[AR] Re: Built another hovering rocket
- From: Ken Biba <kenbiba@xxxxxx>
- To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 21:45:30 -0800
Well done Ben! It is delicious.
Ken Biba
Novarum, Inc.
415-577-5496
> On Feb 10, 2015, at 7:22 PM, Ben Brockert <wikkit@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> 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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