Tag Archives: Vera Mulyani

RRS presents at Mars City PowerLab 2017

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Mars City Foundation has introduced the Power Lab for this year, 2017, to help the Mars generation develop the skills and build the tools and technology necessary for this important time and mission.

Starting August 1st, the Power Lab is a two week long “science retreat” where students will have the opportunity to explore ideas in a workshop with experts from NASA and with other technical organizations giving cross-disciplinary expertise for PowerLab attendees to begin tangibly building the technology and tools to build mankind’s future life on Mars.

Mars City Foundation

Mars City Design

RRS vice president, Frank Miuccio presented on the third day of the workshop at the University of Southern California (USC) with a presentation on the “Past, Present and Future of the RRS”. The RRS was glad to share some of our history and present endeavors and aspirations for our society.

PowerLab attendees inspect an RRS standard alpha rocket

Frank also showed the video of George Garboden’s altitude record setting amateur rocket launch back in November 23, 1996 at Black Rock, Nevada.  

RRS presents to the PowerLab attendees

Frank closed the presentation with an update on the SuperDosa project to reclaim the amateur altitude record for the RRS. The students had many questions and was interested in the many things that the RRS was doing.

The RRS is glad to continue our support of the Mars City Foundation and we hope to be present for other Mars City events in the future. The RRS thanks Vera Mulyani for inviting the society to be a part of the PowerLab event.

For any questions regarding the RRS, please contact Frank Miuccio:
vicepresident@rrs.org

For questions regarding Mars City PowerLab, visit the Mars City Foundation website:
Mars City Foundation

 

2017 RRS symposium was a success!

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The RRS held its 2017 Rocket and Space Exhibition and Symposium today, April 22nd, at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center in Gardena.

pulling up the banner

2017 RRS symposium

In attendance was Orbital-ATK, Aerospace Corporation, Tyvak, Navy Air Weapons Center at China Lake, the China Lake Museum, Rocketry Organization of California (ROC), University of California Los Angeles, University of Southern California, California State University Long Beach, University of California San Diego, University of California Irvine, Cal Poly Pomona, California Institute of Technology, Oregon State, Mars City Design, Spaceport LA and the Magnolia Science Academy.

Many of the university groups and private companies were exhibitors at the event.

UCSD SEDS group

UCLA Rocket Project

USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory

The Rocketry Organization of California (ROC) had a great exhibit.

Rocketry Organization of California (ROC)

Mars City Design and Spaceport L.A. were both at the exhibition.

Mars City Design

Mars City Design

Mars City Design

Spaceport L.A.

The China Lake Museum also had a great display for their museum in Ridgecrest, CA, soon to be unveiled to the public.

China Lake Museum Foundation

China Lake Museum

Also, we were very fortunate to have a lot of rocketry equipment on display (on loan) from Norton Sales.

TRW pintle engine on display, courtesy of Norton Sales

Norton Sales – North Hollywood, CA

thrust chamber on loan from Norton Sales at the RRS symposium exhibition

Rocketdyne Atlas vernier engine

The RRS SuperDosa full-scale mockup was also on display.

The RRS SuperDosa rocket, full-scale mockup

Also a fine piece from Apogee Astronautics, a Viper 3A booster, on loan to the RRS symposium exhibition courtesy of Robert Kleinberger.

Viper 3A booster on loan from Apogee Astronautics

Many current and former members of the RRS were at the symposium.

Larry Hoffing, Niels Anderson, Chip Bassett, George Garboden and John Mariano

Hal Duffy and Osvaldo Tarditti

George Dosa, at the RRS symposium

Richard Garcia, our director of research at the RRS, had his liquid rocket breadboard on display, one of several projects started at the RRS this year.

Richard and his liquid rocket breadboard

RRS liquid rocket vehicle breadboard, work in progress

John Mariano and Larry Hoffing were both on hand at the RRS table all day at the symposium to talk about the society’s rich history and our recent work with local schools including Hermosa, Compton’s Rise Academy and the Girls Academic Leadership Academy of LA USD.

John Mariano at the RRS symposium exhibit

RRS exhibition at the 2017 symposium

The RRS looks forward to doing more events with schools as the importance of STEAM education is increasingly important. To anyone interested in doing rocket build events with the RRS, please contact the RRS at our events email: events@rrs.org

Osvaldo and Frank started off the symposium with the welcoming speech in the exhibition hall.

Frank Miuccio, RRS VP, gives an opening speech

I had the pleasure of giving the first presentation on the RRS’s history, present and future goals.

Dave Nordling, RRS past, present and future

We had presenters running throughout the day. Our presenters gave great speeches. We had a lot of participation from industry, academia and government with a good range of topics.

Warren Frick of Orbital-ATK presents at the RRS symposium speaker series

Matt Walker of NAWC China Lake presents at the RRS symposium

Dr. Jamie Bock of Cal Tech Astronomy Department presents on the CIBER project

Mars City Design has been in partnership with the RRS. Vera Mulyani gave a great presentation on their goals. On behalf of the RRS, Frank donated an alpha to the Mars City Design team for their upcoming “An Evening on Mars” dinner event on May 25th. An Evening on Mars – May 25, 2017 The RRS is glad to be working with Mars City on this ambitious project.

An RRS alpha is donated to Mars City Design

We are very grateful to all who came and to the Ken Nakaoka Community Center for hosting our event.
Ken Nakaoka Community Center – via Facebook

Also, we had a lot of great volunteers who we are indebted for making setup and teardown go swiftly and smoothly.

Dave Nordling, Richard Garcia, Bill Janczewski

The RRS thanks all of our volunteers!

Some of the photos on this post are courtesy of Tony Richards. Thank you for taking those, Tony. If there’s more photos anyone would like to share, please let me know.
secretary@rrs.org

Also, the RRS wants to thank Tacos Los 2 Amigos for providing lunch just outside of the community center. Many people appreciated and enjoyed it!

Tacos Los 2 Amigos – Yelp

In early April, I put out a group of emails to everyone that is on the RRS mailing list that I have. At the symposium, some of our current and former members have said that they didn’t receive the notice. As it seems our mailing list hasn’t been reaching everyone, please email me at: secretary@rrs.org and I will be sure to make the update.

Also, if any of our membership is having trouble accessing the members content on the RRS.ORG website, also, please let me know. I can talk to our webmaster and get that resolved.

The RRS is looking forward to next year’s symposium and if anyone has any feedback or any suggestions for improvement for next year’s symposium, please contact Frank.

vicepresident@rrs.org

We’ll be having a launch event at the MTA this next Saturday, April 29th, with UCLA doing a static firing and a launch. I hope there will be other launches we can do at this event.

Also, our next RRS meeting will be Friday, May 12th, 7:30pm, in Gardena. Please come out as we’ve got a lot of exciting things planned this summer and fall.

February 2017 meeting

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Despite the rain, we had a good attendance at the February meeting on Friday, the 10th. We came to order at 7:51pm.

Chris Lujan said that he’d put together some notes for a future posting on sugar rockets since he has had some experience with a classic in amateur rocketry. Look for that in the coming months.

Larry Hoffing and John Mariano have started an alpha rocket build event with GALA starting this month. The USC RPL will be assisting in the instruction and the event should culminate in the launch event at the MTA on March 25th (** updated **).

Girls Academic Leadership Academy, LA USD

Vera Mulyani who was on travel called into the meeting to give her presentation on Mars City Design. USC hosted a very successful 2016 GALA event that included Buzz Aldrin as a speaker. She’s been working to solicit donors to help start prototype building of some of the first 3-D printed concrete structures. There will be a fundraising dinner on May 25th as a benefit to the organization.

Ultimately, the RRS will house a few of these exotic 3-D printed structures at our MTA site that will give us a cool extra shelter or two. According to the regolith samples taken by the Mars City teem on their site tour, the dry lake bed environment regolith materials of the RRS MTA site should work very well.

Mars City Design

After Vera’s presentation, we discussed more of the RRS Symposium. An idea was put forth to consider having a small static fire demonstration at the RRS symposium event with Steve Majdali. Possibly a black powder or sugar rocket? Still considering the details of how we could do this which certainly involves getting approval for the nearby fire station.

Also, we’ll need to get to work on the full scale mockup of the SuperDosa rocket. Osvaldo can make most if not all of the pieces, but maybe we’ll need help in getting everything ready before the symposium.

Just to re-iterate, the symposium date is hard set to be April 22nd at our same meeting location at the Ken Nakaoka Community Center (formerly called the Gardena Community Center) in Gardena, CA. One of the flyer designs we’re starting to pass around is linked below. Please download, share and post with anyone interested in coming. We’d like to start spreading the word.

rrs symposium flyer 5

As of this month’s meeting, the RRS will formally begin the history project as we are one year before our 75th anniversary. We plan to interview some of our older and current members at the symposium or in separate private interviews to recall and document whatever they can of their experiences with the RRS over the seven and a half decades of our society’s history. Our upcoming symposium will be a good opportunity for members new and past to get together. We’ll also use this opportunity to interview some and at least update contact information for members who would like to meet with us later.

Richard Garcia has been in discussions with an owner of a set of propellant tanks and a vertical test stand. The owner may consider donating a substantial amount of hardware to the RRS.

The RRS has agreed to support UCLA in an undergraduate design class (MAE 157A) by supplying some of our standard alpha and beta rockets. I have invited UCLA to come take a tour of the MTA at the next launch on March 25th. The launch event for this class with UCLA is tenatively scheduled for Saturday, June 3rd, once we can confirm this date.

Richard Garcia and myself were invited to UCLA’s Critical Design Review on Saturday, February 11th for their hybrid rocket project at the next IREC launch in June. We were also invited to a Conceptual Design Review (CoDR) on March 1st for the Tin Can project (liquid bi-prop rocket competition) at the FAR site.

We’ve been having weekly teleconferences for the symposium to help track assignments and note progress. The symposium is picking up a lot of momentum as we have confirmed several speakers from private industry and universities. We still need a lot of help from our members and others who would like to support the RRS.

Our meeting adjourned as the Ken Nakaoka Community Center closed at 9:00pm.

If there is anything I missed or misstated, please let me know.
secretary@rrs.org

Our next meeting will be Friday, March 10th.