Minutes of ERPS General Meeting #247
07 November 2002
The President called the meeting to order at 8:20 PM. Members present
were Kevin Bollinger, Randall Clague, Bill Clawson, Nate Dietrich, Rick
Eversole, David Masten, Alex Mikhailov, Pierce Nichols, Gerald Nordley,
Dan Solvin, Adrian Tymes, David Weinshenker, and Chris Winter. Two
visitors from NASA-Ames Research Center also attended. Mark Blair and
Michael Wallis were out of the country on business.
Reports and discussion on agenda items were as follows:
CMT
---
Kevin Bollinger
Nothing to report
DOCUMENTATION
-------------
Chris Winter
Chris has made some progress on the images for the
Rocketdyne report. Much work on them remains to be done: scanning
the originals that didn't translate to Word the first time, cleaning up
noise, tracing the graphs in Illustrator, adding legends, callouts &
captions to figures, and adjusting sizes. The text, as previously noted, is
fully digitized.
Preparation of the ERPS 2003 Data CD-ROM was discussed.
Chris requested Kevin to make up a list of his proposed contents, so that
we can better organize next year's effort. Kevin agreed to do this.
INFOTECH
--------
Sean Lynch
None of our servers has been compromised within the past
month. However, we (or more properly our ISP, Hurricane Electric) was
recently -- for reasons unknown -- blacklisted by Osiris (sp?). This has
now been resolved.
LIAISON & PAO
-------------
Michael Wallis
Several members were privately e-mailed by someone outside
the U.S. asking for details on peroxide purification. The consensus was
that such inquiries should be re-directed to the public mail list, and
answered there (if at all) only with a warning that any attempt to do this
holds hazards for the inexperienced -- which is precisely why such
processes are not described on the Web.
Randall noted that one Richard Speck fired a rocket fueled by
alcohol and HTP in Colorado. He survived. (This is another potentially
hazardous activity, since alcohol and peroxide form explosive mixtures.)
LOGISTICS
---------
Sean Lynch
Nothing to report
TREASURER
---------
Michael Wallis
Chris Winter
Chris reported the current balance. No funds were disbursed at
this meeting.
CHIEF SCIENTIST
---------------
Kevin Bollinger
Kevin showed a vortex chiller made by X-Air that can drop
temperature by 150 Deg. Celsius.
He offered to sacrifice an engine for development of cat packs
and test of cermet catalyst. This would have some
ports drilled into it that would render it unusable for flight.
Another need is to find better ways of making pellets from the
cermet catalyst. A combustion chamber is a rather severe thermo-
acoustic environment, where poorly bonded pellets will disintegrate,
heading south with the exhaust plume -- and the performance of the
rocket.
Kevin requested a small amount of max-concentration HTP for
tests of hypergolic biodiesel propellants. He will need this in one or two
weeks.
FLIGHT CONTROLS
---------------
Bill Clawson
Due to the Hallowe'en holiday, no FC team meeting was held last
week. The next meeting is scheduled for 14 November.
At the previous meeting, some progress was made on software.
The snubber diodes are on hand, and data on the ADXRS150 gyro chip
(presented at the meeting) indicate this will do the job for us.
Bill described Gizmocopter for our two visitors.
PROPELLANTS
-----------
Pierce Nichols
Pierce and Dave M have finished welding the structure for the
sparger. It was reliably reported that the pockets of blue language
trapped by cobwebs in Pierce's garage have largely dissipated, and local
BLL (Blue Language Levels) have dropped to acceptable concentrations.
Some assembly remains to be done on the sparger.
REGULATORY
AFFAIRS
-------
Randall Clague
Pierce has a hard copy of the shipping papers for the peroxide he
will be transporting. We plan to comply with the hazardous materials
regulations for this transport, though we are not legally required to do so.
Having a printed copy of the shipping papers in the cab of the transport
vehicle is part of this. Another part is placards and labels.
For the flight tests, we will have a waiver to 50,000 feet. Expected
ceiling for the vehicle is 11,000 feet. The window is expected to open at 9
AM on flight day.
SAFETY
------
Dave Masten
Safety is AOK.
TESTING
-------
Dave Masten
Three successful tests of the KISS-III engine were performed on
Sunday. The engine delivered 95% of desired thrust. The shortfall was
laid to the presence of a 90-degree elbow which added some extra
pressure drop. This elbow is not part of the flight configuration.
Despite all efforts, the Dataq data acquistion system failed to
respond. Data were taken from the backup system, which consisted of
two LCD displays showing tank pressure and chamber pressure. Since
Dave M has his new, superior data acquisition system almost ready,
troubleshooting of the Dataq system was deferred, perhaps indefinitely.
Gizmocopter
-----------
Bill Clawson
See the entry for Flight Controls, above.
KISS
----
Mark Blair
The KISS program team will pack up the vehicle and all gear at
CDI after the meeting tonight, and depart for Mojave tomorrow. Setup is
planned for Saturday and flights for Sunday. Current plans (which may
change) are to do two flights of KISS-III, with 4-liter and 7-liter propellant
loadings, and to fly a solid motor. Due to schedule pressure, the 10-liter
flight of KISS-III is postponed until our next opportunity. Observers will
travel down on Saturday.
Forecasts indicate that weather at Mojave is improving slowly.
Saturday is expected to be partly cloudy, with winds of 20-30 mph.
Sunday should bring gentler winds.
Denny's in Mojave is the assembly point. Setup team is to meet
at 10 AM on Saturday. Flight crew and observers meet at 7 AM on
Sunday.
SMARTFLIGHT
-----------
Dave Weinshenker
Dave W and Sean have gotten the microcontroller to respond to
keyboard commands. The purpose of this system is to collect flight data,
store it in on-board non-volatile memory, and also broadcast it to a
ground station via amateur packet radio. It will include a beacon function
to assist in recovery operations.
Spike
-----
Sean Lynch
A design meeting was held last week. Sean will post minutes,
including significant vehicle parameters.
POGO
----
Dave Masten
A final quote for engine construction (contracted) is in hand;
purchasing wil be started ASAP. As before, Gizmocopter software
development is the pacing item.
COMPOSITES
----------
Kevin Bollinger
Kevin's filament winder is essentially complete. He would like a
place to store it temporarily so he can more easily move some other
hardware around.
SPARGER/FF
----------
Pierce Nichols
See the entry for propellants.
NEW BUSINESS
------------
The two visitors from NASA-Ames were invited since their work
involves developing hardware that uses HTP, and they may be of
assistance in ERPS gaining permission to do static tests on the Ames
facility. A lengthy discussion was held, and various concerns were
brought out. The bottom line is that we need to identify and contact
whoever has authority for oxidizing propellants at Ames. Gerald Nordley
agreed to continue to act as liason with Ames, and to identify this
responsible authority in concert with the visitors.
Meeting #247 adjourned at 10:05 PM. The next meeting will take place
on 7 November 2002.
Aftermath
---------
A total of $6.00 in pun taxes was collected. The secretary believes that
most of this is prepayment for the upcoming trip to Mojave.
Respectfully submitted,
Chris Winter
Secretary, ERPS
+++ PLEASE ADVISE THE SECRETARY OF ANY ADDITIONS OR
CORRECTIONS TO THESE MINUTES +++
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