Woke up to a clear crisp desert glow...
I started building motors, even before my coffee… a sure sign of excitement
Tags: XPRS warning sign flight line morning preparation rockets motors HPR Black Rock desert XPRS 2006
Mojave Green is the name of the Aerotech propellant. (click photo to enlarge)
My Nike Smoke screamed into the night on a J500 motor, weather-cocking into the wind... but the LED light control electronics could not take the g’s, and so she went dark... somewhere overhead in the eerily silent night sky. We all looked up and listened.
Someone said they heard the pop of the parachute, who knows where, and so the recovery would have to wait ‘til the morning.
P.S. The neon green comes from barium ions excited in the plasma and dropping to their ground state, releasing photons of a precise wavelength. The ions come from metal chlorides: Barium Chloride (BaCl) for green, Copper Chloride (CuCl) for blue, or Strontium Chloride (SrCl) for red. These metal chlorides generally do not exist at room temperature or are too reactive to add as an additive, so precursors are mixed in, and they react during the burn to create the desired molecules. The Chlorine comes from the Ammonium Perchlorate oxidizer for free, and one need only add metal salts such as nitrates or carbonates to provide the metal atoms. In this case, Barium Nitrate is the additive that forms BaCl during the burn to emit a laser-like green in the flame. (propellant primer)
Tags: Rocket Aeronaut Black Rock Desert Nevada Night Launch Green Mojave Propellant Neon Light Saber Ballistic Reentry
Back from the desert, and boy was the rock moving.
The winds were intense but that did not deter me from two supersonic rocket flights. =)
Tags: Gerlach Guru Road Weather Station Desert Aeronaut Rock Black Rock Desert Nevada
Sunday was very windy on the Black Rock Desert, but I figured the Vertical Assault with a special carbon fiber + aluminum tip nose cone could take just about anything. This was her maiden flight, so I started with the highest impulse motor available in the 54mm diameter — the Cesaroni L935 Imax from Canada, eh! I had not seen this propellant fly before, and it has an unusual plume.
She screamed off the pad, tilted into the wind as expected and roared out of sight. I was using an RF tracking beacon, but my son's keen eyesight was a better tool for finding her down wind.
The computer readout is below, but in short, she pulled 20 g's to go 1,084 MPH and reach 13,711 vertical ft. and about 15K ft. on the diagonal. It accelerated from zero to supersonic 1.86 seconds, within 1,037 feet.
Another special treat: my friend Todd and his fellow Burning Man Rangers were up on Old Razorback Mountain adding a time lapse camera to the solar array/battery/ham radio/wifi beacon rig they have on the mountain top. Todd got one launch photo during this Aeronaut launch weekend, and it happened to be this flight (posted below)
Launch video compilation (HD).
Tags: Rocket Aeronaut Black Rock Desert Nevada GLR Vertical Assault L935 Imax Launch Blastoff Supersonic Mach Trig
With the very wet winter, the triops came out in full bloom in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. When the lake bed dried, they baked into the surface, like fossils in shale.
But they are modern fossils in the archaic sense as well. They are among the oldest surviving group of animals on Earth. They first arose in the Devonian period 350 million years ago, before the dinosaurs came and went.
And they are really weird! They have three eyes and 144 legs, and they breathe through their feet. Their eggs can lie dormant for 20 years without food or water to hatch anew.
They make great pets... with a long shelf life. That’s why I recognized them right away.
Tags: Triops Aquasaur Playa Chunks Tadpole Shrimp Black Rock Desert Nevada Ancient Creatures Freakazoids FSM