June Launch Report <-- Boring Title But VERY Interesting Article

No matter what safety precautions you take, at the end of the day getting beaned on the noggin with an Aerotech Sumo coming in ballistic at a couple hundred feet per second is bad for your health. Just saying.

Despite that little incident (the victim is doing well now, but everyone was freaked out of their breeches at the time), the launch was a smashing success! (No pun intended).

First off, there was an M motor with three outboard J's that were going to airstart. The M cato'd.

Then there was a big Hypertek M motor that would fill with nitrous oxide but was having issues with the ignition system. No joy there.

Then there was my L2 certification attempt. We won't even talk about that.

Just kidding, we will. So I passed the test, no sweat. I had studied for it several times before but never got around to taking it for one reason or another. Then I got my rocket ready to fly: Stinger on a J285. I'm so brilliant. I certify L1 on an I285 which is a huge I, and certify L2 on a J285 which is a baby J. That way I can use the same rocket, same casing, same average thrust... It's amazing they even let you do it that way.

But then it came down to launch time. Despite my 4-caliber stability margin, the rocket had issues on the ascent. I'm still analyzing the video to figure out what went wrong, and I'll post it on YouTube later for you all to analyze as well. But something fishy happened. It corkscrewed a little and increased drag so much that what should have been a 5000' flight turned out to be a 1500' flight. Therefore, a 15 second delay for the motor eject was waaaay too long. The main was set to deploy at 500, but I'm not sure which deployed first, the drogue or the main. I guess I will have to look at the video and figure all these things out. But the point is that it was going way too fast when it finally ejected, and the rocket separated and I failed my certification.

Oh well.

There were some other cool things about the launch, like an L1500, and a minimum diameter H399. Mach 1.25 on the H399! But I'm too lazy to cover every launch in great detail, and besides, reading about it just isn't the same thing as actually being there.

I'm going to build a new rocket for July, so stay tuned for some build pics.

Virgin Galacitc's SpaceShipTwo First Flight Tests

SpaceShipTwo underwent a "drop-test" earlier this month from the White Knight aircraft. The goal of the test flights were to test the "feathering" reentry technique in which the ship effectively folds in half, providing vast amounts of drag while being dynamically stable.

New Launch Vehicle?

Tomorrow at 3:30 pm Eastern Time, NASA will have a press conference in which it will discuss a new decision that will affect the future of deep space manned exploration.

THIS SHOULD BE GOOD NEWS.

So you should watch it live tomorrow on NASA TV.

EDIT: It won't be on NASA TV. It is a teleconference, so it will be audio only: NASA News Audio

Space Junk

Orbital debris is a topic of much concern. At several thousand miles per hour, even a small object like a pebble could do serious damage to a spacecraft or a spacesuit.

That's why NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office tries to catalog, predict and control the activity of space junk in LEO.

There can also be another potentially deadly problem, known as the Kessler effect, or collisional cascading, in which one piece of wondering orbital debris collides with a satellite, and that satellite in turn sends out more pieces of shrapnel that will eventually collide with other satellites--a domino effect.

This problem can be combated by deorbiting old satellites or boosting them into a graveyard orbit.

In 2009 there was a collision between two satellites that added a good deal of orbital debris into LEO. It was the first time there was such a drastic collision in space between two man-made satellites. Here is a video plotting the statistical trajectories of the resulting debris:



I did not know this until just recently, but they have actually had to move the International Space Station on several occasions because of overlapping trajectories with cataloged space debris

Just a tidbit I picked up surfing the net yesterday.

All Fixed

My blog is better now. Thank you Blogger for your eventual fix.

FVU9662RZK8S

I Found a Way to Post!

In case you hadn't heard, Blogger had a little "oopsidaisy" on the 11th, and I have not been able to log in to it ever since. I just found a way to get around this:

Even though I still can't log-in to Blogger Dashboard, I can still go to my blog, click on the edit icon of one of my posts, and then click on New Post.

Loopholes, for the win!

School's Out for the Summer -- Time for Summer Goals!

1. Get certified for level 2 high-power rocketry!
2. Create a video game (that's another post)
3. Make a short film (we're thinking Steampunk :)
4. Earn lots of money by getting a good job.
5. Apply for lots of scholarships.

The last two are the most boring but are also probably the most important.

Got any good plans for the summer?