Rocketry Planet
| 2008 NASA USLI launch in Huntsville a huge success |
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| Launch Report by Walt Stafford, Huntsville Area Rocketry Association | |
| Tuesday, April 22, 2008 | |
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TONEY, Alabama USA — April 19 was a beautiful day at the Bragg Farm. Having rained overnight, the freshly planted corn field was quite muddy. Mother Nature blessed us with clear blue skies, temps in the lower 60's and no wind to speak of during the morning hours. She would challenge the college teams to hit one mile this year as the winds would pick up throughout the day. Members of the Huntsville Area Rocketry Association (HARA) started arriving at 8:00am to set up the launch controller and Launch Control Officer's (LCO) tent. The college teams were responsible for their own launch pads. Once the safe distances were laid out, the set up went smoothly. Shortly after 9:00am, the teams, one by one, staked claim to their spots and started setting up their launch pads. The first team to test the skies was Missouri University out of Rolla, Missouri. Their rocket was 4 inches in diameter and 78 inches long. It was loaded with a Cesaroni K530 SS motor. After the LCO gave the countdown and pushed the button, the rocket blasted off of the pad for a nice Smoky Sam boost slightly into the wind. At apogee the rocket deployed and started drifting down, without a drogue. Once the rocket descended to about 500 feet, the main chute was deployed for a textbook dual deploy in the field. This team set the bar at 3622 feet. The next team to launch was Harding, out of Searcy, Arkansas. Their rocket was 3 inch diameter, 98 inches long loaded with a Contrail J234. The payload experiment was exhaust plume spectra. The boost was looking good until the rocket separated at motor burnout. The chutes came out, stripped off and drifted down range. The booster kept on going up, arched over, and stuck into the field upon landing. The upper section flat spun and landed near the prep line. The home team was ready to launch next. The UAHuntsville rocket was 6 inches diameter, 110 inches long and loaded with an Aerotech L850. The payload was an automated parasail module designed to drift to a predetermined waypoint. The boost phase was a bit wobbly. At apogee their payload was deployed. The rocket drifted back with a nominal dual deployment. The parasail module was unable to overcome the wind and drifted to a non-predetermined spot approximately one mile down range. The team turned in an altitude of 4535 feet. The University North Dakota out of Grand Forks, North Dakota was next on the pad. Their rocket was 5.5 inches in diameter, 93 inches long and loaded with an Aerotech K570 motor. The payload was a Geiger counter voice recorder. The rocket had a great boost, and shortly after apogee, the main chute was released to allow for payload data acquisition. This caused the rocket to drift approximately a mile down range. Fortunately, the UAHuntsville team were down range recovering their payload and saw where the North Dakota rocket touched down. The team turned in an altitude of 5108 feet. Utah State out of Logan, Utah was next on the pad. Their rocket was 5.5 inches in diameter, 102 inches long and loaded with a Contrail L800. The payload was an active air brake system. The rocket had a good boost with nominal dual deployment in the field. The air brake system worked a little too well as the team turned in an altitude of 4395. Team members reported that the system created higher altitude than actual and therefore deployed the air brake for too long. Vanderbilt University out of Nashville, Tennessee was next to get a rocket on the pad. The rocket was 10 inches in diameter, 166 inches long and loaded with an Aerotech M1939 motor. The payload was a UAV RC glider. The rocket had a great flight and dual deployed in the field. The UAV was deployed around 300 feet. The rocket suffered a zipper on the booster and the airframe did not fair well after being drug across the field by the large chute. The team turned in an altitude of 5254 feet. The College of Menominee out of Green Bay, Wisconsin was next to launch. Their rocket was 7.6 inches in diameter, 84 inches long and loaded with an AMW L1300 motor. The payload was an infrared camera. The rocket performed well on the way up but there was no deployment of the drogue or main chutes on the descent. This team experienced the thrill of victory on the accent and the agony of defeat on the descent as the rocket impacted the ground. Early assessment was that the ejection charges did not fire. Auburn University out of Auburn, Alabama was the next team to carry a rocket to the pad. Their rocket was 6 inches in diameter, 108 inches long and loaded with a Loki L1482 motor. The payload was load, temperature and vibration data collection. After a lengthy delay at the pad, they got their rocket loaded and pointed it skyward. The rocket made a nominal flight and dual deployed in the field. The team turned in an altitude of 4360 feet. The last team of the day was Fisk out of Nashville, Tennessee. Their rocket was 7.6 inches in diameter, 152 inches long and loaded with an AT M1315 motor. Their payload was fuel cell demo and atmospheric data. The rocket had a slow majestic flight. At apogee it looked like the first and second stage of deployment happened simultaneously as all the chutes came out at once. The third stage of deployment happened about 30 seconds after the rocket touched down. The team posted an altitude of 1897 feet. This marks the eight year of HARA's involvement with NASA's SLI program. HARA members present for this event were President Joe Robinson, VP Ray Cole, Secretary Bill Cooke, Treasurer Chuck Pierce, Phillip Burroughs, Clark Word and myself, Walt Stafford, TRA Prefect. SLI has grown over the years. Tune in next week when we do it all again, but this time with 17 high school teams. For Walt's contribution of this article, he will receive a free one year subscription to LAUNCH Magazine. This sponsorship is made possible by our friends at MM Publishing, Inc., the producers of LAUNCH Magazine. Want your own free subscription? Read the program details page for complete information. |
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Nasa...Nice display. Our taxpayer dollars hard at work. Wonderful.
However, we would like to point out one inaccuracy in your article. The deployment of our main parachute wasn't premature. It was set for a 15 second time delay from apogee allowing our geiger counter an extended period of time to collect data. Also, the 15 seconds was a safety precaution. If our drogue failed to deploy this was a shorter period of time than free fall of our rocket from a projected 5000 feet.
Thank you for covering this event and raising awareness for it. Great pictures, too!
What is a "Geiger Counter Voice Recorder"? or is this two separate functions?
Congratulations on an excellent effort, keep up the great work.
Our payload was a Geiger counter which has both a digital and an audio output. The audio output was sent to a digital voice recorder and the digital output was sent to a data storage board that was designed and constructed by one of our team members. The digital voice recorder was for redundancy pruposes and we expect to get our main data off of the circuit board.
OK that makes plenty of sense. Thanks.
I believe that the motor was made by Cesaroni and not Aerotech.