Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
ƒ/14
400 mm
1/2,500
1600

My son and I have been going to the Black Rock Desert for 18 years now to launch our largest rocketry projects. Here is a video clip of our 10’-tall carbon fiber and fiberglass rocket going supersonic with a speaking GPS system.

The GPS telemetry system on board connects to a Yagi-antenna tracker that also has a GPS so it can calculate relative positioning for recovery. She calls herself Kate, and you can hear her calling out altitude numbers in real time during the climb to just over 19K feet altitude and a peak velocity just over 1,000 MPH.

But then we lost GPS and telemetry, so we have no idea where she went or whether she came back ballistic or not. This is perhaps the most frustrating outcome as we can’t analyze where things went wrong. All we know for now, is that rockets are hard.

But there is still a chance… I have my name, cell phone number and the word “Reward!” written on all of the major airframe sections. The carbon-fiber base of this rocket has flown many times, and one on occasion, when it went missing on some farmlands, I got a call a year later for a joyous return.

One response to “A glorious launch of my Red Mongoose rocket to Mach 1.4”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Last checks of telemetry links and igniter continuity by the intrepid pad team of Dean, Peter and my son.Before flight, a detailed simulation in RockSimRockSim of my Red Mongoose rocketWith our BALLS XXX shirts (it being the 30th year)Beautiful plumage, with multiple shock diamonds… The blue shift in the flame is from excited copper (from metal salts premixed in the solid AP propellant). From my ScienceBlogs post on rocket propellants: "Metal ions combine with electrons in the flame, and the metal atoms are raised to excited states because of the high flame temperature. Upon returning to the ground state, they give off light (from their line spectrum) characteristic of that metal. The ions come from metal chlorides: Barium Chloride (BaCl) for green, Copper Chloride (CuCl) for blue, or Strontium Chloride (SrCl) for red. These metal chlorides generally do not exist at room temperature or are too reactive to add as an additive, so precursors are mixed in, and they react during the burn to create the desired molecules. The Chlorine comes from the Ammonium Perchlorate oxidizer for free, and one need only add metal salts such as nitrates or carbonates to provide the metal"

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