This is similar to a project I've been a part of called Operation Space, the difference being we are students not backed by one single university or organization. We've been monitoring USC's progress for months and they have been a great source of motivation, especially being that they held the previous altitude record at 144,000 ft.
We are actually launching out of the same site in New Mexico in about a week and looking to break the Karman Line and hopefully this new milestone.
Link for anyone interested: https://operationspace.org/
>(At the time of this writing the rocket and payload had not been recovered.)
Normally to claim these sorts of records recovery of the vehicle is required. USC RPL's Traveler III was "thought" to have reached space but they didn't turn the avionics on beforehand and therefore didn't verify or recover.
The rocket reached 103.57km (100km is considered the edge of space) in altitude to spare anyone from reading this extremely annoying article. The solid fuel based rocket weighed 136kg and at just under 4m in height is impressively small for reaching this altitude. It’s parachutes deployed an it was recovered safely. There.
The article really is so annoying, and not just for that reason. There are no links or references to the technological advancements made here along the way. Another: they at least mention the CSXT team in passing (which the article seems to imply to an unwitting reader to not exist), but not even their name.
If I were king of a news outlet, I'd rather hire actual enthusiasts to write articles, and editors to touch them up, rather than have this kind of crap.
The fact that it has taken the university _years_ to reach the goal combined with the solid fuel systems, which is less complex (but _not_ simple), shows the determination to have another group of non-pro's to reach that coveted altitude.
The article mixes all sorts of units but doesn't say exactly where the Kármán line is supposed to be in any single unit. The closest it gets is 50 miles plus 60,000 feet, which is a rather confusing way to say 98.75 kilometers.
The actual Kármán line is at 100 kilometers.
This rocket reached an altitude of 339,800 feet, or 103.57 kilometers. Its maximum speed of 3,386 mph (assuming "normal" miles, not nautical miles) is equivalent to 1.513 kilometers per second [fixed]. It's well below orbital velocity, but good enough for poking into space and coming back down.
There's a guy in the high power rocketry hobby that is aiming for space this August at the BALLS event in Nevada. He won't say it, but given what he's done in the past, and the pictures of what he's building there's no other reasonable explanation.
A guy last year hit 244k feet ( 2/3 the way to the Karman line) on OTC solid rocket motors available to NAR or Tripoli L3 certified amateurs. Granted, it was a very exceptional rocket, but access to space by amateurs is getting closer every day.
Consider the "Tyranny of Rockets" problem: if you want to send a rocket up 1 km, you need X fuel. But to get to 2 km, you need way more than 2X fuel- because you first have to carry all that extra fuel up 1 km, which takes more energy/fuel, before you can use it to go the other km. And if you want 3 km up... well, you get the idea. It's exponential in cost.
Then the problem of the fuel itself. It has to be something super-energy-dense: lots of energy (velocity) for the least mass. The most super energy dense substances are usually used to make bombs, so basically you're building a metal tube with explosives inside and hoping that you can direct the explosion correctly such that your rocket goes up.
And then you have to make sure your payload- in this case some sensors to prove you actually went up that high- have to be lifted (mass) and not break. In the case of this team, their previous rocket probably did reach space but the sensors weren't working so they have no evidence!
If you want to really learn this stuff, play the game "Kerbal Space Program". It's not accurate in any sense, but it gives you the instincts of why and how rocketry and orbital mechanics work.
Assuming ample money, resources, and support, height isn't a big deal (for solid state rockets).
From my experience as a part of a collegiate (liquid) rocket club, just getting to manufacturing is a major hurdle.
There's legal red tape, university specific red tape, insurance/liability, material sourcing, funding, manufacturing, testing etc.
Note that some of these steps may require specialized facilities/equipment, transport, etc. Outsourcing (e.g. manufacturing) trades off for added red tape. ITAR is fun.
This makes working towards great heights a slow process, and if something goes wrong during testing/launch it's a major set back.
> For most of the history of spaceflight, sending a rocket to space required mobilizing resources on a national scale.
From the article. It's not that it is super hard to do nowadays if you have a near endless supply of resources and money, but for students in a science project it is a big deal.
i've been in the high power rocketry hobby for a year or so.
Mostly it's getting everything to go right a the same time. Fin flutter destroys rockets, so does wind sheer, so does bad flight controllers or bad programming. Parachutes not deploying properly in low pressure high altitude flights, second stage igniters not working as fast as they should at low pressure, the list goes on and on.
By and large, as long as you're using decent specific impulse propellants, the hard part is not really the rocket equation but rather that rockets are extremely complicated sustained explosions. Oh, and they're really expensive. You have to worry about pogo, combustion instability, etc.
From a simplistic standpoint, the only difference between the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters and an Estes rocket was the size.
In reality, a solid rocket motor at this scale is very difficult to manufacture reliably, and with the thrust profile that will provide the performance that you need to reach your goals.
That's not to mention the avionics in this rocket, the materials (carbon fiber laid down by the students), the deployment systems for the nose cone, and the manufacturing of the nozzle engineered to provide adequate thrust through the entire range of atmospheric pressures.
Bigger also means they can put more sensors onboard (though you can do quite a bit with Estes). But even the Shuttle SRBs used parachute recovery, although without popping the nose cone.
Biggest difference I can think of is that the SRBs had a gimballing nozzle. From photos on the project website, it looks like fins are fixed too. I don't know the law around it, but guess adding control surfaces would make this into a guided missile!
you're pretty much right on. There's not a whole lot of difference. Where it gets hard is holding it together past Mach 1 and building it in the first place. Misaligning a fin on an estes rocket is no big deal, misaligning a fin on this one would mean near-instant destruction. Also, materials, cardboard isn't going to cut it. At this scale the best option is hand rolled carbon fibre which is an art in its own right.
I'd think the spike geometry would still give ambient (maximally efficient) expansion over a range of altitudes but IDK how they'd make that work with solid propellants.
I'm sure the students didn't because it's never been done before, and you get an A for succeeding with proven technologies, not failing with unproven ones.
[+] [-] railsgirls112|6 years ago|reply
We are actually launching out of the same site in New Mexico in about a week and looking to break the Karman Line and hopefully this new milestone. Link for anyone interested: https://operationspace.org/
[+] [-] breitling|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mysterydip|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HubZemke|6 years ago|reply
https://archive.is/20121212202343/http://www.af.mil/news/sto...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwuvfKuNqZxQQ2xudkwtQXB4V0k...
From here:
https://twitter.com/skulumani/status/1131351960622391297?s=2...
[+] [-] fernandopj|6 years ago|reply
> making the USC Rocket Lab only the second amateur group to ever send a rocket to space
[+] [-] plugger|6 years ago|reply
>(At the time of this writing the rocket and payload had not been recovered.)
Normally to claim these sorts of records recovery of the vehicle is required. USC RPL's Traveler III was "thought" to have reached space but they didn't turn the avionics on beforehand and therefore didn't verify or recover.
[+] [-] davidhyde|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallace_f|6 years ago|reply
If I were king of a news outlet, I'd rather hire actual enthusiasts to write articles, and editors to touch them up, rather than have this kind of crap.
[+] [-] InafuSabi|6 years ago|reply
The fact that it has taken the university _years_ to reach the goal combined with the solid fuel systems, which is less complex (but _not_ simple), shows the determination to have another group of non-pro's to reach that coveted altitude.
[+] [-] kijin|6 years ago|reply
The actual Kármán line is at 100 kilometers.
This rocket reached an altitude of 339,800 feet, or 103.57 kilometers. Its maximum speed of 3,386 mph (assuming "normal" miles, not nautical miles) is equivalent to 1.513 kilometers per second [fixed]. It's well below orbital velocity, but good enough for poking into space and coming back down.
[+] [-] aerophilic|6 years ago|reply
Recently there have been efforts to define it as less stringent than the 100km limit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457651...
Potentially bringing it back down to 80km (the original definition was a range between 70-90km).
[+] [-] chasd00|6 years ago|reply
A guy last year hit 244k feet ( 2/3 the way to the Karman line) on OTC solid rocket motors available to NAR or Tripoli L3 certified amateurs. Granted, it was a very exceptional rocket, but access to space by amateurs is getting closer every day.
That rocket https://mach5lowdown.com/2018/11/07/phx4-rocket-launch-to-20...
BALLS http://www.tripoli.org/Balls
[+] [-] LeonM|6 years ago|reply
What else besides power/weight ratio is required to achieve something like this?
[+] [-] mabbo|6 years ago|reply
Consider the "Tyranny of Rockets" problem: if you want to send a rocket up 1 km, you need X fuel. But to get to 2 km, you need way more than 2X fuel- because you first have to carry all that extra fuel up 1 km, which takes more energy/fuel, before you can use it to go the other km. And if you want 3 km up... well, you get the idea. It's exponential in cost.
Then the problem of the fuel itself. It has to be something super-energy-dense: lots of energy (velocity) for the least mass. The most super energy dense substances are usually used to make bombs, so basically you're building a metal tube with explosives inside and hoping that you can direct the explosion correctly such that your rocket goes up.
And then you have to make sure your payload- in this case some sensors to prove you actually went up that high- have to be lifted (mass) and not break. In the case of this team, their previous rocket probably did reach space but the sensors weren't working so they have no evidence!
If you want to really learn this stuff, play the game "Kerbal Space Program". It's not accurate in any sense, but it gives you the instincts of why and how rocketry and orbital mechanics work.
[+] [-] uponcoffee|6 years ago|reply
From my experience as a part of a collegiate (liquid) rocket club, just getting to manufacturing is a major hurdle.
There's legal red tape, university specific red tape, insurance/liability, material sourcing, funding, manufacturing, testing etc.
Note that some of these steps may require specialized facilities/equipment, transport, etc. Outsourcing (e.g. manufacturing) trades off for added red tape. ITAR is fun.
This makes working towards great heights a slow process, and if something goes wrong during testing/launch it's a major set back.
[+] [-] akuji1993|6 years ago|reply
From the article. It's not that it is super hard to do nowadays if you have a near endless supply of resources and money, but for students in a science project it is a big deal.
[+] [-] chasd00|6 years ago|reply
Mostly it's getting everything to go right a the same time. Fin flutter destroys rockets, so does wind sheer, so does bad flight controllers or bad programming. Parachutes not deploying properly in low pressure high altitude flights, second stage igniters not working as fast as they should at low pressure, the list goes on and on.
[+] [-] deepnotderp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bunderbunder|6 years ago|reply
It would appear that the biggest difference between this thing and an Estes rocket is the size?
[+] [-] MPSimmons|6 years ago|reply
In reality, a solid rocket motor at this scale is very difficult to manufacture reliably, and with the thrust profile that will provide the performance that you need to reach your goals.
That's not to mention the avionics in this rocket, the materials (carbon fiber laid down by the students), the deployment systems for the nose cone, and the manufacturing of the nozzle engineered to provide adequate thrust through the entire range of atmospheric pressures.
[+] [-] delibes|6 years ago|reply
Biggest difference I can think of is that the SRBs had a gimballing nozzle. From photos on the project website, it looks like fins are fixed too. I don't know the law around it, but guess adding control surfaces would make this into a guided missile!
https://www.uscrpl.com/traveler-iv http://www.uscrpl.com/updates/2019/5/22/traveler-iv
[+] [-] chasd00|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frugalmail|6 years ago|reply
Also, wonder why not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine ?
[+] [-] mLuby|6 years ago|reply
I'd think the spike geometry would still give ambient (maximally efficient) expansion over a range of altitudes but IDK how they'd make that work with solid propellants.
I'm sure the students didn't because it's never been done before, and you get an A for succeeding with proven technologies, not failing with unproven ones.