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« Rick Tumlinson | Main | Till Next Year »

Unreasonable Rocket

This is a concept that Paul Breed and his son are developing for the Lunar Landing Challenge. Showing a video of servos and valves. Demonstrating igniters, have flightweight tanks and motors. Built a 650 lbf ablative motor, which is demonstrated. Uses composite cylindrical tanks, wound on flourescent light tubes, with tube caps at ends. Leaked at fifteen hundred psi, failed at nineteen hundred. Most weight in the end caps. Mass ratio of 6. Failure mode was shearing of aluminum pins, not plastic failure.

Valves initially based on Mikita cordless drill, hooked up to a ball valve. Ultimately ended up with UAV servos from Tokyo Hobbies in Japan. Have valves, tanks, built aluminum igniter, using ideas from Carmack's blog.

Basic vehicle layout will have four modules in quadrants, legs laced together with rope that stretches for landing gear. Has built a test vehicle. Has a blog, if we want to follow progress.

Name based on quote by George Bernard Shaw.

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 24, 2007 04:31 PM
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I just read the whole blog. Fascinating.

Makes me want to get down to the next x prize cup to see this guy's rocket in action.

Posted by Jeff Mauldin at March 27, 2007 01:40 AM


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