If life gives you stainless steel plates, just roll & weld with it. Eventually you will have something resembling a rocket. 🚀On a more serious note, our team learned and develop a lot while making these Spica propellant tanks. It is nice to look back to see where they started.
Prototyping the first BPM-100 rocket engine chamber parts on a BPM-5 scale! One of our design constraints is making all BPM-100 parts manufacturable in-house. Here we (successfully) tested some CNC mill hackery to see if our MAHO could produce the components we'll soon need. 🚀
Two of these impellers will channel 50 liters of liquid oxygen and ethanol into our 100kN rocket engine each second.Developed by @OrbitalMachines it will use ~300kW of shaft power, and will possibly become the world's most powerful electric motor rocket propellant pump! 🚀
Weather is cooperating and we are GO for the first parachute test of the day!🪂 Martin, sitting next to the exit, will be testing the updated Ribbon Hemisflow drogue, aka the "Spaghetti Monster" first - one of the supersonic drogue chute contenders for the Spica rocket booster.
Martin and Lennart deserve credit for this finely executed parachute chase scene! 😯This 3rd test of the ribbon hemisflow drogue parachute for the Spica rocket booster was much better than our 1st attempt, but there's still room for improvement.Back to the sewing machine!🪂
We put the Spica propellant tanks on the scales recently.🚀Considering both LOX and ethanol tanks should be identical, what's your bet on:a) Each tanks' weightb) How close we got the mass of both tanks to each other (in %)P.S.See the comments for what's inside them.👇
Just needed to share this because I'm just enjoying it too much.This video explains a V2 type engine that would be 1950's era, but built in 2012. Enjoy all.
1st: NEW VIDEO! We introduce a new approach to rocket guidance we haven't tried before that our 2022 recruits will test on their bi-liquid rocket. We also weigh our Spica LOX & ethanol tanks, and more. Video link below.2nd: Kudos to the Firefly team for their success today! 🚀
With 17.2 kilograms (38 lb) of material removed, this chuck of steel is slowly beginning to resemble a (large) part of a rocket engine! 🚀 Next step*: Removing that staircase*! *Pun not intended.
