perfect time in California.  Jerry and Erika are fun to hang out with.  The mountains of California hold the best of Alaska (wilderness, sparse population, comfortable summer weather) and the best of California (close to conferences, space industry, and rockets).  Jerry used to work on the East side of the mountain in Lucerne Valley but has had to move his operation to the house/shop/garage in Running Springs where I was staying.  I left there so he and his son can get the shop and garage going and allow time for awarded contracts to come through.  I could have stayed but I left Idaho for a two week trip and was gone about 8 so I have returned to my sister’s house in Caldwell, ID and spend more time with her while opportunities develop in California.

I headed down the mountain through Lucerne Valley to Las Vegas on Friday evening July 5^th arriving pretty late in Las Vegas to spend the night with my parents.  I headed out midmorning towards Idaho with an overnight in Wells and arrived in Caldwell about 5PM on Sunday.  It is a bit warmer here, at only 2500 ft (vs 5-6000 in California) but I will adapt quickly.  My sister has a gorgeous house amidst a few subdivisions and farms and conveniently to shopping.  It was nice here when I left but I still felt removed from the industry and things that I left Alaska for.  Now ,I am here, it is nice and I feel close to the new space industry.

The next trip will be to the NewSpace 2013 conference in San Jose at the end of July.  I will be here until then for sure. 

A little ablum, not much here but more than I orginally planned for this post

Artifical Stars for 4th of July

An annual event at Lake Arrowhead Village is the 4th of July Fireworks show.  Additionally, the area has the "Mountain Singles Club" which congregates twice a week for various events such as dinner, game night and bowling.  So the club met at 4:30PM at the organizer's home, namely Dan and Carol for a pot luck dinner with ribs and conversation.  Then many of us car pooled over to Jerry's Condo which is right on the lake to watch the fireworks.  Album includes two videos as well.
 
Click here for the album.

Wandering in San Diego

Click here for the photo album.  Disclaimer - still editing pictures so lots of redundancy in them.

A day at FAR - FAR - Away

Not really all that far, but, FAR - Friends of Amateur Rocketry (an organization and a place) is a few hours away from Lake Arrowhead and also a fair distance from anything else, i.e. igniting rockets that can and do explode.  Click here for the Album of the FAR facility

Students preparing a 2 stage rocket for launch

The Students working at the site today (Sun. June 2, 2013) had camped out at the site so they would be right there ready to go.  We left Lake Arrowhead at 5:30 in the morning and arrived a bit after 9AM with a stop for breakfast.  We arrived and the students were busily working on their rockets for flight.

Four teams were present, one each of sizable rockets from Stanford and from UCSD and I think the other two were also from USCD.  We were called in for a safety briefing which was we needed to be in the bunkers for 3 of the rockets.  Stanford was supposed to go first but they still needed a couple hours to load the nitrous oxide into their rocket.

So the first launch was a small, 1 1/2 foot tall solid rocket that took 5 tries to ignite and so I missed the lift off in the end but did catch the parachute returning to the ground.Click here for parachute landing Then the other smaller rocket, about 3 feet long I did video and which exploded soon after lift off. Click here for exploding rocket


I made a point to catch up to Dave Dunlop who I met at the ISDC conference the previous weekend and we talked for a while.  We were out in the sun and then we decided to sit in the shade of the stairs of the Vertical motor test stand.  We were talking while still, now 3 hours into the nitrous oxide fill, the Stanford rocket started making sounds of escaping gas and we noticed everyone was gone from their launch stand.  We headed immediately for the bunkers just as the call to return to the bunkers was announced.  I was able to zoom the camera in and got a nice video, albeit low resolution, video of it leaving the launch pad.  We lost site of it quickly and while it was supposed to be retrieved, the electronics didn't broadcast as expected, according to Jerry, likely because the second stage didn't ignite and it crashed early and was considered un-retrievable. Click here for the Stanford video


We finished with going into the bunker for the Vertical test stand and a few pictures from the top of the stand and us on it.  We left just as the last USCD rocket was loaded on the rail.  It would take them a few hours to load the propellant.  It flew just fine, but the parachute failed and the it experienced a "hard off-runway landing".  Click here for the activities of the day

Catching up on the New Space Industry

Much of my reason for leaving Alaska was to get with what is called the New Space Industry.  Our OpenLuna project is part of the movement. Interestingly, we founded ISECCo back in 1988 under the exact same concept, so I was New Space before New Space was cool.  So I had the chance to come over the California for two conferences, the first being the SpaceExpo which had a free exhibit area and two speaking forums plus one speaking forum at the usual framework of a sizable conference fee.  The second was the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) which is the annual meeting of the National Space Society (NSS).  They overlapped one day and were a couple hours apart. 

In the pilot's seat at the Expo; Full Scale mock up of Lynx

The Space Expo is actually a trade show and the topic of the paid conference was the business case for space.  It was held in Long Beach May 21-23, and was a few miles from a friends home where I was able to stay.  Thank you Monika, Andrew and Isabelle.  The booths were varied but highly technical in nature.  The ISDC was just north of San Diego in La Jolla a couple miles south of LA/Long Beach.  It was May 23 thru Memorial Day.  I only attended Friday afternoon and Saturday and mostly stayed in the exhibit area tending the booth for OpenLuna with some help from Gordan Fisher and he managed it on Sunday for us, thank you.  The topics of discussion were at a much higher level in general with highly technical stuff available for those.  The exhibitors were few and the room lightly attended but the ones who did come through were good contacts. 

I left the mountain, which the locals call the "rim of the world" into the LA area.  Traffic wasn't too bad but I forgot one of the highways and went a bit out of the way, story of my trips these days,and I arrived around Noon in Long Beach, the first day of the Space Expo at the Long Beach Conference and Entertainment center.  The booths ranged from companies producing connectors to facilities in formation like The California Space Enterprise Center.  The well known players XCorp, the X-Prize, The Planetary Society, SEDS, and Boeing had booths.  The Commercial Space Flight Federation sponsored the coffee. There were manufactures, testing labs, test equipment rental companies, sensor manufacturers so very technical skiled people.  I would ask them what they had that I would need to get to the moon.  I left after 2 1/2 days
with a pile of data sheets and promotional materials. 

The best contact came on day 2, I stopped by APV Manufacturing's booth to see what they did. They engineer and manufacture any part out of many material for development (vs production, i.e. 1-15 copies).
I spoke with Bruce Richardson, a Retired Army Col, was intersted in helping with OpenLuna and has become our Marketing Manager.  He has a plan.  More will come on this soon.  I am very excited
that we could get things moving very fast.

Full Scale exhibit of Lynx spacecraft under development

Between the prospect of a marketing manager (what we have been really needing for the project) and the promotional ideas that Jerry was talking about it was very tempting to return to the mountain (Lake Arrowhead) and get started.  The problem was, the team originally planning to attend ISDC were not going to make it and I had the brochures for that exhibit table.  So Friday morning, I drove down the La Jolla amidst some slow traffic so when it finally picked up the pace I almost missed the exit.  The only reason I caught it was because I needed an exit anyway.  As it happened, traffic was just starting to back up at the intersection and I just got off in time.  When I left early at the end of the exhibit time on Saturday, I was able to say, "I am going to get working on the problem instead of just talking about it" and everyone liked that.  After 5 days at conferences, my brain was pretty full anyway.