Tag Archives: liquid rockets

September 2020 virtual meeting

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by the Reaction Research Society

The Reaction Research Society met on September 11, 2020, by teleconference. Several members called in from out of state. After calling the meeting to order and the reading of the treasurer’s report, we began to discuss events to come and those in planning.

Attendees of the Seotember 2020 meeting by teleconference

MTA WORK EVENT 10/3/2020

The next event at the Mojave Test Area will be on Saturday, October 3rd. This will be a work event to repair our large adjustable rail launcher, remove tumbleweeds and brush from around our site, fix the two cut strands of barbed wire at our front gate, clean off corrosion from several areas and also potentially replace the bent panel on the vertical thrust stand. Osvaldo is leading the work event and all members are encouraged to come out. In addition to bringing sunscreeen, proper desert attire and footwear, bringing work gloves will be very useful.

John Krell wearing his facemask standing before our front gate with two of the barbed wire strands cut. This is one of many things to be repaired at the MTA.
Bent panel on the vertical test stand
The 8-inch adjustable rail launcher is still under repair from the failed July 2019 launch. The inner adjustable rail slides are being built from scratch. One of the outer braces was blown off and some of the angle frame pieces are distorted. This will require a lot of rework but we hope to have this launcher back in service soon.

As with all events at the MTA, social distancing and facemasks are required by all attendees at this event. Newcomers must request permission to attend and sign our indemnification waiver in advance of their arrival. See our website for these forms and submit them to the RRS president.

At this same event, we may also have a few launches if members are ready to do so. Dave Nordling was appointed to be the pyro-op in charge for this day. Wolfram Blume had planned to attempt his first flight of the two-stage Gas Guzzler to verify the staging and recovery systems. The nitrous-oxide hybrid motor is also ready for another launch attempt at this event.

Bill Inman also plans to join us at the MTA to conduct some tests of his solar concentrator to be used with his next generation steam rocket still in build.

NEW RESTROOM FACILITY AT THE MTA

Last year, the executive council set priorities for improvements at the Mojave Test Area. At the top of the list was building a new restroom facility which would offer our guests greater comfort than the current facility.

Larry Hoffing and Dave Nordling have begun to approach potential contractors willing and able to build a modest facility at our site. No formal proposals have yet been received yet but the society expects to have more to share in the coming month. With the hot summer months receding and the cooler temperatures of autumn approaching it is a perfect time to begin this project.

Given our modest budget, we are asking for donations to help the society make this much asked for and much needed improvement. Donations to the RRS are tax deductible as we are a registered 501(c)3 educational non-profit group in California. Our Paypal link is one our website and if there are any questions please contact the RRS president or any member of the executive council.

2021 RRS SYMPOSIUM

It was recommended that we try to set a firm date for the 2021 RRS Symposium with the Ken Nakaoka Community Center on a Saturday in late March. Although it is not certain if the symposium can be held, preparation for the symposium can take many months. Frank was going to see if a tenative date could be established only for planning purposes. If COVID-19 restrictions in Los Angeles were lifted to allow our symposium, we would have little time for advanced planning. There’s liitle to lose in scheduling the event and postponing if it becomes necessary.

IN CLOSING

Contact the RRS secretary with questions. Next meeting will be held virtually on October 9, 2020, 7:30pm. Contact the RRS secretary for details.

July 2019 meeting

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Dave Nordling, RRS Secretary

The RRS held their monthly meeting on July 12, 2019, at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena. We had a very large turnout with over 26 people coming in to see the three different presentations we had and catch up on the latest news.

After our reading of the treasury report, we had a special announcement of the induction of five new administrative members to the RRS. Our society is growing and this is in large part to the great participation we’ve been having and the dedication of the many talented people at the RRS.

Larry Hoffing gave us a short summary of the UCLA Rockets project he supervised at the RRS MTA. This Wednesday, July 10th, event was the first since the pair of earthquakes that rattled the nearby town of Ridgecrest in the Mojave. The RRS is happy to report none of our structures had any significant damage and the MTA is very much ready to operate.

We next discussed the upcoming launch event at the MTA tomorrow with Operation Progress in Watts with the LAPD CSP. We’ll have several alphas and a beta launch. We also plan to have an alpha with a parachute recovery system put together by new member, Kent Schwitkis and his friend Brian.

RRS vice president, Frank Miuccio, has started a new educational program this week with the students of Boyle Heights. There will be 10 teams launching their rockets from the MTA in September.

RRS alpha outfitted with a 36-inch parachute
Two alpha payload tubes with the nose cone and couplers installed. Reused parts from recovered alpha rockets.

Our first presenter was Kent Schwitkis who brought several of his students from Compton College to our Friday night meeting. Kent is a member of the Sierra Club and Ski Patrol and has many years of experience with wilderness survival and first aid. His presentation outlined the important of planning for many kinds of potential emergencies. One of the important results from this discussion was the need for the RRS to form a safety committee to begin preparing emergency plans and establish contact with the regional authorities in preparing to handle serious emergencies if the need would ever arise.

Kent Schwitkis and Waldo Stakes before the July 2019 meeting

The second presenter we had at the meeting was Sam Austin, a senior at MIT. Sam presented his two-stage solid rocket design to reach the von Karman line.

Sam Austin (right) presents his booster and second stage design for his solid rocket

Sam also detailed the kerosene-LOX liquid rocket design that was test-fired at FAR in January 2019. Although the test was short (3 seconds), his results were impressive and his injector survived intact..

Sam’s liquid rocket injector which was modified for 1500 lbf of thrust

The last presentation was by RRS members, Jack Oswald and Cooper Eastwood. They have been steadily improving their solid motor design and have fabricated their improved motor based on prior tests. Their goal is to reach the 50,000 foot altitude limit at the RRS MTA on July 20th. His “50 for 50” rocket is 12 feet tall and 5-inches in diameter built entirely from scratch. The launch is to be timed with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Jack and Cooper detail the progress they’ve made and their solid motor ready for flight from the RRS MTA on July 20th.

The solid rocket holds 30 lbm of APCP propellant with an estimated burn time of 3 to 4 seconds generating an impulse of 7000 lbf-sec. The rocket fully loaded is 84 lbm and should reach a peak acceleration of 30 G’s and a burnout velocity of Mach 2.5 as it reaches 50,000 feet.

A 100-foot drogue streamer will deploy from the recovery system followed by a 9-foot Apollo 11 replica parachute at 2000 feet. The flight events are driven by an upgraded classic flight computer from Eggtimer and an RRC3 dual deployment system from MissileWorks. The von Karman nosecone is 3D printed and the aluminum fin can was rolled onto the aluminum body to be painted in polished black and white pattern of the Apollo 11 vehicle.

The RRS looks forward to the successful flights of Sam and Jack’s rocket from FAR and the RRS MTA, respectively. Both will be on the 50th anniversary of mankind’s greatest achievement on July 20th.

If there are any questions or corrections, please contact the RRS secretary. The next meeting of the RRS will be August 9, 2019.

Lots of progress with RRS archiving and history

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We’ve had a lot of progress recently with archiving RRS newsletters and other publications. I’ve put up six more newsletters. I’ve posted three more newsletters I received from Osvaldo a while back and had backlogged to post. This includes issue Vol_54_4_Dec_1997.pdf which is the second half of the RRS’s summary of the history of liquid propellant work at our society.

RRS liquid rockets from the 1990’s

Three more editions of the early Astrojet newsletter where also posted in the newsletters section with the help of Dave Nordling who got Caltech’s JPL library to send us what digital copies they had of Astrojet. I suspect they may have more in their archives because it seems odd to have only three non-sequential issues, but we haven’t been able to locate them through their catalog. The RRS is thankful to the Caltech JPL library for retaining and helping us obtain a copy of these early works of the Glendale Rocket Society (former name of the RRS). We hope to work with them more in finding all we can on the RRS history.

RRS founder, George James, with his “Slim Jim” rocket

Dave Crisalli shared with us ten more articles and two videos. These reports and videos have been posted on the “Other RRS articles” tab of the RRS website.

Six of these articles are from High Power Rocketry Magazine and were authored by Dave. Also included was the most recent versions of David Elliot’s and Lee Rosenthal’s hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) monopropellant rocket report from the 1950’s.

Dave Crisalli’s package included a Scientific American magazine article from 1957 which includes mention of the RRS. This is on the “Articles about the RRS” tab of our website.

Also we have an improved version of Dave Crisalli’s 1976 liquid rocket report that has been updated with more pictures and drawings.

Dave also shared two fantastic videos. One is the video report on the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) monopropellant rocket that was filmed at the time of construction and test in the 1950’s with audio narration by David Elliot being added later by Dave Crisalli.

The second is a video report on Dave’s sounding rocket, a written report on the Rocket was also shared. This video also includes some liquid propellant work done at the time by other RRS members.

Dave Crisalli’s regeneratively cooled LOX-kerosene rocket firing

Both of these new videos can be seen on the RRS YouTube channel linked below. Please subscribe to our channel so you can be informed of updates as we make them. There will certainly be more to come!
RRS YouTube channel – ReactionResearchSoc

Frank Miuccio, our society VP, contributed a small collection that I’ve also posted to the “articles about the RRS” tab of the RRS website. This included six magazine articles and some news clippings.

Image from Popular Science article

Another item added to the other RRS articles section, brought to us by John Mariano and scanned by RRS secretary, Dave Nordling, is a short book on early micrograin rockets jointly from the Reaction Research Society (RRS) and the Pacific Rocket Society (PRS). The title is simply “Micrograin Rockets” and was written by B.J. Humphreys Jr with excellent illustrations and descriptions.

Micrograin rocket and an early hybrid design (B.J. Humphreys Jr.)

Dave Nordling is also working on scanning a second book from John Mariano’s personal library which should be available soon.

A lot more will be coming soon. Frank Miuccio managed to obtain a collection of RRS newsletters. They are issue numbers 59 through 100 and he has lent them to me to scan. This will double the number of newsletters we have archived!

In addition to that, Dave Nordling has gotten for us the RRS material that happened to be scanned and collected by the Google Books Library Project. This was five documents some with several Astrojet editions included. The collection totals 934 pages in all. Although some of the Astrojet newsletters are duplicates. The collection includes reprints of the first eight RRS newsletters from our founding in 1943! A truly impressive find which we hope to share soon.

All this new material will have to be scanned and parsed before being posted, which I hope to accomplish one at a time over the next few months. I’ll write a follow-up post once it’s all up on the RRS website.

More RRS newsletters

We strongly encourage our current and former membership to consider donating or just letting the RRS borrow articles, photos and reports for scanning and inclusion into the ever-expanding RRS archives. We hope to build a great story for the RRS history project coinciding with our upcoming 75th anniversary next year.

If there are any errors, clarifications, questions, suggestions or other things you’d like to add or donate to the RRS archives, contact me at research@rrs.org.

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