“The Big Project”………..sort of

Warren once told me about TRA's “Big Project”, which was to try to put an amateur rocket into orbit.  Earlier this week, about the closest thing to using an amateur rocket to get to orbit was launched from Hawaii.  It looks remarkably like an amateur rocket, and its first stage is fin- and spin-stabilized — no active guidance.  And, it launches from a rail on a moveable truss!!!

Looks just like one of ours, eh?   Just a little larger…..it's 55 feet long.  Because the first stage is unguided, they have to angle the launch rail at the Azimuth and Elevation needed for the desired trajectory.

Stage 1 has 284,000 pounds of thrust and burns for 73 seconds, which gives it a total impulse of ~92,000,000 N-s, which makes it equivalent to two Z motors.  It has a “very high” thrust-to-weight (by satellite launching standards) of 4.8:1, which sounds about right for us.

Unfortunately, the launch failed — about a minute into the flight, it started to nutate, and then broke apart.  The video from the on-board camera will look very familiar to anyone who's watched an amateur rocket video:

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/11/04/video-clips-show-rocket-anomaly-high-above-hawaii/

Here are a couple of links for more info about it:

Super Strypi conducts inaugural launch – Fails during first stage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARK_%28rocket%29