Let's Build Rockets

05/03/2019

Cleaning up our IMU visualization software tonight

04/22/2019

I welded up the intertank module for the rocket. This is the piece of the airframe that connects the liquid oxygen and kerosene tanks. It is a really rigid shape. I have an FEA somewhere... but it only weighs 330g, so thats cool!

03/17/2019

Blink or you'll miss it !
Here's a short clip of our launch. This is "Ultraviolet", an Aerotech Sumo kit rocket, launched on an H410-VM motor. We used the motor with the shortest burn we could find: this was a heavy rocket, so we needed a decent amount of thrust to get it off the rail at a reasonable speed, but we also wanted to ensure safe recovery of the rocket, and the 10-15 mph wind speeds were making us nervous! Since Ultraviolet is only equipped for a single parachute deployment, we needed to minimize the amount of time it was blowing away as it coasts down on its parachute. The launch and parachute deployment went smoothly, but we still seemed to catch a gust of wind along the way down, blowing the rocket beyond the field, just across the street. Luckily it landed in open grass and we were able to safely retrieve the rocket and it's electronics payload!

03/16/2019

Successful flight and recovery, and confirmed that we received data on the ground station. Will review our log files soon!

03/16/2019

On the launchpad...

03/16/2019

We are preparing for a test launch of our flight electronics on a high power model rocket. It's very windy today, here's hoping for a good recovery.

Flying an Aerotech Sumo kit rocket on a H410-VM motor with modified nose cone to house the electronics payload.

03/15/2019

A summary of our December engine test, and an update about tomorrow's electronics test.

The cold static test verifies that the plumbing of the LOX and fuel lines are operating as expected. In this test, we ran liquid oxygen (pressurized with helium) and water (instead of kerosene) through the system. The results of this test were nominal, allowing us to proceed to the hot tests.

12/28/2018

More updates & footage to come

()
・・・
After the cold water test, we had one semi-successful engine test. The bang/fire at t -3 is the ignitor going off just before the fuel and oxygen valves open (as expected). The big plume of flame is excess kerosene burning off quickly, then for a fraction of a second after that you can see a more desirable burn, much shorter than we wanted. It seems like the system aborted and shut off the valves early, we will have to investigate the data we recorded more closely and decide what we are going to do. Let's Build Rockets

11/07/2018

Check out some new update videos showing some recent progress!
https://youtu.be/6lDIojTViB0
https://youtu.be/FGgyqv99AXI

10/11/2018

Ooh look! Some late night assembly work. This is one of the subassemblies for the test stand plumbing. Specifically, this assembly contains the solenoid valve, pressure sensor, and regulator for the high pressure Helium supply used to pressurize the rocket propellant. Also check out the size of that blue solenoid valve...

09/29/2018

Just finished soldering up a prototype data downlink for the rocket. It will transmit data on APRS during and after the flight in order to give us GPS coordinates and other sensor readings so we can better understand what happened during flight and hopefully recover the rocket when it lands. We're going to test this on a smaller model rocket first to see how it goes! -Giselle

09/27/2018

Hanging out at in Cambridge, Mass today! Eric is chatting with Jimmy from about our DAQ project.