JP Aerospace Blog

This roll is from about two years ago. It at 106,000 feet. When the center of gravity of the high rack is bit high it tend to do one roll before the fins grab a bit of air. Fetch Newton!

We fired rocket engines in the rain and mounted monitors and keyboards in the crew module mock up.

The team really moved forward on our MHD generator research. We did four test firings today. Two with the new porcelain unit and two with unit number two reconfigured as a multi channel system. The first two firing were is the pouring down rain under an awning. Neither rain nor sleet, nor gloom of night….

All produced results that are moving us forward, (the multi channel unit’s data was just weird though).

Ed and Paul were at it with the hot glue and Velcro outfitting the crew module mock up.  We’re really starting to get a feel for what it will be like to operate in the vehicle.

The current MDH set.          Drew Preping the new unit.

Test 20 and Test 23

JP, Ed and Paul inside the crew module.

In the not so distance future…

Here’s some odds and ends images from the Toshiba Chair Commercial flights:

Morning Chairs.                       Last one, hauling out vehicle four.

Shooting it’s own Shadow

Dazzle and distortion.             On the way down.

Our sad chase plane up on blocks waiting for it’s new landing gear and propeller.

The porcelain body of the new generator is done. It should be able to handle the higher temperatures of the larger motors.  In a hundred years I wonder how much it will go for on the Antiques Road Show?

We’ve stripped down the smaller generator and are rebuilding it as a multi channel unit. It will have four electrodes initially.  It should be ready to test this weekend.

A morning in June 2006. Away 27 about to launch with 600 PongSats.

Here’s Paul and Drew working on the crew module mockup.

After the motor detonations on test 17 and 18 we build a new MHD generator. This one was designed to handle larger rocket motors. We did the first test tonight. Test 19 went great. Lots of power and lots of data. However, (there’s always a however) when we disassembled the unit after the firing we found cracks all through the ceramic.  We always expect to see a few little crack due to thermal shock. The unit’s core temperature  goes from ambient to 2000 degrees F in about a second.  This time the unit was ruined, cracks everywhere going clean through. We start building the next unit tomorrow, but this time out of porcelain.

courtesy of www.hybridblimp.net

When the motor on test 17 exploded I thought it was just an old motor. When the motor on test 18 also exploded I dug in and figured it out.  These tests were the first to use a larger motor with the Mini MHD Generator. The back pressure from the restricted flow through the generator caused the motors to fail. Add another data point in MHD design.

I never knew just how a big of a bang a ‘D’ motor can make when it really lets go!

The Sacramento chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is holding a PongSat Contest. The contest is open to 7th and 8th grade science classes in the Sacramento area. The PongSat mission to be flown next March is open to anyone on Earth.  We have space for approximately 600 PongSat student experiments. This will be a balloon flight to the edge of space.

PongSat contest flyer 2010-11

In response to a question below, here is what’s inside the orbital Ascender. Specifically it’s not a single balloon but a array of lifting cells.

This drawing is from the book “Floating to Space,  The Airship to Orbit Program”. If you don’t have a copy get yourself to the front page of the JPA site, click on the picture of the book in the upper left corner and buy one!

The second image shows the things you only see in the slow motion replay. It’s a frame from the moment of ignition. Next time I won’t be putting the expensive HD camera there!

I just did test firing number 15 of the mini MHD generator. This thing is really starting to work. The out put on test 15 was 50% higher than 14 and 14 was pretty good. This was another big change in the electrodes. Same shape as in test 14 but with a lot more surface area.

I’m going to try and get another run in tonight. Check back in about an hour to see how it went.