Thrust Vector Control

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gwh

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Barnard Propulsion Systems has developed a purchasable flight computer that allows for thrust vector control of an engine during flight among other features. All the info is available here: https://www.bps.space/signal-alpha/

First round of manufacturing is about to kick off and orders for that round close tonight.

I am not in any way affiliated with BPS, but have been following the development of this for a while because its incredibly cool and has been a long process with lots of experimentation. I am sharing this because I am interested in the product and think others will be too.
 
Just saw this post, not in time to contemplate ordering, but still interesting. I wish the guy and his product well, but would need to learn a lot more about how it works to justify investing into an $300 experiment.

The fact that first production round will only work on 24mm and 29mm motor mounts with 66mm or 74mm airframes eliminates all of my current and future rockets (that's mid-power engines on HP 2.6"-2.9" tubes). Combine that with requirement for plugged motors, and you could only fly it on very few motors.

I assume the solution requires leaving the aft-end of the motor mount hanging loose in this gizmo, so that it can move to adjust thrust vector. The trouble is - that's a LOT of energy transmitted through an untested and plastic-looking sleeve, even with 24/29mm motors. When you upscale to 54/75/98mm motors, that could be serious trouble.

Either way, did anyone here buy it?

a
 
One other issue with hobby rocket thrust vectoring is that the motors tend to burn for a relatively short period of time, on average two seconds or so. Once the motor burns out, vectoring has no effect on your attitude, so a stiff wind will still weathercock the rocket. Nose vanes work regardless of motor status.
 
This looks really cool, this is something I always wanted to do to get rid of the fins or avoid spinning. As I live outside the US I guess that I will have to develop my own. What would be good is to have a small liquid engine that last a little longer than our solid propellant rocket motors .... and yes retro landing like a Falcon 9 .....
 
It includes deployment channels on the device I believe. The buy period wasn't open very long if you ask me. I no doubt think the price is fair but that's some nice reloads there. Kurt
 
Having thrust vectoring stabilization, (guidance?) would make for some very cool 24mm and 29mm launches... for the cost of a couple of K reloads. I might like to get in on the January batch, depending on feedback from the first.
 
The buy period has been extended now until he hits a certain number, good updates on his twitter feed.

The reason stated for the short buy in was that this is a first run and needed to be ordered all at once, of course I posted this pretty last minute.

As for burn times I think he used E9's. It's well worth the time to check out the different videos in the rocket section.

Not sure if he ended up using Apogee Medalist motors, which as far as I know are Aerotech's RC rocket glider motors with an ejection charge and have burn times of 4 seconds or more. Problem with those motors while the thrust curve is real flat and long, the thrust is pretty low.

I believe you have the option to buy just the electronics and then fit in your own mount and servos, that way if you are going higher thrust its possible. This system just BEGS to be paired up with an I49N or I59N and the 7 second burn times!
 
This is stability augmentation and not "guided" launching. It doesn't look like anyone needs a tracker for this level of flying. Even if it graduated to that, a passive tracker to find the downed rocket is still not an issue. Kurt
 
This is incredibly cool stuff. I've been reading through the whole website (particularly the testing logs) and it's fascinating.

Although I'm not a candidate to actually purchase and try out this stuff, I sure am glad there are folks pushing the envelope like this.
 
I liked his idea of the brake petals during decent,then blow a chute. I think its just too hard to reliably ignite a solid fuel.motor for a standing landing to be practical, let alone not start a fire. The guidance is neat but limited to long burn motors to be interesting, f10, e6, g12 etc, as there isn't much coast, they seem to pitch or tumble pretty quickly, so not sure that they are super stable without the vectoring. At least what I can tell from the videos.

Frank
 
This is incredibly cool stuff. I've been reading through the whole website (particularly the testing logs) and it's fascinating.
Although I'm not a candidate to actually purchase and try out this stuff, I sure am glad there are folks pushing the envelope like this.

I sent the guy a list of questions about functionality and limitations, and haven't heard back after three days. I was ready to send him the deposit, but now I'm off the bandwagon.
If the supplier/vendor doesn't respond back to your questions before he takes the money, he is even less likely to do so afterwards when you need his support.

I liked his idea of the brake petals during decent,then blow a chute.

I'm not convinced this will do much good.
If you don't pop a guide/drogue chute at apogee, the rocket will self-aim into the wind and then descent at and angle dictated by the drag of the airframe. All my larger rockets descent semi-horizontally on under-sized drogue chutes, so the petals will get minimal airflow, unless they are exotically ginormous. At that point it becomes a huge complications for minimal, if any, gain.

I think its just too hard to reliably ignite a solid fuel.motor for a standing landing to be practical, let alone not start a fire.

An even bigger trouble is throttling the output with solid fuel motors, which is nearly impossible, but a prerequisite for controlled descent.

The guidance is neat but limited to long burn motors to be interesting, f10, e6, g12 etc, as there isn't much coast, they seem to pitch or tumble pretty quickly, so not sure that they are super stable without the vectoring. At least what I can tell from the videos.

That's the kicker.
As outlined, this product only works during the burn phase of the motor, so you need to fly on slow-burn motors (limiting your choices, but OK for now). On the other hand, if you flew on a motor that got the rocket to 60+ fps off the launch rod, the aerodynamics and fins take over, and you don't need much stabilization (beyond wind cocking) anyway. In a way, you create a problem by flying slow off the rod with long-burn motors, and solve the problem you just created with thrust vectoring.

Still cool.

But now you add weight of the gizmo, and more weight from the width of the rocket required to fit the gizmo, and I'm suddenly out of airframes where it could fit.
OK, so I can buy and build something dedicated just for this experiment.
Then you add the fact that it's not easily transferable between rockets, and this becomes an expensive one-off experiment that can fly on very few motors, that can still be written-off if the chute pops off to soon, or not at all (lawn-dart).

...or, I can fly on a regular fast burning motor that gets me off the rod fast enough to stabilize via aerodynamics on all of my rockets... all the time...

Hmmm,

a
 
Disclaimer: I have no stake in this and am not in any way trying to encourage anyone one way or another. However:
As outlined, this product only works during the burn phase of the motor, so you need to fly on slow-burn motors (limiting your choices, but OK for now). On the other hand, if you flew on a motor that got the rocket to 60+ fps off the launch rod, the aerodynamics and fins take over, and you don't need much stabilization (beyond wind cocking) anyway. In a way, you create a problem by flying slow off the rod with long-burn motors, and solve the problem you just created with thrust vectoring.

Still cool.

But now you add weight of the gizmo, and more weight from the width of the rocket required to fit the gizmo, and I'm suddenly out of airframes where it could fit.
OK, so I can buy and build something dedicated just for this experiment.
Then you add the fact that it's not easily transferable between rockets, and this becomes an expensive one-off experiment that can fly on very few motors, that can still be written-off if the chute pops off to soon, or not at all (lawn-dart).

...or, I can fly on a regular fast burning motor that gets me off the rod fast enough to stabilize via aerodynamics on all of my rockets... all the time...
I don't think this is the right way to look at it.

Even in the best case, this is not something you're going to want to apply to all or even many or even (maybe) more than one rocket. This makes it very different from some other new technologies like (say) a Chute Release which has broad applicability. This seems more likely to be something for which you'd build a single dedicated rocket, presumably without fins (so speed off the rod is irrelevant), to experience and experiment with. So the real question for the potential buyer is: do I want to spend xxx to build a rocket to play with this, in addition to all my normal rockets with fins and fast burning motors?

That said, I too am pretty dubious of the practicality of landing on a retro-rocket, but the "up" part of the flight looks pretty cool.
 
The product looks great as far as it goes... again with the problem that it works only during boost.
It could be a much better product if it could save its angular and acceleration data so that one might analyze the trajectory rigorously.
That would mean operation throughout the flight - not just boost.
And... THAT would be cool.
 
Even in the best case, this is not something you're going to want to apply to all or even many or even (maybe) more than one rocket. This makes it very different from some other new technologies like (say) a Chute Release which has broad applicability. This seems more likely to be something for which you'd build a single dedicated rocket, presumably without fins (so speed off the rod is irrelevant), to experience and experiment with. So the real question for the potential buyer is: do I want to spend xxx to build a rocket to play with this, in addition to all my normal rockets with fins and fast burning motors?

Agreed.
This proposition looks more and more like a cool one-off experiment.
I'm thinking the fins might be superfluous altogether.
Maybe also the launch rod!
All you need is something to keep it pointing, roughly, up, and fire up the motor. The rest will be managed by the TVC.

Undersized fins on true scale real-world replica rockets (that do have thrust vectoring) have always bothered me. TVC takes care of that, and would allow you to launch aerodynamically unstable rocket (at lower speeds).

Still, it would be a one-off build.


That said, I too am pretty dubious of the practicality of landing on a retro-rocket, but the "up" part of the flight looks pretty cool.

Right, so what you achieve is SLOOOOOOOOOWWWWW and sexy launch sequence with a relatively large (3-4" airframe) rocket.
Might be worth it just for that!


The product looks great as far as it goes... again with the problem that it works only during boost.
It could be a much better product if it could save its angular and acceleration data so that one might analyze the trajectory rigorously.
That would mean operation throughout the flight - not just boost.
And... THAT would be cool.

It appears the TVC computer saves that data (one of the video shows the guy reviewing it afterwards).

Would be also cool is combining this with servos that adjust guide fin angles to achieve perfectly vertical (or spiral, or some other desirable pattern) flight during upward coasting part of the flight. If it goes straight up perfectly, then you could deploy drogue/streamer at apogee, and have it come down right on top of the pad until main/JLCR deploy at ~200 feet.
Easy to spot, fun to observe, easy to track, easy to retrieve.


a
 
I guess that if it becomes affordable people will start using it for all their scaled rocket replica just to get rid of those annoying pvc fins
 
So, I've been to a number of Joe's test launches, and thought I'd throw a couple things in here.

For motors, both Apogee Medalist and Estes F15 motors have been used. Dealing with an ejection charge was a development issue. The project originated as an experiment to try to do a landing using retro thrust (SpaceX style), but obviously that's pretty hard with hobby rocket motors.

None of the rockets had stabilizing fins, and so relied entirely on thrust vectoring to stabilize the rocket. One rocket had fins at the top, both to test the vectoring system and as a possible stabilizing mechanism so the rocket would fall rearward in an attempt to keep the rocket upright for a second, recovery motor to fire.

Many of the first launches did not go well at all. It took Joe a long time to get this thrust vectoring down, but once he did, he got some amazing flights. The rocket does not remain stable after thrust, but with such underpowered, slow flights, they weren't going to fly much higher after that point anyway. It was just a slow liftoff to the end of thrust, a bit of a tumble, then chutes. His YouTube channel has lots of great launch video.

Skepticism is, of course, understandable. Anybody who is concerned about the viability of this system should stay tuned. I'm sure early adopters will report eagerly on how well the system works, and if all goes well, more people will be interested.

I'm not affiliated with BPS, but I've witnessed a lot of flights, and Joe and I have gone to a number of NAR launches. We're going to one in Maine this weekend, and he hopes to show off the system with a demo launch.
 
BPS space has uploaded a multi-part build video that provides a lot of information on construction and function of the system for those interested:
[video=youtube;6Y8QiqOZZ3g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y8QiqOZZ3g[/video]

The thought and detail that went into putting this system together is impressive to say the least!
 
That's pretty nice, well though out, nice instructions, very straight forward. I don't know that I like the rubber band, but that's easy to fix, and on a unit that expensive where centering is critical, $3-$4 servos I don't like, I've had a lot of issues with these types of servos not centering repeatably or with some slop. Other than that it looks pretty neat.

Frank
 
That's pretty nice, well though out, nice instructions, very straight forward. I don't know that I like the rubber band, but that's easy to fix, and on a unit that expensive where centering is critical, $3-$4 servos I don't like, I've had a lot of issues with these types of servos not centering repeatably or with some slop. Other than that it looks pretty neat.

Frank
What fixes / modifications / upgrades / substitutions would you recommend? I'd like to run a g65 through one of these next year, and have a lot of time to tinker with it.
 
I'd have to look through the servos, it looks like it is built to take those specific servo cases so not sure what would retrofit. Maybe the centering isn't as big a deal since it obviously is using sensing to know what is up, so if there is slop it will still try to steer to correct...but I'd like to see a metal gear maybe digital servo. The niceness of this is for gentle long burn motors where you get a lot of steering, a high thrust two second burn only steers for two seconds, then its sort of tumble or whatever the stability margin of your finless design gets you, plus the gimbal is held in by just four screws into a bt-80 type tube so not super sturdy for higher thrust. Maybe someone who has one or is building one will chime in.

What fixes / modifications / upgrades / substitutions would you recommend? I'd like to run a g65 through one of these next year, and have a lot of time to tinker with it.
 
I'd have to look through the servos, it looks like it is built to take those specific servo cases so not sure what would retrofit. Maybe the centering isn't as big a deal since it obviously is using sensing to know what is up, so if there is slop it will still try to steer to correct...but I'd like to see a metal gear maybe digital servo. The niceness of this is for gentle long burn motors where you get a lot of steering, a high thrust two second burn only steers for two seconds, then its sort of tumble or whatever the stability margin of your finless design gets you, plus the gimbal is held in by just four screws into a bt-80 type tube so not super sturdy for higher thrust. Maybe someone who has one or is building one will chime in.
I have one and will be building one :)
 
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