Kip Daugirdas

I definitely felt 293,488 ft high! Three years of work on this project panned out! youtu.be/4QsEPEhq5yk

Very cool onboard video.

@joebarnard Very cool Joe!!!! This is awesome to see working so well. Congrats 🎉

FLIGHT STATS 🥩🚀 - 33G's max acceleration - Mach 2.6 - 8.5km - Meat internal temp reached 105C / 221F Yaw/pitch/roll control worked great! At low speed and low air pressure we get a little oscillation, starting on the roll axis and progressing to pitch/yaw. A little more detail in the modeling should fix that. Cross range at apogee was about 230m from the launch point with lateral velocity less than 2m/s! HUGE win for my goal with pitch/yaw control: reducing recovery dispersion. The rocket is in awesome shape, I think it should fly again! Maybe as a second stage to a much higher altitude so we can nail down attitude control in the upper atmosphere.

Please 👏 go 👏 beat 👏 it!

Way before Mesos there was Workbench 2.0. Six years ago it flew on the 4th of July to 154,068 ft. It still holds the Tripoli commercial O-class staged altitude record. I’m surprised it still stands as an N2500 -> M685 is just 21,300 N-s. The O-impulse class extends to 40,960 N-s.

@joebarnard 8”-8” may make it tough to use the same propellant/geometry for both stages without sacrificing some performance. So going up to 10” on the booster seems reasonable.

Hear me out... 10in single stage

@joebarnard California, while beautiful, sucks for many reasons.

Reading up on the Cal Fire regulations, lots about fireworks in here. My favorite part is where they say "No you may not get your fireworks license in the month before July 4th..."

@joebarnard Yeah I feel like it just gets to a point where it’s not fun anymore.

@kipdaugirdas I remember you saying something a year or two ago about how much more fun you had making smaller rockets. I think about it on a weekly basis

The urge to do liquid rockets grows stronger every day 😵‍💫

@joebarnard Always make room for good cameras!

It's hard to explain to people why it's important to spend your mass/avionics/power/telemetry/financial budget on good cameras. It's a lot easier to communicate why with views like this

@joebarnard I was there and saw the project. I’m not sure who was out at the pad - perhaps just the students. An additional accident happened where a guy (adult) had to be airlifted for burns after a motor lit in his truck bed. Those two incidents caused Tripoli to clamp down hard.

In the fall of 2018 there was a bad rocketry accident involving a college team out in the black rock desert where an Q class upper stage ignited while students were feet from it - nobody was killed, but I'd like to talk with anyone who was there/involved for a video about safety

@Pad33space Safe distance hero.

This guy is practicing to be the LDRS launch control officer. He must be Tripoli L4 certified.

@DJSnM This was pretty close to my house! 💥

A widow was worried about her deceased husband’s collection of chemicals, hazmat people began carefully clearing out the basement. And then they found the dynamite. A stock of dynamite that had been inherited from the husband’s father….. ksltv.com/639989/hollada…

@82yqtjjpxd Running less and very fine aluminum.

Developing a fast propellant is going to be very interesting. Pretty flame 🔥.

@joebarnard Who knows if I’ll succeed but I hope to learn a lot. Worst-case there will be some cool motors!

@kipdaugirdas Super excited to see the endburner come to life!

@rktpoweredkeith Hoping to develop some fast stuff!

@kipdaugirdas New propellant formulations?

@joebarnard I say try vibrating and see if you can gain back a percent or two. I don’t think you need to vacuum cast. In the end it’s more about consistency than perfect propellant. You just need it to work and work the same way every time.

@kipdaugirdas Yeah it’s not too bad, I don’t think the burn rate will run away at that range but would love to be a bit higher

Simplex V2 casting complete! Spin casting was a huge success but the prop density is low. It’s totally fire-able but propellant fold-over is a big issue. Every time it folds it traps little air bubbles - I’m thinking the next step is vacuum casting

@joebarnard So like 97-98% of theoretical? That’s not horrible with the measurement error you likely have due to spin casting. As long as you’re consistently hitting that density range for every motor.

@kipdaugirdas The spin casting makes internal volume a little hard to estimate, but I’m in the ballpark of 1620-1640kgm3