Team Prometheus Testing Thread

For those who want to follow along, we are starting to post videos of the vacuum chamber qualification tests. These are taken with the same HD GoPro camera that will be flying on the NSE-6 mission, downconverted to lower resolution for YouTube.

Vacuum Chamber Testing, Day 1 (igniters):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIcl_CvzNMs

Altimeter Test 2 (camera battery died 2 minutes in):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiM9_BNBibE

Igniter Test 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCasRsjxzCk

Stew

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woah prometheus takes bitcoin donations now? hahahaha set up your own pool and i'll set up a gpu miner or two or twelve for you!

Wow, that is super! What a great idea. We'll take all we can get. As everyone around here knows, "No Bucks, No Buck Rogers". We excel in low budget aerospace, but it still helps to keep the lights on and the team fed....

I will investigate setting up our own pool, but until we can do that you can donate spare cycles at bitcoinpool.com. I set up an account for us:

username: Team Prometheus
password: magWUV50

Note that bitcoinpool prefers their own miner, poclbm-mod. I currently have two 5850's crunching away full time for about 1 BTC/day. Depending on the relative capability of the GPU's you have access to, this could really add up quickly!

Note: please avoid any career-limiting moves....


PS... The gravity fractal is cool, but I'm not sure I fully understand it. Phase space I get, but what are the coordinate axes? A transverse cross section across the orbital plane, or something else like semimajor axis?

Stew,

The test videos look great. Are you planning on doing some motor ignition tests in a vacuum? You'll need a larger vacuum chamber because a few chuffs from a motor could bring the chamber pressure up enough to get it going, and it wouldn't be a good simulation of the pressure at 80k feet. I recall discussing the use of a large diameter, 10-foot long section of PVC pipe for that.

Have you tried making a gasket out of rubber for the lid seal? It seems like it should work. The melted wax or plastic that you guys were using seems a bit messy. However, it was entertaining watching Monroe melt it with a torch while trying not burn his fingers. A pair of pliers come in real handy for something like that.

Dave

Dave,

Yes, you bring up several good points. Extending the vacuum chamber is on the to-do list, the current chamber isn't long enough to hold the completed avionics bay. We do intend to do motor ignition testing in the vacuum chamber and I think you have a valid point about chuffs. We have moved to sealing the glass plate on with grease instead of wax and it seems to also work fairly well. It helps that we are trying to simulate 80,000 feet not space, so the vacuum has to be good but not great. We have achieved altimeter readings of 87,000 feet barometric so far.

Stew

PS- we weren't filming when Monroe lit a big chunk of pyrogen and toasted his thumb....

Guess I should take a photo of the blister and post it lol! We added some more oxidizer to the mix and it was much more energetic! About 5 fold! Anyway cant wait to test some more in the chamber today!
BPN get's really hot! I hope we finish the av-bay today! Very close to a ground launch test!

Monroe