Aerotech Strong Arm

9 responses to “Aerotech Strong Arm”

1. 

   Eric Olson

   Sep 20, 2005 at 11:14 pm

   I didn’t know you were into rockets. I have built many as well but have not in some time I am afraid. Anyhow, I am big fan of your nanotech evangelizing. I am planning to write a piece on nano in my blog soon (thanks to you giving me the courage). There was a while when I would talk to people about it and people didn’t want to touch the stuff but now that the nano bubble is expected to hit 2010 VCs are more into it since it fits their time to exit model. Looking forward to continuing conversations with you and I would appreciate any comments you have on my blog.

   – Eric Olson

   P.S. Do you read SmallTimes? It is a pretty good mag on nanotech and subs are free.

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2. 

   MagicMan!!

   Sep 21, 2005 at 4:03 am

   Up, Up and away… exploration and discovery makes life fun. So how high did she fly?

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3. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 21, 2005 at 4:27 am

   eric: go for it. yup, I think I have every issue of Small Times.

   EagleKnight: Probably 1000ft. I did not have the digital altimeter in this one. This upcoming weekend, I plan to be on the telemetry team for a 100K ft. attempt in the Black Rock Desert…

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4. 

   tarotastic

   Sep 21, 2005 at 6:26 am

   What don’t you do?!! If I ever needed to approach someone to build a Mars orbiter from things you can find in a scrapyard, you’d be my man of choice!!

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5. 

   biotron

   Sep 21, 2005 at 11:34 am

   good luck for the weekend! nice array of shorts being sported on that site you linked to…

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6. 

   gdsanders

   Sep 21, 2005 at 4:36 pm

   100K? Wow! Hopefully NORAD will be notified. 🙂

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7. 

   Eric Olson

   Sep 21, 2005 at 6:03 pm

   Steve, I have the nano post up on my blog. Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated. Good luck with the 100K launch!

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8. 

   jurvetson

   Sep 21, 2005 at 6:10 pm

   Here’s a video of the test airframe and commentary from the designer:

   "This is an experimental motor we built, about a half M in the booster, with an L in the sustainer. Flew to about 30K which was the target altitude to shake down CO2 deployment system and airframe. Too much rollrate, though. Onboard video will make you puke. Recovery system never deployed drogue, so it came in post Mach 2. I think about 2.8. You can hear the sonic boom as the shock wave passes us just before the video cuts out. It came in ballistic at about Mach 2.8, blew its main chutes as designed at about 800 ft., which shred, and then lawn darted into the playa. Spent the last 3 weeks in a rebuild project.

   Turn up your sound. Sorry for the profanities. We got a little excited, when the motor went off. You know how parenting is……

   This is a two stage rocket that air started the sustainer at about 20K AGL. The sustainer motor was soft, to keep the altitude below the jet stream.

   My favorite quote out of the audio track……. “We’ve got a booster chute, but I don’t know where the sustainer is”……….…..”It’s in heaven”…”The space station just saw it go by”"

   Here’s the view from 100K feet:
   
   from Ian Kluft’s Black Rock guide

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9. 

   gdsanders

   Sep 21, 2005 at 10:09 pm

   Whoa! Simply awesome video.

   "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ignition." slight pause……
   "Light you bastard." :-))))))))))))

   Please keep us posted on the 100K attempt.

   Reply