Randall Clague wrote: > > So the five hour turnaround would have been a three hour turnaround > had you been using a non-cryogenic oxidizer? :-)
Or if I'd had another dewar delivered the day before with a single phone call- I just dropped the ball on Monday :) > What does your turnaround consist of? I was tweaking Aleta a little > bit about XCOR shooting for ERPS' 2:10 turnaround time for KISS II, > but all we have to do is: > > 1) Wait for rocket to land > 2) Go get rocket > 3) Safe pyro > 4) Bring rocket back > 5) Split modules > > (Propulsion module track) > > P6) Load rocket on launch rail > P7) Purge tank > P8) Take rocket off launch rail > P9) Mate propulsion module with recovery module > > (Recovery module track) > > R6) Download flight data > R7) Clean pyro area of residue > R8) Load new pyro > R9) Pack/load parachute, attach nosecone > R10) Mate with propulsion module > > 11) Load rocket on rail > 12) Fuel rocket > 13) Pressurize rocket > 14) Arm pyro > 15) Launch > > Gosh, not as simple as I remembered, and that's with some > oversimplification. So what kinds of things do you have to do to turn > around EZ-Rocket? For a fast turnaround without helium reclaim, the aircraft crew must: 1) Vent fuel tank [pilot can do this from cockpit during rollout] 2) Meet pilot at tower at end of rollout 3) Open access panel, vent LOX tank 4) Close helium valve 5) Tow back to hangar 6) Load fuel 7) Fill 5 liter dewar with LOX for helium loading 8) Load helium (goes fast with chilling) 9) Tow out to runway 11) Load LOX 12) Pressurize tanks, test igniters 13) Put pilot in plane and fly This takes three people (Mike, Johnny, and me) about 90 minutes in real time, but we had a few pauses for discussions like, "Do we want to offload a portion of the fuel for lighter weight?" (The fuel tank is oversized because we originally made allowance for using watered alcohol at lower O:F, and didn't need that capacity after all. We have a set procedure for this, I just wanted to consider dropping that page.) Also, I forgot to move a helium bottle that we needed from the shop to the hangar the day before & had to send Johhny off to get it In parallel, the video tech is replacing the tapes in the onboard recorders and charging the aircraft batteries. If I had been more ambitious, we could have loaded helium and LOX at the same time by mounting the prechiller heat exchanger on the LOX tank vent, but chose to separate the tasks to reduce the workload. 14) Change video tapes, charge aircraft batteries 15) Download GPS data Of course, I've oversimplified too; I think the key difference is that we don't take apart or reassemble anything, but our propellant loading is much more complex. I've said it before but it bears repeating- we're doing what we must to prepare for our future vehicles; ERPS is making useful progress by working at the scale appropriate for their goals and capabilites. No particular solution is THE solution. Doug Jones, Rocket Plumber _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
