Awesome work! Good job doing the large sugar rocket. Most of the sugar
guy's cant do an "O" impulse successfully!
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [AR] Sugar rocket flown to 17,5km (+57.000ft)
From: "Andrej Vrbec" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender
"andre09091978" for DMARC)
Date: Fri, December 04, 2015 5:44 am
To: "arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Here is a couple of videos from my latest project that was launched in
October 2015. The goal of this project was to fly above 50.000feet on a sugar
propellant (KN/Dextrose). The rocket was a boosted-dart powered by a newly
developed 110mm diameter O-9600 (36kNs) sugar rocket motor. The design was
largely based on my first boosted-dart project that flew to +35.000feet in
April 2015. Video about this earlier project can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vcAQPJUqV0
An entire project from the start of motor development to an actual flight
took five weeks. It took three weeks to develop the motor and another two
weeks to fabricate the flight hardware and the new launch rail. The rocket
construction is very simple. Booster motor has threads on both ends. Booster
fincan is screwed on the aft end and a short section of aluminum tube holding
the booster electronics and parachute is screwed to the forward end of the
motor. Then the transition cone is attached to the booster. Dart
fincan/boattail assembly is made from stainless steel. Dart fins are also
made from stainless steel and are laser welded to the fincan. Dart is 50mm in
diameter and weighs 9,3kg (20,5lbs). Body tube is made from filament winded
fiberglass. There were two altimeters on-board the dart. Perfectflite
Stratologger CF and an ARTS-2. A BigRedBee 70cm HP GPS was used for dart
tracking. Lithium batteries were used for power. Dart nosecone is a 8°cone
and is turned from a solid mild steel.
Flight was great. When the button was pushed more than a ton of thrust made
sure that the things started to move quickly. Booster burned out in 3,5
seconds at an altitude of 4000 feet. Dart successfully separated and coasted
for more then 50 seconds to a measured altitude of 57.359feet. 18inch
parachute was deployed at apogee and the dart safely landed 8km from the
launch site, where it was recovered two hours later. Booster recovery system
unfortunatelly didn't deploy and the booster made a ballistic impact about a
kilometer from the launch rail. Impact site was not located and a cause of
malfunction remains a mystery. Overall I consider the project to be a
success. The altitude goal was achieved and the motor was successfully flight
tested. What's next?
Next project will be a two stage rocket. The plan is to use the same booster
motor for a first stage and a yet to be developed 55mm, 5kNs sustainer motor
for a second stage. Preliminary simulations show that this combination would
be able to fly to well over 100.000feet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_TpaJn72k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWsqNXpL7qY
Andrej Vrbec