Surprisingly, the flight computer was continuing to operate and transmit through all of this, but the sensor and wiring harnesses were shorted out in the fire, so we didn't have any sense of the state of the tanks. With trepidation, someone approached the vehicle and found that the lox tanks were still full and pressurized at the same pressure as when the vehicle was shut down.
meiza - 7/9/2007 6:54 AMHmm, I wondered that myself too. But what can you do in such a situation? Maybe you could let it sit for a day and have most of the lox boil and exit through relief valves.
The MOD just flew a qualification flight for AST into the teeth of a windthat was pushing our flight safety limit of 25 mph. Had to fight it all theway across the 100-m pads, but we stuck a precision landing with propellantto spare. Looks like we will have both the MOD and the QUAD (Pixel ... hersister died in a tragic accident) flying next weekend at XPC2007. Stillwaiting on FAA AST official notification of the acceptance of the flightdata.
Acuity:Very Secret I know almost nothign about their progress. They had an unflown vehicle at the 2006 XPC, they could be the dark horse. They have an interesting control scheme that always made me wonder.Armadillo: As ready as anyone could be, the "Gold Standard"Bon Nova: They have posted a couple of very quick Rocket Motor videos, the longest being several seconds. We posted our 106 Second firing in April and we did not make it. They have posted no vehicle hardware pictures.Masten: They just announced on their blog they are out for 2007.Micro space: Failed to attend the required team meeting in Aug.Paragon Labs: They have a very credible vehicle, well constructed and professional Another team that is somewhat secretive and an unknown. They posted finished airframe and rocket firing pictures in Aug. They were planning to have throttling via movable pintile in the all aluminum motor, while technically very cool, not easy to do and Armadillo was never able to make an all aluminum motor last without melting.Speed Up:Announced that they will not make 2007.Unreasonable Rocket:Announced we will not make it in 2007.Team X :Pulled out before the Last team summit.
Acuity:Acuity was almost ready for last years XPC. They had their regulatory afairs in order and were building real hardware at least 18 months ago. Acuity has a control scheme that looks a little bit too cute for my taste. They are using short aquat tanks that will slosh on a vehicle with VERY limited control authority. There control experience is in winged UAV's where you can usea self righting gyro bias just like you do on an aircraft while flying on instruments. If you use the rate of turn and compass to fly straight then you can use the vertical earth gravity vector to zero out your bank gyro drift. If you hold a constant altitude then you can use the gravity vector to zero out your pitch gyro. This is done automagically by the low to medium cost gyro systems for UAV's, and by all aircraft horizon gyros. This does not work on a free flying hovering rocket. I believe that these two issues will conspire to cause them problems in their free flights.I would be absolutely stunned if they made it to the XPC.Paragon Labs:Paragon Labs built a Pixel/Texel clone. The finish quality of what they fabricated was on par or better than what AA has done. They have done significant quality work in the electronics and control space. I believe that there two primary issues will be the motor and insurance/regulatory compliance. The motor is an all aluminum Regen, it uses a mechanical pintile for throttling. They have issues a single photo of the motor running, but no video. I think they will have problems cooling the all aluminum motor and the moveable pintle is technically cool, but practically hard to make work. One of my biggest issues has been holding the tolerance of the pintiles in my motors after accounting for heating stress hardening and hydraulic stretch. They need to keep these tolerances on moving sealed parts. I would say they are probably the best machinists of all the LLC groups, but its still hard.Flying at Holloman means a really high maximum probable Loss as there are nearby expensivestructures and getting insurance for a vehicle that has not had much flight time on it will be expensive. Given the lack of public flight test for the Paragon vehicle, I would not be surprised if the Insurance quote for team Paragon exceeded the amount of their entire stated development budget.Paragon labs only has one vehicle, so even if they make it to the 2007 show there will still be some prize money for 2008.
