First is one of my own since it goes well with the title pic. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"These safety glasses are being worn for your protection, not mine"
-KenKzak ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right, a single experiment can prove me wrong."
-Albert Einstein re; Theory of Relativity. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."
-Leonardo daVinci ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Logic is an organized system of thought that enables you to be wrong with confidence."
-Charles F. Kettering ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Can't ya see, you're not making Christianity better, you're making Rock'n'Roll worse!"
-Hank Hill ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"War without fire is like sausages without mustard"
-Jean Juvénal des Ursins on Henry V's firing of Meaux in 1421 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You can do anything if you have enthusiasm. With it, there is accomplishment. Without it, there are only alibis."
- Henry Ford ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak."
- unknown ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
-Wernher von Braun ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."
--Frank Zappa ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The thing about quotes on the internet is that you cannot confirm their validity."
This is my first train post at the Lab. Along with my other bad habits, I'm fond of trains too. Plural of caboose is cabeese and a common nickname is crummy. These days you can simply call a caboose a trailing anachronism.
This crummy started out as a toy cast in at least 5 clashing and semi-translucent colors of plastic and covered in meaningless and/or contradictory crooked stickers. It's part of a battery powered christmas train set by New Bright, running on 45mm gauge plastic track. It's aproxximately 1/32 scale. Along with repainting and adding window glazing, I added a few details. I ordered and installed Ozark Miniatures pewter marker lamps and eliptical springs castings on the trucks. I had to build new roof walks to replace the originals which I lost somehow. The Y-type rerail was fabbed from a track part. Standard operating orders my imaginary railway company, the GT&O, requires that all locos, cabeese and plows must carry a rerail device [the imaginary trackage aint so good]. The chain slung on the other side is for the crews to drag stuff with. Sometimes a car has to be dragged at a distance, and once, the conductor shot a moose. The marker lamps are functional with a 3V grain of wheat bulb in each one. Another bulb is hung inside as a ceiling lamp. I chose to use a pair of C batteries so that I could use up tired hand me downs from the loco which sucks up 6 at a time. Too, I had several spare battery holders handy. I frosted the windows so you can't see in, and it simulates window fogging on a cold day. I modified the track in the photo to be a grade crossing. The wood strips hide some superfluous toy crap underneath. The wood is aged with grey art markers and detailed with a fine Sharpie pen. After the crummy, I refinished the boxcar and gondola that I have. Next will be the loco and tender, ugh. When I start on the tender, I intend to get lettering and logos for everything.
I decided to leave my christmas tree mummified in a closet this year, but the xmas train is coming out tonight. I found some tiny plastic wreaths to put on each end of the train, and some snow covered pine trees to put along the track.
I was surfing for the X37B and landed on the Atlas 5 which is going to be the X37's launch vehicle soon. I didn't know much about the Atlas 5 and admittedly, I still don't know enough. Research will continue though. I have a few points to make in this post, more may arise in the future.
As near as I can tell, this is practically a new vehicle, it bears so little commonality with the Atlas that I know, it hardly deserves the name. Atlas always had 3 liquid rocket motors in a stage and a half arrangement. It took off on 3 motors, then later drops the outer pair, continueing on the center motor alone. A sweet solution. This new bird has only 2 liquid motors. More important than the name, L-M adds the older Atlas launch success rate in with the new one, claiming over 600 successful launches. Most of those flights were made by the original Convair later renamed General Dynamics. Marketing hype that doesn't fool anybody who cares.
The pics above are from the recent launch of the Intelsat 14 satelite. Reading about the flight, I found that it used 3 strap-on motors. Scrolling through the roll-out pics, I was struck by the sight of 2 of the strap-ons side by side. Typically 3 strap-ons would be attached equidistant around the booster. Further through the pics I find the third strap- on on the other side next to an empty mounting pad for a fourth. The Atlas 5 is outfitted for only 4 strap-ons mounted in 2 opposite pairs. I would've designed the booster with 6 mounting pads, which would allow any balanced combo of 2,3,4, or 6. It's a pure guess on my part that they didn't want to rebuild the launch pad. The umbilical tower is a bit too close to allow strap-ons on that side.
These days, strap-on motors are about as likely to have inward canted nose cones as traditional concentric cones. The Atlas 5 strap-ons have a cone style I've never seen before. They are canted inward but the tip is full width and flattened next to the main booster. Wonder what they call it?
pics by KeithAlanK This is a Coupe deHiver called the Coupe deVille. Coupe deHiver is French for Winter Cup. We all know that a Coupe deVille is, or was, a top end 2 door Cadillac.
In rubber power competition the king of competition categories is Wakefield It's been around since the 1930's or longer, and as a consequence, is packed with rules and dominated by guys who've been flying them for decades, or the occasional young aerospace engineer who still has the ability to innovate after 6-8 years of college. Coupe deHiver has been around since the 1950's or so, and while it has some tight rules of it's own, they still fit on one page. After going to a few contests, I knew the event I wanted. I bought a 2nd rate kit called Slats and set it on a shelf straightaway. Not long after, Blue Ridge Models introduced the Coupe deVille and I was hooked. A truly great kit for it's day. All the rib sets were milled, the propellor blades preformed, and all the wood was 1st rate and appropriate to the task. Another nice feature is that with a couple quick adjustments it can be loaded with as much rubber as desired and flown in Unlimited event as well. I built it immediately during July-August 1977. I finished the decorations the night before the first day of my senior year. Too nervous to sleep, I stayed up finishing it by about 3am. The name and shark mouth are all cut tissue, both based on my own sketches. The color on the tail used to be a very nice royal blue.
I had started collecting all the support equipment back when I bought the Slats kit, so I was ready. I took it out a few times that fall and it flew great. A real pleasure to watch. In October I got my own car. The car and girls quickly pushed everything else out of mind. Occasional flying still took place now and then, but weeks long bouts of steady onstruction projects were at an end. When I moved back to Texas in 1981. the Coupe deVille made the trip, but the box full of ground support equipment and supplies didn't. By then I was a mad biker, and flying was even farther from my mind. I thought about getting the ground support together but it didn't happen soon enough. Consideration was even given to doing a sacrilegious electric conversion. By 1990 the tissue covering was already too old and brittle. It's made 6 moves over the years, and hung from a lot of walls and ceilings, but this is the end of the line. Now that it's finally digitized, it's headed to a viking funeral. Like most rockets, the build time far exceeded the total airtime. This model may have as many as 35 hours construction time, another 15 hours or so invested in the ground support. At most, the Coupe deVille probably amassed no more than 20 minutes in the air, with only one flight making a full 2 minutes and having the dethermalizer triggered by the fuse. Pure magic to watch though.
Here's yet another gem I found at China Lake Alumni. 1970 gallery. It's called the HAP Sidewinder. HAP stands for High Altitude Project. The limited research I found indicates that it was created by combining a Sparrow rocket motor with the front end of an AIM-9L. Some test flights were performed, but the project was soon cancelled.
I've never been a big Sidewinder fan and the proliferation of variants has always made the study of them a bit bewildering. Having admitted that, I must say; I LIKE THIS!
I can look up the 2 diameters and easily scale a drawing from there.I have an Estes Python nosecone which will serve for the Sidewinder seeker section, or I can turn one, as well as turning the transition section. Sigh... just add it to an already long list of unstarted and semi-started projects
3d by Dick Stafford Photo KeithAlanK Photo KeithAlanK Photo John Lee
I can appreciate a clever euphemism. The USAF nuclear arsenal is typically modular in nature. A sensible approach when technology is progressing rapidly. The nuclear explosive is a seperable unit from it's carrier body, either a missile or a gravity bomb. In the case of a gravity bomb, the body is referred to as a drop-shape. Cute, I like that.
This it the DS-3r; Drop Shape, 3"dia, rear ejection. This is also the 3rd DS that I've built over the years. Won't be the last either. I had been sketching and dreaming this particular design for a couple years already, and when Giant Leap introduced it's 3", 5:1 plastic nosecone, I knew the time had come. I turned an upscale Cherokee cone for a rocket buddy in trade for the Giant Leap cone.
I always thought the slo-mo vidclips of gravity bombs with retard packages looked cool. The small close coupled chute ejecting out the rear to slow the bombs down. For a low altitude drop, this gives the aircraft a lead over the slowing bombs so that they don't explode directly under the aircraft. Nukes often are configured the same way for the same reason, despite much higher release altitudes. The DS-3r has the internal space to do this well. The motor mount tube extends well into the nose. The ejection gasses must 1st go forward, then return through the baffled centering rings to eject the tail cap and the chute which is packed around the motor. This utilizes the entire internal volume of cool air to push the chute out before any hot gasses can even reach it. Another trick I pulled is that by removing the nose cone, the entire motor mount/baffle assembly slides right out for servicing or for chute replacement.
When the DS-3r was nearing completion, I decided that It needed to be run through RocSim. I've used it a time or two, but don't have it. I still use Barrowman CP calc on paper, and did it this time, though knowing that it has trouble with rockets this stubby. I contacted Dick Stafford of Dick's Rocket Dungeon fame and he helped me out. After tweaking the mass and balance in line with the the real model, he found that only one ounce of nose weight would be required, I added 1 1/2oz. RocSim Barrowman CP agreed with paper Barrowman CP, and RocSim CP was indeed a bit further back. The wedge airfoil fins [which RocSim as yet doesn't handle] actually moves the CP still further back a bit. The performance sim crosses Estes motors and the 24mm Blackjacks right off the list, too slow off the rail. E18W is good for 800ft, the F39T goes to 1200ft. Just about perfect upper range, and I may work my way down the motor list over time. That new Aerotech E20W looks nice too.
Here's another pic I found at China Lake Alumni. The very first pic in the 1962 gallery. I haven't seen one of these in at least 20 years. I do know what it is. Do you?
Sometimes it pays to repeat a search from time to time. Previously, when I Googled Monocopter I'd get some of the usual scattering of model vidclips and discussion, and a whole lot of that Euro turbofan jetpak, which may be mono, but aint no copter. This time around the photo below popped out at me. Quite a find. It was at the China Lake Alumni website, in the photo gallery page for 1963. China Lake is home to the US Navy weapons test facilities. The site search engine, unfortunately, yielded no other photos or info. I kept the original file name on the pic; Monocopter perch 16AUG63 CLK SL-027985
I am able to infer a few things from the pic. Foremost is that the protuberance on the far side of the hub is not the same as the wing on this side, so I believe this really is a monocopter. The wing is mounted to the hub at the center of lift, therefore is probably capable of changing pitch in flight, likely in response to control inputs to the elevon at the wingtip. If the hub isn't made from actual truck hubcaps I'll be surprised as hell. If it's heavy enough the disk hub will stabilize a rotor despite the lack of a proper flybar. I had already designed a monocopter using a ring shaped hub, although the ring on mine is proportionately larger in relation to the wing since it'll have no extra internal mass.
Two things are puzzling. Obviously; what is the powerplant? The other is the source of the 1/2 round shadow directly below the hub? You can see that the sun is to the left and the shadows are stretching to the right, therefore the hub's actual shadow is to the right as well.
Today, while surfing the web for something completely different, I ran across another version of Low Flight, this time written by and for helicopter pilots. I previously posted the original High Flight, and then Low Flight written for Phantom II crews earlier this year.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Low Flight
Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth And hovered out of ground effect on semi-rigid blades; Earthward I've auto'ed and met the rising brush of non-paved terrain And done a thousand things you would never care to Skidded and dropped and flared Low in the heat soaked roar. Confined there, I've chased the earthbound traffic And lost the race to insignificant headwinds; Forward and up a little in ground effect I've topped the General's hedge with drooping turns Where never Skyhawk or even Phantom flew. Shaking and pulling collective, I've lumbered the low untresspassed halls of victor airways, Put out my hand and touched a tree. -Anonymous
On Sept 19, I went to fly with the Alamo Rocketeers over in China Grove. Since my truck is broken, I went on my Harley Sportster with whatever I could carry in a knapsack. It's been a long time since I did that. You're limited to rockets that are either small enough, or that disassemble. Sturdy is important too. The Campitch 1 is certainly small enough once the flybar is removed. The hard part is getting by while leaving a new 25LB field box at home. It helps to have friends.
The CP1 sitting on a borrowed pad, loaded with a D12-0
After ignition it's only spun 180 degrees and the wing is already extended for ascent at least part way. The pads' rod angle adjuster is slipping.
That's the wing in the foreground after bouncing off the ground, and tossing up a small cloud of orange soil.
The hub is falling after making a respectable altitude, wingless.
No major damage to speak of, but the cam follower pin was sheared off where it came out of the reinforcement plate on top of the wing. The pin was essentially a 2-56 steel bolt. I've already done repairs and replaced the 2-56 with a 4-40 socket head bolt, and widened the camtrack slot to take it. In retrospect it's not too surprising that something happened, given the number of MC's that come apart under centrifigal loads. I would've been much less surprised if the 2-56 pin was simply bent but still there. While I was at it, I installed the heavier return spring I had pre-selected as a possible upgrade. I never liked the limited wing attachment method on this model. A secondary safety attachment would be nice, but how to do it without making the next failure worse?
This is the Campitch 1. The 1st of 2 recently finished monocopters. Both monos employ quite different wing control mechanisms, but I decided to build both at once because most of the construction is routine enough to be a bit boring and I always mix too much epoxy anyway.
The Campitch 1 uses a system similar to that of the Rotary Space Ship that I posted about back in March of this year. When the vehicle begins to rotate, centrifigal force causes the wing to slide outward on its' pivot rod, as it does so, a pin on top of the wing root follows a cam track causing the wing to rotate from down pitch to up so that it can ascend. Once the motor burns out, the mono will slow it's spin until a spring can retract the wing, returning it to down pitch so that it can autorotate for a gentle landing. No stopping, no falling.
Now, I've done away with the burn string that the Mousetrap requires. After I work the bugs out on D12's, I'll be able to fly it on my own small moonburn sugar motors.
I can't remember the last time I was hot to go to a museum. The Cosmodrome when I was in Kansas for LDRS 12? That was a space related museum, no surprise there. This time it was the McNay art museum here in San Antonio. I've driven past it a 1/2 a million times without knowing it was even there, this time we were pulling in. What snagged me was a traveling exhibit of the art of Edward Gorey. We aint in Kansas anymore, for sure. We managed to get down there on the final day of the exhibit and it was great. There were plenty of prints of course, a mere drop in the bucket from a prolific artist, but mixed in were occasional originals, and pencil layout sketches. One of the prettiest displays was a cabinet with hand drawn and watercolered envelopes that Edward sent to his mother over the years. I'll spare you further descriptions, the book covers above are adequate examples. The Doubtful Guest above was my intro to Ed Gorey, it was read to me/us when quite young, but then I grew up with hippy school teachers. My brother and his Sylvia were the ones who went with me, in fact drove me as I had no transportation at the time. Last weekend was my birthday and they gave me Ed Gorey's Amphogorey Again, a compilation. Love it.
The website below is a .net, but it's actually a .com. http://goreydetails.net/ Other than that go to Amazon for books or simply Google, there's plenty of E.G. out there.
I've been flying monocopters since 1988. I've also seen other people fly them. They all shared two common problems, the first is getting them to stay in one piece throughout the flight despite the high rotational loads. I've seen a few fly apart, including some of my own. Anyone who hangs in there a while, can conquer this sooner or later. The second problem is the subject of this post. When a monocopter's motor shuts off, they typically stop spinning and fall down. Some falling monocopters will reaquire spin, either backward or upside down, hopefully before impact,and make a safe landing.
In short, after getting monocopters to go up reliably, the next trick is to get them to come back back down safely. I've seen other recovery methods tried with varied success, but the coolest will always be autorotation, ie; true mapleseed recovery. Spinning up, and spinning back down, without stopping, without falling.
Last fall, I built the 1st step on this quest. I call, it the Flying Mousetrap. It somewhat looks the part. Mousetrap has a wing that pivots around the center of lift. There's a spring that pulls the wing to descent angle, and a length of string to hold the wing at ascent angle until the motor [D12-3] ejection burns it through. This gives a timely transition after slowing to autorotaion speed, but without falling or reversal. The string is actually dental floss, it's easy to work with at the field, and it comes in a neat dispenser WITH a built-in cutter. Minty fresh too.
I don't consider this to be the best approach to the problem. It's a simple up/down system instead of being reactive, and it limits the choice of usable motors to ones with suitable delay and an ejection charge. Since I make my own sugar motors, I would prefer a system that can use them, and they're all capped. However, I figured this would be a good first step that others might prefer.
"Aaarh, Ye be welcome to the Pirate Art Institute" How many ways can you COPY this pirate? When wewere kids we would see this art school ad in the back of magazines. "Can you draw this pirate?" or some other bit of cutesy art. "Then enroll today and have a future as a commercial artist, bla-bla-bla..."
When my brother and I had a print shop back in the late '80's, it became a running joke early on. Customers would bring us totally crappedout art, or ask for art that we didn't have, or to infringe on copyrights in a questionable manner. The Pirate Art Institute to the rescue! We would clip, photocopy, photograph, trace, or redraw, then shoot a transparency, use it to expose a screen, and finally silkscreen print it in [hopefully] vast quantities. Whatever it took to make a buck.
Anything but FAX! We refused to install fax service because at least one customer a week would want to fax their art to us. No, nope, nu-uh, don't do it! Most fax looks terrible on a good day. Imagine what it would do to the aforementioned already crapped out art.
As I perused online photo albums from NARAM-51, I saw another rocket worthy of note amongst the scale and fantasy scale models. Fantasy scale designs are rockets and spacecraft that are serious designs that were never built, or designs that are entirely fictional in nature. This is a very nice model of the Alpha Omega Bomb, the doomsday missile that radiation fried mutant humans worshipped in the movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. I didn't quite have a primal moment when I recognized the model, but the apes in the movie sure did. Reading up on the history of the movie, it was Charlton Hestons idea to set off the bomb at the end of the movie. He rather hoped that would be the end of the series. No such luck.
All the models entered in competition at NARAM have to fly, but I doubt the Omega Bomb flew as is. It only has 2 fins. No doubt the model has a set of removable clear plastic fins that are added to make it flyable. Unfortunately, I have no info at this time on the owner builder, or the photographer.
When I first saw a pic of what I take to be Quest Aerospace's dealer table at NARAM 51 I had a primal moment. I curled my lips back and hooted a few times while slapping my head. A quick check of the Quest web site confirmed that what I spotted in the pic was one of Quest's new kits, the Striker AGM. Well there's new and then there's new. I've seen that design before and it takes an old rocketeer to know where. Way back when, some of the movers and shakers of model rocketry got together to create a truly cutting edge company called Enertek. To make a long and mostly unknown story short, Enertek failed to make it into production. Gary Rosenfield and/or his company Aerotech was a major participant, others participants went on to form Quest. A lot of Enertek tooling had already been done and this formed the core of Aerotech's kit line. The Mantis launch pad, the Initiater, Strong Arm, and Arcas kits. All underwent some changes minor or major, but there they were. Enertek was where C-slot motors and Copperhead igniters [called Top Shot Igniters then] gestated as well.
A close look at the Astra 2000 will cause a lot of fellow rocketeers to have a primal reaction themselves, the critter is obviously based on major components from a Black Brant II. Nose cone, boattail, and the narrow waist ring [the white section below the upper fins]. Quest naturally used what was at hand and used a Nike Smoke nosecone.
I always wanted to build a clone-rok of the Astra 2000, but being a difficult person, I wanted to stage it and that upper fin set is dreadfully small. I have cloned a couple other Enertek vapor-roks over the years, but that's a story for another day.
Enter the Kaman K-Max. This is a pure work helicopter employed to transport and set bulky and heavy objects. It's got a centerline winch and the fuselage is extra narrow so that the pilot can stick his head out the sides to look down. The K-Max has a long tailboom so it doesn't need as much fin area as the Huskie has, but like the Huskie it doesn't need a tailrotor either. As a direct consequence, a lot more horsepower is available for lifting. In fact, 6000lb at sea level, impressive for a 5100lb helicopter.
Another neat design feature shared by all Kaman helicopters, eggbeater and conventional alike, is the blade control flap. On other helicopters, the blade pitch is controlled by pitching it directly at the hub. This requires hydraulic controls on any helicopter of size. With the blade control flap, the flap is actuated in the opposite direction and this causes the blade to twist in the desired direction, Just like the elevator on a conventional airplane. This means the control input required is much lighter, [no horsepower robbing hydraulic pump needed] and because the blade is being controlled out where lift is created instead of at the hub, the blade trim is more precise and reactive to the airflow around it on a per blade basis. This spells greater efficiency and reduced vibration. The simplified rotor hub also reduces mechanical friction losses, and reduced aerodynamic drag in forward flight.
Kaman has utilized the K-Max's light and easy main rotor control and the lack of a squirrely tail rotor to produce a dual function version that can be remotely controlled as well as piloted. As far as I know, this is the first full size helicopter to be flown unmanned. The fact that it can still be flown manned as well makes it quite versatile.
Kaman has partnered with Lockheed Martin, called Team K-Max to modify and demonstrate the UAV K-Max for military operational testing. These modifications are at least the minimum needed to turn a civilian bush aircraft into one that's integrated with the 21st century US Navy and Marines.
As kids we lived on and around Randolph AFB, Texas back in the '60's, Randolph had a squadron [well at least 2 anyway] of Search and Rescue [SAR] helicopters stationed there. A bravo idea. At a training base accidents do happen. Back then, the helicopters they used were the HH43 Kaman Huskie. Along with patrolling the local flight paths and training areas off base, they would take part in practice crash rescues and fire suppression. There were a couple wrecked airframes on the east side of the base and once a week or so they'd light one on fire, then scramble a Huskie and the base firetrucks to come in and put the fire out. Top entertainment for a kid, a bit nerve wracking for pilot's wives.
As helicopters go, I ALWAYS thought the Kaman Huskie was the coolest. A stubby little glass box with a whole bunch of tail fins and those eggbeater twin rotors counter-rotating overhead. A unique look and a unique sound. At least till recently.
I onced swapped a few beers with a heli pilot who flew USAF SAR Huskies in Thailand during the "Police Action". He loved the Huskie, but he said they had one major drawback at the time. The rotor blades were made of Spruce wood. After a rain or even a heavy dewfall, the wet blades would sag far enough to risk a strike during startup. The blades had to be dry before takeoff. No doubt modern composite blades have little or no trouble with this.
Wahoo! ZZakk's Lab passed the 1000 visitor mark today. Not bad for a blog that's only 5 months old, with 34 posts. I swear, I accounted for no more than 200 of them myself. 250 tops. By May the count had crept up to 138 for the month. June practically exploded with 345 visitors. July may edge that out by a few. According to the average visit duration, most visitors are even staying long enough to read something. Thank you everybody.
Such a great idea, yet even Estes doesn't seem to want to build one. WTF? In the 1997 Estes catalog there was a kit that never reached production. It was a model of a fly-back booster called Star Booster. It's based on descriptions in Buzz Aldrin's sci-fi book; Encounter with Tiber. copyright 1996 Great book by the way. I dug it up for this post and then read it all again.
In the book, the Star Booster is built by Boeing to take a slide-in Zenit motor/tank assembly, built under license, in the USA. One or two of them would be attached to a core vehicle as a strap-on like an SRB is. After using up it's propellants, the Star Booster would seperate from the core vehicle then glides back to an automated runway landing near the launch site. After each flight, the Zenit is removed for seperate servicing. When the airframe is ready, the next available Zenit gets installed for a quick turn-around. BTW; Boeing really is building licensed Zenits for the Sea Launch commercial launch program.
The Estes Star Booster model was going to be 18" long, with a 9.5" wingspan, parachute recovery, C motors only. By the looks, I expected it to have a cast styrofoam fuselage over a cardboard core tube, just like the large Shuttle Orbiter kit of the same time period.
I've been looking at the Estes Star Booster recently with ideas for reproducing it. I have hot-wire foam cutting equipment, so it's not a big stretch for me to model it at the original size or larger. The difficult part is that not only do I want it to glide, I want it to glide with an unfair chunk of reload casing inside it. In short, a realistic mission as afly-back strap-on, boosting a level 2 size rocket. For the sake of balance it needs a long thin motor case. Either a 29/360 or 38/480+ sized case, probably EX and burning sugar. The big trade-off [ya can't design anything without trade-offs] is, to maintain balance, the bigger the model, the longer the motor case needs to be, and vice-versa. Of course, it'll glide like a brick!
For more info see; Fly-Back Boosters, Reprised right here at ZZakk's Lab on Monday, May 18, 2009 These 2 posts [of 3 before long] were supposed to coincide more closely, but I'm easily distracted.
Early today I read that NASA released some early photos from the LRO, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, showing most of the Apollo landing sites on the moon. Curmudgeons Corner, the blog that clued me in, said that the conspiracy nuts are now invited to apologize and then shut up. My first thought was that this is a NASA spacecraft and therefore not independant coroboration.
Bah! I didn't bother leaving a comment, let alone feeling the need to compose this post.
On the evening news I found out that Walter Cronkite passed away today. I grew up watching Uncle Walt on the news. He was a great great man, and a first rate journalist. He was also a staunch supporter of the space program, but no wide eyed fool. So, here's my answer to all the lunar landing hoax theorists;
The illustrations above show what the MLAS shroud will look like in the near future, more or less.
Obviously it was drawn when the number of motors were to be as many as six, the version just flown is designed to use only four motors. The folding grid fins are shown though, and four is the number since no matter what, one side is reserved for crew access. Once the MLAS gains it's grid fins, the boost test vehicle will lose it's coast skirt and associated upper finset. Depending on the nature [flight envelope] of the future tests, the test booster will mutate further still. MLAS's current good looks are probably a one shot deal.
Before a live MLAS shroud abort flight can take place, the motor manifold connecting the four shroud motors around the apex will have to be ground tested. That'll be an event to look for in future NASA news releases.
The Block I & II Ares LAS uses a single abort motor that is mounted upside down, with the exhaust flowing through a hot manifold to turn it around approxx 135deg in order to exit the nozzles, this constitues a large weight and performance penalty. Scary hot too. With the MLAS motor system there are multiple motors which all must ignite. Of course, the motors and ignition systems are very reliable, but just in case, the motors will be interconnected with a manifold at the top end. This allows exhaust gasses from the other three to ignite the stubborn one. Since gas cross flow will be minimal once all motors are lit, the MLAS manifold will run a lot cooler and can therefore be made a bit lighter than on the LAS.
BTW; Rumor has it, Quest is fast tracking an MLAS modroc kit.
After several delays in June, I found yesterday that the MLAS was scheduled to fly this morning 7/8/09. Well it took off at 6:25AM ET, which is soon after the launch window opened, so it seems the countdown went well.
There are only a few sparce articles out so far, but that should grow, shortly. I've seen 2 ascent pics so far. Despite the massive base drag, I was hoping to see the individual flames of the severely canted boost motors, however you can seethe lobes they create in the smoke column. Now that the MLAS has made it's 1st successful flight, it paves the way for the rest of the MLAS test program. It also takes it from an interesting sport modroc and turns it into a legal NAR scale subject.
I Found it! Almost. This info is less than a year old, so it's practically current. This hasn't been an easy search, I had to buildup a string of clues. I knew the test flights would occur at White Sands Missile Range. I more or less trolled through the NASA facilities until I found that NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB has the project. Dryden is responsible for vehicle integrations and ops.
I found that Orbital Sciences Corporation, Chandler, Ariz. is constructing the Abort Test Booster. Thus the all important acronym; ATB. For a successful technical search, having the correct acronym for a keyword can be crucial. Even when I went to the Orbital Sciences website it took a bit of searching, I had to use their search box, but "ATB" gave up a bunch of documents. Unfortunately for me, the 4.1MB PDF fact sheet wouldn't open once I downloaded it. My PC OS is too old. So far, all I've found are illustrations, and not photographs, thus the "Almost" in the title. But good illustrations they are, with versions for both Block I and Block II LAS's
Motive power is going to come from surplus Peacekeeper ICBM 1st stage motors. Given the current lack of fins, no doubt the ATB will use the stock Peacekeeper thrust vector system. The flight control system will probably be based on the same modular system that Orbital Sciences developed for their other programs. Orbital's new Minotaur IV & V already uses Peacekeeper motors, so that should be a slam-dunk.
The above NASA document shows the difference between the Block I, called PA-1 here [Pad Abort], and the Block II design with the curvy bullet shaped fairing.
The Mercury capsule flew with the abort tower attached directly to the capsule. With Apollo, the designers added the BPS, Boost Protective Shroud. I've seen it called BPC, Boost Protective Cover too. This was a large metal conical cover over the capsule. The BPSserved double duty; as extra protection for the capsuleduring an emergency seperation [possibly allowing a reduction in capsule weight], and the BPS acts as a stabilizer when the tower motors are fired.
When NASA designed the Launch Abort System for the Orion capsule, they logically started with the Apollo system, with a few changes to make it more compact. Compact usually translates to weight savings. The obvious change was the deletion of the open struts that seperate the abort motor nozzles from the BPS. In the Orion system this space is taken up by the seperation motor itself, which is mounted upside down. More about that little kluge at a later date.
This all sounds fine and dandy so far. The other pic is a wind tunnel model of the Ares 1 with visible shock waves. This is a common wind tunnel technique for researching different designs. As you can plainly see the biggest shock wave is generated by the Orion BPC. NASA says they have no problem with controlling the Ares 1, but any hobby rocketeer can tell that aint very stable. Not stable at all. Saturn Apollo didn't have this problem. The Apollo capsule and BPS were much smaller than Orion and, as I recall, the biggest shock wave producer on the Saturn was the reducer, between the 2nd and 3rd stage, which is further back on the airframe. OTOH; the 1st stage of the Ares 1 is smaller in diameter than the 2nd stage and capsule, making the situation even worse. Natural stability is no big requirement for modern rocket systems with computer guidance systems and gimballing nozzles, but the Big Stick is pushing the envelope here.
Enter the Block II BPS. The modern BPS's are made of composites instead of metal, which is sensible, but the Block II will certainly weigh a fair bit more than the Block I. With it's bullet shape, the Block II drag reduction will be huge and therefore controllability margins will be enhanced.
Ares 1X, the 1st test flight of the Ares 1 stack will use a Block 1 BPS. Hopefully later tests will include Block II or even MLAS.
Dick Stafford of Dick's Rocket Dungeon linked me to this illustration he posted a couple years ago. Is this the shape of Little Joe III? The search goes on. It's certainly conjecture in the illustration since it shows 3 possible versions, and it shows a generic Apollo style escape tower on the cone. I would discount the 2 segment SRB version outright. Even if ATK had already developed it, it would be expensive, and offer only one performance profile. Version 2 with the 2 surplus Minuteman 1st stages would be neat, and answers the above problems a bit better. Now version 3 with the GEM-60's, that's the ticket! Load'er up with however many strap-on's needed for a particular test, and let'er rip! Quantity discounts when ordering by the truckload. BTW: Dick ran a stability sim on a 3"dia modroc of the MLAS in my previous post. Check it at: http://rocketdungeon.blogspot.com/
The Mercury program had Little Joe. Apollo had Little Joe II. They were built for inflight testing of the escape towers under multiple flight conditions, in order to man-rate them as crew launch abort systems in the event of post launch emergency. Ares-IX is currently configured with a LAS tower with a conical capsule shroud. NASA is working on a block II version with a bulkier but aerodynamically much better ogive shroud. I spent over a day searching and reading what I could find, but I couldn't find much of anything on the Ares I LAS tower testing. Some pics of motor ground testing, and a couple vague references to pad abort testing, but no Little Joe III so far.
Now enter the MLAS, The Max Launch Abort System. BTW; Max doesn't stand for maximum but for Maxime Faget, a Mercury program engineer and patent holder on the Mercury escape tower. With the improved aerodynamics and the rocket motors imbedded in the shroud itself, this is touted as being much lighter, and I daresay, simpler too. Call it an Ares I LAS Block III I guess.
And the MLAS test vehicle? Wahoo! I want to build one! The MLAS test vehicle is currently awaiting it's 1st flight on a pad at Wallops Island VA having sat through several weather delays throughout June. The C of O chart above illustrates the first flight profile, just high enough [1 mile] to test launch, stability, separation, the recovery system and Dataq.. Later tests would use live abort motors at various speeds and altitudes, both higher and lower.
If Plan B shuttle, in the post below, ever gets flown with an Orion capsule on board, this'll be the LAS needed for the job.
I wonder if the Soviets ever had any LAS test vehicles?
NASA's future manned spaceflight programs are under review by the Catherine Commision. There are development issues with the current Ares1/Ares5 systems. Perhaps, the most important of which is the large time gap between retirement of the shuttle and scheduled 1st flight of the Ares 1 to the space station. Of course this time gap could easily grow larger.
So NOW NASA unveils a stopgap measure based on shuttle hardware. It looks a lot like the Shuttle-C which gets mentioned. I consider the timing just a bit creepy, since I've heard nothing of Shuttle-C in the last 10 years, except my own post, a week before this hit the news.
I'm not going to go over the whole system, since this article link is fresh. Just a few interesting points. Unlike Shuttle-C, NASA is proposing this as a manned system as well, with the new Orion capsule riding inside the fairing, which consequently would look a bit different from the picture above. The comment about cost savings from reusable main motors being a myth is quite interesting. I'll need to digest that one further before emitting a response. Of course, this system fits my vision of modularity that I expounded upon in my previous post. Finally, as I said then, this sort of thing could've been flying years ago, saving the orbiters for the missions that really needed them. I don't mean to sound bitchy, I like it better than the Ares 1 system.
6/28/09--Update; After a lot of googling, I found multiple references to Shuttle-C and Plan B, mostly dating from around 2005. That's still damn recent in shuttle years, but near the infancy of the Constellation program. BTW; Dog years are 7:1, Shuttle years are about 5:1, therefore the shuttles are not dogs.
