When you rebuild, will you do anything different? I mean other than the battery
connector. Sometimes the building process can spark creativity.



John Carmack wrote:

> Everything was going well, operating at the Oklahoma Spaceport was working
> out great, the water test and engine warmups were fine, the liftoff was
> fine, ...
>
> Then the rocket started pitching over, did a complete flip, and crashed
> into the ground from a couple hundred feet up.
>
> Telemetry had ceased from the rocket after the first second at full
> throttle, and apparently an attitude engine had stuck on.  The telemetry
> did show a precipitous drop in the battery voltage from 12.1v to 8v in the
> last half second before failing.  At first, I was worried that something
> might have shorted, and drained the battery rapidly.  When we got the
> electronics box out of the rocket, one of the battery connectors was not
> on.  It might have happened during the crash, as there was quite a bit of
> general destruction, but the battery still had 12v on it, so we have strong
> evidence that the connector wiggled off during flight.
>
> I have always been a little worried about the fast-on connectors on the
> batteries we use, and this clinches it.  If I can't find batteries in the
> size we need with ring terminals, we are going to solder the fast-ons
> directly to the batteries.  We are also going to make a redundant battery
> power supply.
>
> Starting on a new frame tomorrow, and hoping that the inertial unit is
> undamaged.  Sigh.  A few other good lessons learned, more in the update
> this weekend.
>
> John Carmack
>
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--
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
........ Alex Fraser  N3DER .........
......... [EMAIL PROTECTED] .......
[~]_>^</\-[~]_>^</\-[~]_>^</\-[~]_>^<


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