cherokeej
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High power rocketry making a very real contribution...
https://www.intelfreepress.com/news/cansat-satellite-rocket-intel-edison/8791
We've been doing this for years.
You wanna talk about a seriously cool program, talk about ARLISS.
Ya show up with your ARLISS bird in September. She's sitting on the table, all prepped and ready to go, except for the motor and the payload. But here comes the flight coordinator. She has a box with a liner sticking out of it, and a team of university students in tow. She introduces the team, and you hand the payload carrier to the team. They load their payload in the carrier while you assemble and install the M1419 that was in the box. Then you install the carrier in the bird, put on the n/c, and install the shear pins. The team carry's the bird to the pad, you get her set up, turn on flight electronix, install the igniter, then take the obligatory "dumb rocket pics." Time to fly.
And ya do that all week long, several times a day. Some times, it can get down-right busy, and I can tell you first hand... Trying to get in 3 M flights and two K flights in one day is hard work. But it sure is fun.
It's a rough job, but someone has to do it. :wink:
And some of the student projects... WOW! Completely outside the box. Autonomous rovers, deployed at 12K, drop under chute to the deck, release that chute, and drive to a pre-programmed set of GPS coordinates, while avoiding "out-of-bounds" areas of the deck. GPS controlled gliders and parafoils that do the same. Multiple sat projects that coordinate photographing each other in flight, while actively avoiding exposing the lens to the sun. Test flights for magnetometer devices that will control attitude of satellites in geo-synchronous orbit. Use your imagination. The students do.
What the program does is present the students with some seriously adverse conditions. They aren't back at school, in their lab with all their resources. They're in the middle of the desert with a table, a chair, a shade canopy, and a lot of wind, dust, and noise. When they hand me their project, I'm first going to subject it to 7+ G's at lift-off, then I'm going to hit it with close to 50 G's at main chute deployment. (Most of these flights are quite parabolic, and aren't going slow when they deploy the mains at apogee.) Assuming the shear pins in the nose held, 8 seconds later, I hit their project with another 50+ G's by firing it out of the cannon with a small ejection charge. It is now deployed at close to 12K.
Here's the thing.. 15 years from now, when that student-turned-engineer is responsible for some aspect of a project that will be flying 800 trillion miles into the Oort cloud, no one will be able to mitigate the conditions his probe will encounter. He must design and build for the conditions his project will face.
Yes. An ARLISS flight will abuse your project. Design and build for it.
How often do you go to a launch, and have someone just walk up and hand you a 3 grain 98, and say "Here. Will you fly this for me? It's already paid for..."
Like I said, it's a rough job, but someone has to do it. :lol:
BTW... There are currently over 10 satellites in LEO that were worked on by engineers whose first practical experience was the ARLISS program.
We're a little bit of proud of that. :grin:
And I was allowed to be part of that for several years. Thank you, AeroPAC.
https://www.intelfreepress.com/news/cansat-satellite-rocket-intel-edison/8791
We've been doing this for years.
You wanna talk about a seriously cool program, talk about ARLISS.
Ya show up with your ARLISS bird in September. She's sitting on the table, all prepped and ready to go, except for the motor and the payload. But here comes the flight coordinator. She has a box with a liner sticking out of it, and a team of university students in tow. She introduces the team, and you hand the payload carrier to the team. They load their payload in the carrier while you assemble and install the M1419 that was in the box. Then you install the carrier in the bird, put on the n/c, and install the shear pins. The team carry's the bird to the pad, you get her set up, turn on flight electronix, install the igniter, then take the obligatory "dumb rocket pics." Time to fly.
And ya do that all week long, several times a day. Some times, it can get down-right busy, and I can tell you first hand... Trying to get in 3 M flights and two K flights in one day is hard work. But it sure is fun.
It's a rough job, but someone has to do it. :wink:
And some of the student projects... WOW! Completely outside the box. Autonomous rovers, deployed at 12K, drop under chute to the deck, release that chute, and drive to a pre-programmed set of GPS coordinates, while avoiding "out-of-bounds" areas of the deck. GPS controlled gliders and parafoils that do the same. Multiple sat projects that coordinate photographing each other in flight, while actively avoiding exposing the lens to the sun. Test flights for magnetometer devices that will control attitude of satellites in geo-synchronous orbit. Use your imagination. The students do.
What the program does is present the students with some seriously adverse conditions. They aren't back at school, in their lab with all their resources. They're in the middle of the desert with a table, a chair, a shade canopy, and a lot of wind, dust, and noise. When they hand me their project, I'm first going to subject it to 7+ G's at lift-off, then I'm going to hit it with close to 50 G's at main chute deployment. (Most of these flights are quite parabolic, and aren't going slow when they deploy the mains at apogee.) Assuming the shear pins in the nose held, 8 seconds later, I hit their project with another 50+ G's by firing it out of the cannon with a small ejection charge. It is now deployed at close to 12K.
Here's the thing.. 15 years from now, when that student-turned-engineer is responsible for some aspect of a project that will be flying 800 trillion miles into the Oort cloud, no one will be able to mitigate the conditions his probe will encounter. He must design and build for the conditions his project will face.
Yes. An ARLISS flight will abuse your project. Design and build for it.
How often do you go to a launch, and have someone just walk up and hand you a 3 grain 98, and say "Here. Will you fly this for me? It's already paid for..."
Like I said, it's a rough job, but someone has to do it. :lol:
BTW... There are currently over 10 satellites in LEO that were worked on by engineers whose first practical experience was the ARLISS program.
We're a little bit of proud of that. :grin:
And I was allowed to be part of that for several years. Thank you, AeroPAC.
