More fire fighting equipment being tested. The engine is almost ready. We expect first burn within an hour.
Here’s an overview of the test area shortly before the first test
First test with the new injector design is complete. Fantastic sound, and the engine is still looking great!
Another beautiful burn with these injectors. The mission control computer can’t wait for the next burn...
The 1st test of our 3D printed stainless steel coaxial swirl injector! 🚀In 10 minutes we will run one more final test with this injector, performing a long duration burn to celebrate and finish off this successful 2-day engine test campaign. Join us!youtu.be/Q3uVwJB1qUk
Usually, liquid oxygen (LOX) and rocket propellants can either make art or burnt toast. But in this case, it made both! The exquisite interaction between brass & LOX on our coaxial swirl injector front contrasts well with its potential in presence of a combustible substance. 🚀
After our successful tests of the coaxial swirl injectors with the BPM-5 engine, our booster team has been consolidating the Spica rocket's BPM-100 engine design. It's a big step up in size from our BPM-5, but we're close to making it robust, modular and simple to manufacture. 🚀
To stack the newly-pressure-tested Spica rocket propellant tanks we might be thinking of temporarily turning our Horizontal Assembly Building (HAB) into a Vertical Assembly Building (VAB). 🚀 But first, some tall scaffolding construction, pulley upgrades, and safety assurance.
We have some major rocker assembling coming up! The Spica propellant tanks got their final coat of paint, John, Jørgen & Martin have finished pop nut riveting to connect them, some alignment tweaks are being done and we will soon be ready to stack them on top of each other! 🚀
The Spica rocket propellant tank pressurization system heat exchanger (right) and its burner (small racket engine on the left) to provide heat to vaporize liquid nitrogen into pressurization gas & ensure a stable ~15bar chamber pressure of the BPM-100 rocket engine during flight.
Here's the rig we use for BPM-100 rocket engine LOX valve cold flow testing (minus its valve motor and gearbox). A critical component in any liquid 🚀 engine to precisely control flow of propellant (in this case cryogenics) under extreme pressures and low temperatures (-183°C).
Usually you'd put the gauge and transducer on a few inches of smaller stainless tubing oriented vertically so that they don't see liquid and freeze.
With each subsystem we make leading up to the BPM-100 engine, such as the recently-pressure-tested propellant tanks, BPM-100 LOX valve test rig, or the liquid nitrogen evaporator, we continue to better our weld quality for when it's time for those crucial BPM-100 engine welds. 🚀
Enhance. 🔍
Out of curiosity, how far out roughly are we from seeing the first completed BPM-100?
We hope to order first combustion chamber parts in the coming weeks. Some equipment for its manufacturing has already been made as well, so hopefully we can have it ready a couple of months after part arrival. Scaling injector production might take a bit longer, but we'll see. 🤞
Copenhagen Suborbitals is the world's only crewed, crowdfunded space program. In the future, a volunteer astronaut will fly to space on our home-built rocket. We do this in our spare time, all the donations go to paying our workshop rent and buying materials. We are forever thankful to each of our supporters!In this episode, we introduce you to Copenhagen Subrobitals' first-ever recruit project. To accelerate the Spica rocket production and introduce more people to liquid rocketry, we are helping a team of young future rocket engineers to design, build and launch their own Ethanol / Liquid Oxygen fueled rocket. This exercise will help them gain confidence and the required skills to work on the much larger Spica rocket in the near future.
A non-conclusive test to see whether hydrochloric or phosphorus acid can be a viable oxide cleaner & surface treatment for BPM-100 🚀 engine rust protection. With BPM-5 we used nickel plating (📺bit.ly/2XaHIDI) which is difficult, especially in narrow cooling channels.
A first one for the history books! Our HAB (Horizontal Assembly Building) has finally been turned into a VAB.So no, we didn't shrink John and Scott, just simply stacked the the two LOX & Ethanol propellant tanks. Nice to see Spica beginning to look like an actual rocket! 😍🚀
The first coaxial swirl injector prototypes for the BPM-100 rocket engine have been water flow tested by Jeppe & Scott. Good flow rates, atomization & cone angles despite the changes over the BPM-5 injectors we previously static tested show we're on a good path to BPM-100! 🚀
