[AR] Built another hovering rocket
- From: Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 22:22:03 -0500
I was the propulsion/structural lead on another hovering rocket, this
one for Moon Express:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAMPD65dvIY
Concept to first flight in a bit under four months. It was built to
match MoonEx's planned control scheme and so has a slightly unusual
architecture, with one large fixed engine in the center and twelve
fixed thrusters at different downward angles on the outside. Center
thruster is monoprop peroxide (FMC "90%" which is actually 86.6% now),
outer are nitrogen cold gas.
It won a $1M "terrestrial milestone prize" from the Google Lunar X
Prize. Astrobotic also won a $1M prize doing flights on Masten's
Xombie, so rockets I helped create have now won $3.15M of prizes. It
is not lost on me that this is an extremely odd thing to make money
at.
It is a bummer that good peroxide is so hard to get or I expect we'd
see a lot more peroxide rockets on AR. If anyone is curious I'll look
up the pricing on the FMC stuff.
Ben
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