LUNAR’clips
2004
Volume 11, Number 5
LUNAR’clips
2004
Volume 11, Number 5
Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry September/October 2004
Copyright © 2004 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.
Just a reminder of the few events for the rest of the year. The only "extracurricular" item is the "Girls Go Tech" event on November 20th in Oakland. Before that, our first HP launch of the season is scheduled for October 30 at Snow Ranch, and the one after that on December 4. I have asked the FAA for waiver activation on both those days, plus the Saturdays one week after (November 6 and December 11, respectively) as rain dates. The last two LP launches at Robertson are scheduled for November 20th and December 18th, regular times.
Finally, remember that our November meeting on the 17th is our annual planning meeting where we'll hammer out the schedule for '05, and nominate officers for next year as well. Nominations will remain open until the January meeting when we'll vote.
Even though my spell checker hates that heading, the rest of the world was just electrified at Burt Rutan and his Scaled Composites team capturing the $10 million X-Prize on October 4th. The prize rules said that they had to fly twice in less than two weeks, but they actually did the second flight less than a week after the first one on September 29th. The reason they hurried was to make the prize-winning flight on a significant aerospace anniversary. October 4th is, of course, the date in 1957 that the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. Most people don't realize, though, that the Sputnik launch was, itself, scheduled for a significant anniversary. The original launch date of Sputnik I was supposed to be September 17, 1957, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's 100th birthday, but they were a little late.
One of the reasons SpaceShipOne could be turned around so quickly is that its rocket motor is a scaled up version of the hybrid motors used in our hobby. It uses polybutediene rubber for fuel (the same as composite motors) and nitrous oxide for the oxidizer (like hybrid motors), only it's liquefied to pack more of it in the tank. This has lead people to ask what NAR letter class the motor might be. From the Scaled Composites website, the engine puts out 17,000 pounds of thrust (75,000 Newtons) and burns for approx 80 seconds. Of course, that's far from a uniform burn, but just for arguments sake, that's 6 million Newton-seconds which puts it just into the "W" range (5,242,880 to 10,485,760 Newton-seconds). That makes it a "W75,000."
In a very ironic, and very sad coincidence, Gordon "Gordo" Cooper passed away on the very day that SpaceShipOne made its historic flight. Cooper was one of the original Mercury astronauts. He made the last Mercury flight (Faith 7) thus becoming the last man to orbit the Earth solo, at least until the Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei made that country's first space flight, just a year ago (October 16 last year). Still, Cooper's 22 orbits in 33 hours eclipses the Chinese flight of 14 orbits (21 hours) meaning that Cooper still holds the record for being in space the longest all by yourself. He commanded the third Gemini flight, Gemini V (the first two flights were unmanned), with Pete Conrad, which also set an endurance record (five days). During that flight is when we passed the Soviets in total man-hours in space. He was backup pilot for Apollo 10, but in one of the obituaries I read, he claims that "politics" forced him out of the space program before he got his trip to the moon.
The seven Mercury astronauts divided up rides aboard the four different types of US manned spacecraft in just about every way possible. Listed in their "Mercury flight" order:
There is only one pair of duplications, Grissom and Cooper, who both flew in Mercury and Gemini, but Grissom was rehearsing to command Apollo 1 when he and his two crew mates were killed in the pad fire in 1967.
For those of you out there who are aerospace historians, or just have a keen interest in the history of the US space program, the definitive book on Apollo has just been reprinted. It's called simply Apollo, written by Charles Murray and Catherine Cox. It tells the story not from the astronaut's point-of-view, but rather that of the scientists, engineers and administrators that made it all happen. It is not highly technical, instead it reads more like a novel. It was originally published in 1989 with the title Apollo: The Race To the Moon. This is a paperback reprint, and is well worth your time to check out if you have even the slightest interest in the history of the moon program.
With reprints, authors don't get a book tours, radio interviews, etc. The only publicity is word-of-mouth, so I'm doing what I can here. You can check it out at: www.apollostory.com. There are not only snippets of the book there, but some audio files of actual ground controller conversations at critical times in the program, such as when Apollo 12 was struck by lightning, or when Fred Haise reported "Houston, we've had a problem" on Apollo 13. These are the bits you didn't hear on TV or the documentaries.
Those High Power fliers out there should be interested in the following announcement from NAR president, Mark Bundick, regarding the NAR/Tripoli lawsuit against the BATF. Earlier this year, the judge in the case found, in a preliminary ruling, that the BATF was guilty of "capricious and arbitrary rule making" regarding our hobby. Basically, they were making it up as they went along, and didn't follow government guidelines for rule making in federal agencies. The judge basically told them to cease and desist while the rest of the case was being reviewed. They haven't. Many rocket fliers either applying for, or renewing their LEUP's have been hassled by agents in direct violation of the judge's orders. Here's the official announcement from Bunny:
The NAR and TRA have petitioned the U. S. District Court in Washington, DC for an acceleration of the planned December 17, 2004 status conference. The full text of the petition can be found at the NAR website, www.nar.org. The Court has agreed to a revised date of October 15, 2004, for this important conference.
Our request was triggered by two events: the publication of a "Questions and Answers Hobby Rocket Motors" document at the ATF Explosives website, and an apparent attempt to enforce these illegally promulgated regulations on at least one motor dealer.
In light of these events, we again suggest that members need to be vigilant for attempts by any ATF personnel attempts to impose conditions on rocketeers which are counter to the April 2004 Court opinion or for which legally promulgated regulations do not exist. Members who experience treatment similar to that outlined above or who are threatened or receive enforcement action should immediately contact NAR President Mark Bundick via email or at 630-293-9343 or TRA President Ken Good via email or at 412-373-2734 and provide full details of those action or threats. It will be important to record your experience in as much detail as possible so counsel can then seek the appropriate relief from Judge Walton's court
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