New Armadillo website posting February 12th 2013 :-)

STIG B Program Update - Preamble

Update by Neil Milburn, February 12th 2013

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/A ... ews_id=380

That new ACS system looks amazing!

Thanks for writing this Neil Milburn and thanks for pointing it out TranceCode!

I'm looking forward to the other updates

Me too!

But the current one is also interesting. Kristian von Bengtson of Copenhagen Suborbitals recently wrote that "building space rockets is mostly a matter of bending and welding metals". Looks like he's right on the money, and at the same time it's something you don't hear about often. This post gives some insight into how difficult it really is to make a sizeable rocket, and perhaps an argument for going with an OTRAG-style cluster of smaller tubes. Anyway, well done to James for solving it. Good thing he likes to weld!

It is very interesting seeing the difficulty’s found in manufacture and really illustrates the differences between drawing a rocket and manufacturing one.

Edited for diabolical spelling

Indeed. I wonder if they considered using the same wall thickness of the smaller rocket, and then overwrapping the tank with carbon fibre or kevlar or somesuch to increase the strength. Maybe the cryogenic temperatures and repeated cycling in a reusable vehicle are a problem for the composites?

By the way, I just noticed that they skipped update number 379 (at the end of the URL), which I linked to in my April Fool's post last year, and that this is 380 instead .

Long time lurker, first time poster!

This weekend they released two new videos. Both appear to be from the 10/6/2012 launch that had the in-flight abort, but with successful recovery via the Wamore system. The one below is an onboard launch to landing shot…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UolAOKdLsaM

Pure speculation on my part, but it looks like something happens at around 20 seconds into the flight, it starts to nose over, the cold gas thruster system is trying to maintain attitude, but is unable to do so (engine gimbaling issue perhaps?) I assume an abort threshold is hit (appears to be approaching horizontal flight) and it then shuts down the engine. It is interesting to watch the Wamore system in action and I am sure they learned a lot from this launch even if it didn’t go 100% as they had hoped.

From just watching the landing, I am assuming it was heavy due to not going through all its fuel, and was experiencing a higher than optimal rate of decent, but regardless, it looks like the nozzle/engine took a hard hit. I wonder if they have put any thought to something that might extend downward past the nozzle to take the main shock of the landing? Maybe deploy some type of simple crushable structure could be deployed after the engine shuts down? Maybe it’s not worth the trouble to protect for a rare heavy landing.

Anyhow, I enjoyed the recent news update (patiently waiting for the rest). I wish they did more frequent updates, but understand their main objective is to not provide entertainment for us. I really am fascinated by what they are doing and wish them well!

Richard

Yessssssssssssssssssssss

Well, I guess that puts STIG B in the same category as Ariane 5 now . Both failed on the first flight due to using a GNC component from an earlier rocket...

But seriously, here's another under-discussed area in space flight: everyone worries about going up, and for most flights I guess that's it, but if we want to make things reusable then coming down is just as important. It's good to see that they've got this working pretty well. Some strengthening here and there and it seems to be quite possible to get everything back more or less undamaged. The track from the Wamore system looks weird though, with all those loops. I guess it has to take into account the wind changing with altitude and the fact that it has limited control, but I can't imagine the kind of algorithm they're using. Very interesting!

Looking forward to the next update, and especially the last one which I guess we're all hoping is the big payoff at the end of the season .

Since I only noticed it because of the references that Lourens made in his post:

For everyone (like myself) that missed it: there is ANOTHER new post up from February 22nd!

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/A ... ews_id=422

I guess it's down to having to move around whilst losing height - in much the same way as a skydiver under chute tracks back and forth over the drop zone whilst losing height - you might be right over the required point but 1000m up, so you needs to loop around. That tracks looks pretty impressive tbh, the software did a great job of steering the path around during the descent.

Well, I was thinking that I'd probably just try to fly circles around the goal, and compensate for any drift, or try to gauge the wind and make a 45 degree turn approach like in an aeroplane. This looks like spaghetti though . It doesn't look like a simple steer-towards-the-goal kind of thing.

I wonder what information it gets, it would probably really help if it had the ground level altitude at the drop zone, so that it can compute its height above ground level. Then if you know the glide slope, you can compute how long you need to make the path to the goal. But still you would then expect some more-or-less regular back and forth that gradually closes in on the goal. Mysterious .

I *think* you would always want to be downwind of the landing site during approach, so you always land in to the wind, as that reduces horizontal speed on impact. So you won't go round and round but perform figure of eights just downwind until ready for final approach.#

Doing figure of eights means you spend less time going downwind - you are always turning in to the wind (tack vs gibe in sailing terms), which means you don't lose so much ground during the turns.

Head's up! Update number 3 on STIG B flight II!

Its just like the good ol' days with these updates!!!