Curiosity... watch the build!

Hey all. 2 days ago a ustream feed went live that is just too cool... the clean room where they're building the next Mars rover, the enormous Curiosity. Check it out HERE.

This thing is, for a rover, HUGE! Its about 8 feet long, 6 feet high without things deployed, the wheels are like 20 inches in diameter, it's like they put Spirit in an up-scale ray.

Thanks to Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer, for pointing it out.... DR

Bob's gets a "Drive-through" window

This, from Ralph, according to WSOC-TV:

"Just saw on WSOC TV that an man parking his car at Bob's hit the gas instead of the breaks and crashed into Bob's, sounds like around supper time. Had we flown, some of us may have been there. How ironic... The Rocket Gods were smiling on us in an unsual way.

Looks like he came through the wall between the door and the side room were we normally sit.  Looks bad as they had replace that whole wall. Said the driver and two customers were transported to the hospital, one or two had life threatimg injurries."

Sometimes you just don't know why things happen the way they do, but it sure is ironic sometimes!

DR

October launch window

This, from Kip via Ralph this morning:

OK, Finally got up with Kip last night and had a good conversation about a lot of things, most importantly about the launch.

The corn fields to the north are full of corn shucks left over from the harvest, he decided to leave it that way versus bush hogging it like he normally does.  They have already planted the grain for the wheat and barley winter crops.  So basically the field is full of dry fuel.  The soybean field is drying down now, its not green as it was last month.  The drought index has us in the "Abnormally dry" area with no rain in the last two weeks. Not Good. The corn crop harvest this year has not yielded what he was expecting, plus the soybeans don't look like they will give a good yield either. 

 

Next Item:  Weather. Since we'll be on the backside of this front coming through Thursday with not much rain forecasted.  The winds per Wunderground.com are forecasted to be from the NNW at 6mph in the afternoon, blowing straight to the beans.

 

Plus, Race traffic Saturday would make it rough for people coming in from the North.

 

Based on all the conditions I say we wait till next month to attempt a launch once all crops are out.  Kip would be OK with us to wait as well.

 

He could not give me a date yet on the harvest of the beans, they have to dry down to a certain point before the harvest.  It has usually been the 1st or 2nd week of November in the past.  The dryer we stay the sooner it will happen.

 

Thanks,

Ralph

Science Channel "The Rocket Project"

Check this out: 

Here's the description: Eight high school students begin a journey to design, build and launch a rocket out of the stratosphere. As inevitable delays and mechanical troubles set in, even a healthy dose of support and know-how may not be enough to get the rocket off the ground.

I caught this and it was wonderful. Very inspiring. It will be repeated once more at 4:00 am on Monday morning so set your recorders!

DR

Welcome!

Welcome to the "new look" for the ROCC site! In a short while we'll move the net pointer for rocketrycarolina.org to point to this site.

Members will be able to get news, RSS feeds from the main news site, participate in discussion boards, post photos and leave comments on those photos. And it will be hosted on a server that's a lot faster and more reliable than we've ever had before.

Look around... get the feel of the place. It's still under construction, so bear with us as we refine it. If you're a member of ROCC and haven't gotten an email from us please send a request to rocketrycarolina at gmail dot com and let us know.

Doc Russell

Thank Yous, and a request...

A HUGE thank you to all the folks that came out and helped with the Y-Guides demo to make it a success. There were a few give and takes on the field, but all went fairly well considering. Bob lost a casing in the trees, and there was a rather nerve wracking finale', but all in all it was a good show and they were pleased. The request part? Well, that finale' I spoke about? The last rack of the night had a G-71 on it, and the nozzle had something wrong. At least that's what we think happened. Anyway, the rocket hung up coming off the 1/4" rod and basically swung on the end of the rod in a 360 degree arc before it ripped the lug apart and hit the ground, where it skimmed toward the line of parked cars for about 50 feet. It stopped short, then unceremoniously fired the ejection charge without further problems. Amazingly it didn't catch anything on fire. (I thought we were going to really need those fire guys!) Here's the request part. I don't know if it would have been safer or not, but the 1/4" rod was not strong enough for the rocket weight and motor power. I really think that we need to stress the use of the rails for G-plus projects. Please, think about using rail buttons if possible. They don't cost that much and now that we have plenty of rails we really don't have any reason not to. DR

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September 18th

On September 18th there is another opportunity for ROCC to shine the light on rocketry with another outreach session. It'll be back at Rural Hill Farms. (map located here) It'll be late in the afternoon. The Y-Guides have invited us to participate in their weekend of activities by flying a Demo Launch. This time we will not have kids' rockets to prep and fly but we need to keep them entertained and keep things moving. As you can see from the map the site is fairly small, so FAR-101 rules will apply. Rule of thumb is just about any G under 80N average thrust and under 62.5g propellant weight. If you look at the map closely the square site to the north is the corn maze so that's not really available for recovery. If you're available to help please contact Brad at his usual email address. Discussion is located on ROCC's Rocketry Planet site. DR

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It's not Rocket Science... Oh, wait, yes it is

You know, we spend a lot of time fooling around with some pretty esoteric stuff, and a lot of terms get bandied about, but when it comes down to it we are really dealing with some heavy duty math. I got curious and Googled "Barrowman", that is James Barrowman, from the NASA sounding rocket branch, who did his Master's thesis on 'The Practical Calculation of the Aerodynamic Characteristics of Slender Finned Vehicles'. What I found, and thought I'd share, is a wonderful page of links to all of the math that goes into rocket stability and performance that you'd probably ever need. Here's a LINK

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Only 2 more days

There's only today and Monday to get your butt down to Orangeburg for one of the best annual weekend launches this side of the Mississippi! I encourage everyone that can go to head on down to O'burg this year and either fly or watch the great show. Here's a LINK to the ICBM-SC message board on Freedom launch and here's a LINK to the Super Sod farm location on Chop Road in O'burg. Happy flying!!! DR

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This is COOL

OK, I don't really mean to step on the conversation about the upcoming Orangeburg festivities, but our own Dr. Doug and his kids have been at it again. He sent a link to the Fliker feed of photos from their high altitude balloon flight this past weekend. This LINK should get you there. Approximate altitude is 85,000 ft. Yes, that's about 16 miles! Way to GO!

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