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BALLS 16
September, 2007
On the road to Black Rock, Nevada and one hour into the trip tragedy strikes. We blow out two tires on the support trailer. Luckily there was a highway on-ramp and emergency phone nearby. A quick call, and one hour later we where at a tire shop that just happened to have 4 new tires that would fit the support trailer.
This put our travel schedule behind by five or six hours so we ended up on the Black Rock Playa well after midnight. Night is no time to be driving around on the 40 by 60 mile dry lake bed, so we decided to bed down for the night and head out to the launch site early Friday morning. When we arrived, Russ Bruner and most of the launch crew were already there and set up. As morning pushed on, I unhitched the 30 foot support trailer and unloaded the truck; now I had to return to Gerlach to pick up the 6 K-Bottles filled with N2o. On the drive back to the playa I noticed a dust storm approaching that would last all day Friday. We ended up camping out in the support trailer for the rest of the day and would pay a visit to Russ' Motor home next door from time to time. |
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Saturday was spent prepping the vehicle and setting up the flight computer along with the waycell. This proved to be a greater than expected task and eliminated the possibility of a Saturday's launch.
Sunday morning the weather was very calm and the upper winds where low. This would be the perfect day to launch. Shortly after we loaded up the vehicle and headed out to the waycell to set the equipment up and do a pressure check using the wireless data transmitter. This went well and we where then ready for finale launch preparation. By late morning the rocket was erect and we where ready to load 200 pounds of oxidizer. This took 45 minutes and once again the fuel data transmitter worked flawlessly. We were able to remotely read weight and pressure data for the first time at a launch. |
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| Several minutes before noon we radioed the LCO. We told him the vehicle was loaded and we where entering a ten second count. At T minus zero the fire button was pushed and the mighty R-10,000 came to life with a ball of white fire under the tail cone, Once the vehicle left the launch tower the flight computer rebooted due to the switch that was installed (by me); it fired all the pyro charges. We lost the nose cone but the vehicle was very determined to continue without it. At around 12,000 ft. and 12.9 seconds into the burn the injector failed due to a dent which occurred during the trailer tire blowout. The failure caused the motor case to sever and plummet to the ground but the boat tail survived the landing. The tank and payload section was propelled another 2,000 ft. with the residual N2o until the main chute deployed. I would say 80% of the vehicle was recovered, and is reusable. We ended up losing the fin can and motor case.
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| After all data was verified, it was determined this vehicle would have made the 100,000 ft altitude it was seeking. If all goes well, we will meet our 20 mile challenge in 2008. |
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