New Year

Hello loyal RPL followers,

Happy (belated) New Year from USCRPL! This semester we have a few exciting projects in store. But first off, we have come away from another static-fire setback. Our "lengthened Trunnion" motor did not perform as planned, and has sent us temporarily back to the drawing board. We were hoping for a success the first week back from winter break, but were instead scratching our heads over what went wrong and what we can/should do about it.

Rocket science is never easy.

We plan on having a third static fire of the modified motor (which WILL work!) this spring. Check for updates. I know we've been quiet about it, but when it works, everyone will know about it.

There is other work going on in lab, too. We are re-launching Del Grande with a modified propellant formula (still TBD), and it will be a testbed for our new hypersonic 8" conical nosecone and CO2 recovery deployment system. Still planning a ~20k ft altitude at >Mach 1, but it will be exciting to launch a rocket that has already flown before. We're planning a launch in the beginning of March.

The new freshmen have been a tremendous asset to Rocket Lab, and will soon carry the torch when some of us leave. Because of this, Del Grande (except for the nosecone) will be pretty much redesigned and rebuilt by the newer members of lab. This will be a great opportunity to become experienced with heritage RPL hardware and familiarized with a pretty straight forward rocket design.

One other thing I forgot to mention in the last RPL update:


Our recovery system did try to deploy, but the nosecone never come off of the rocket, as can be seen by the two accelerometer blips from the primary and secondary black powder charges. We placed 4 grams of BP in surgical tubing, and it didn't seem to have the necessary kick to pop the nose off. Therefore, the ARTS board was armed and working correctly, and the charges did deploy, but there wasn't enough BP combustion to produce enough force to break the shear pins holding the nosecone on. 50k+ ft recovery isn't easy. But at least it made for some good pictures (and we didn't have to chase down the rocket 10 miles away and miss dinner at Bruno's!)

One last thing: We'd like to send out a huge thanks to the RRS (Reaction Research Society) and Dave Crisalli in particular. We wouldn't be able to do almost any of this without the help of these guys, and they have been extremely patient with our static testing--we really appreciate it. And Dave, we still owe you concrete anchors. Those will be repaid in full.