I recently looked at the official rules for the TARC contest, and it turns out we are supposed to be using a streamer for recovery. That changes things a bit. Quite a bit actually. At first it didn't seem like our design could slow down enought under a streamer, but it turns out there's more to streamer recovery than meets the eye. There is an entire science behind it. For instance, most people seem to think that you want a really really really long streamer. Not so. For the maximum drag coefficient you want a length to width ratio of 10:1. According to the simulations, a 9 by 90 inch streamer will bring our rocket down in 50 seconds, which is more than enough time.
I'm just glad I caught this as early as I did. We still have at least a month before the deadline.
Today we did some painting in the Tech Ed department. My ears are still ringing from all the noise that goes on in there. Its going to look pretty good, but I entrusted too much of the painting to the freshmen and we got some nasty globs and runs. Its actually not too bad, I just like to give them a hard time.
2/25/10
How'd We Miss That?
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3 comments:
Why do they want a streamer?
Just for a new twist on the contest. They want to present kids with a new engineering challenge each year. This year, it's to see if you can bring an egg down safely using only a streamer for recovery.
hey one of those freshmen looks at this periodically!!!!!!!!
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