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BLACK ROCK DESERT, Nevada USA — On the playa of the Black Rock Desert this past Sunday, October 1st, 2000, a handful of British rocketeers broke the existing British and UK amateur rocket altitude record during the annual Tripoli BALLS Experimental Launch held outside of Reno, Nevada with their Phobos EAV rocket. The Phobos-EAV rocket is just 4 inches in diameter, stood just over 12 feet tall and achieved a peak altitude of over 35,000 feet.
MARS PEAV Team. Click to enlarge. |
The team, from the Middlesex Advanced Rocketry Society (MARS), had been hoping to capture the UK record set back in March by Hugh Gemmell of the Sheffield Rocketry Association and in the process broke that record by two and a half times as well as bypassed the European record of 20,000 feet.
"We were a bit disappointed the rocket didn't go to 15,240 metres (50,000 feet), but the disappointment only lasted 10 or 15 seconds," MARS Project Director Ben Jarvis said during a BBC phone interview held in the town of Gerlach, NV, the closest locale to the launch site.
Frank Kosdon building the O-10,000. Click to enlarge. |
"The rocket accelerated at twice the speed of sound in a couple of seconds and we were quite worried it was all going to come apart. But it was an absolute success and we are absolutely astounded by how well it went. We are ecstatic."
The boosted dart was powered by an Kosdon O-10,000 motor, six feet of ammonium perchlorate thunder and lighting. The motor delivers an average thrust of one metric ton, enough to propel the 50 pound rocket to speeds in excess of 2,000 MPH, nearly three times the speed of sound.
Electronics package. Click to enlarge. |
After burnout of the booster, it returned to earth under parachute, while the upper stage dart continued to coast to a much higher altitude, using the inertial momentum gained from the booster's acceleration.
The aluminum booster carried recovery electronics consisting of a Blacksky Timer 2b and a G-Wiz flight computer designed by Robert Briody and Larry Lynch-Freshner in a custom machined aluminum transition section designed to adapt the larger diameter of the booster assembly to the much smaller diameter dart.
Chris Eilbeck tracking the dart. Click to enlarge. |
Inside the dart's payload resided an RDAS data acquisition package, an Emmanuel Avionics IA-X96 integrating accelerometer and a Blacksky Alt-Acc accelerometer, redundantly designed to verify the altitude data following launch.
The rocket's recovery system worked as planned, slowly lowering the two parts of the rocket back down intact, both on reinforced high performance parachutes.
The dart upper stage was recovered about 30 minutes after the launch, approximately 3 miles downrange from the launch site while the booster section was recovered about 2 and a half hours later, some 5 miles downrange.
Booster suffered only a cracked fin fillet. Click to enlarge. |
According to the team's Internet web site, the rocket reached a peak velocity of 1350 miles per hour (600 metres per second), with a total flight time of 5 and one half minutes.
The team's trek westward began back on September 26th, when the launch crew packed the rocket onboard a Boeing 767 enroute to San Francisco, CA, and then on to the launch site 2 hours outside of Reno, Nevada. The MARS team will be returning to the UK on Thursday of this week for much needed rest after several sleepless nights in the desert prepping the rocket.
A jubilant MARS team celebrates their success.
Real Media Celebration (1.2meg)
Windows Media Celebration (2.8meg) |
