[AR] Re: $1M prize for a student rocket reaching 100 km
- From: "David W. Schultz" <david.schultz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2018 11:51:14 -0500
On 09/15/2018 05:59 PM, Ben Brockert wrote:
Now, an aside about FTS more generally:
By law you are not even required to have independent FTS for an
orbital rocket.
Law perhaps but what matters is the opinion of the range safety office
on whatever range you are going to fly at.
Range safety generally gets nervous when the vehicle can leave the
confines of the area they can exclude people from. They also have fixed
assets within the range that need to be avoided.
If you need to design a FTS, the document that you need to be aware of
is RCC319. While a range can tailor the requirements to suit their
needs, other ranges are not bound to that. Having something fully
compliant with 319 gives you the maximum flexibility.
http://www.wsmr.army.mil/RCCsite/Pages/Publications.aspx
As for being able to predict where a nominal flight will go, there is
still room for improvement. The recent launch by a Princeton team was
afflicted by launcher tipoff. Both gravity and wind induced. Most (all?)
simulation programs ignore these phenomena. If you can't reliably
predict where it will go range safety will be even more nervous.
--
David W. Schultz
http://home.earthlink.net/~david.schultz
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