Smash Rocketry New Group Project – The Proton M

[smashburn]

WhooHoo!. ! we are good to go for launch on Sunday. Adrian has done an amazing job on the electronics and James helped me finalize the deployment components.

I’ll be at the hanger on Wed finishing up …

[Warren B. MusselmanModerator]

So the launch is scheduled for Sunday – any time frame? I really would love to see this fly and I can probably steal away for a few hours to come up if the weather looks like a go.

[Bret PackardParticipant]

As of 1 page ago it was scheduled for between 1 and 2 pm on Sunday

[AdrianParticipant]

My prep is going way overtime, so now I’m planning to come up early tomorrow so I can keep working tonight. I have range duty in the morning tomorrow and then I’ll be free to install the electronics sleds in the Proton.

[smashburn]

Well .. we got it off, though the flight was not totally successful. We’ll post pics as we get them. Here’s a pad shot w/ the new graphics from StickerShock.

I’d also like to thank everyone for their amazing hard work and friendship throughout this project. We certainly would have preferred a more successful end, but it was pretty awesome nonetheless. We will likely rebuild and try again .. but it will be a while.

I’d also like to thank all the generous contributors as their donations made this possible in the first place.

We’ll be analyzing the pics, vids, and flight data over the next few weeks and hope to determine causes for the failures we had.

Thanks! Steve

[James Russell]

The thing about projects like this is they brings people together and letting then interact together in ways they may not otherwise. Bringing all kinds of different skills, knowledge and and experience, we learn from each other and together with both our success and failures.

We successfully built lots of different relationships, successfully build a three stage rocket, learning lots of different building techniques. We over came challenges of all kinds, though the flight was not what was expected I still think it was successful in many other ways.

Steve and everyone, thanks for letting me be part of the project, I can’t wait for the next one!

[Kevin OslerParticipant]

Here is a video my son Josh took with his Iphone from in front of Rich’s trailer. You can barely see what looks like a long metal cylinder (the Cessaroni motor casing) falling from the rocket in the 28s to 32s timeframe, then hit the ground with a large dust cloud 33 seconds in to the video.
Here’s the link:http://home.comcast.net/~k.osler/protonm2.wmv
Heres a picture of impact at 33 sec:
http://home.comcast.net/~k.osler/Snap1.bmp

Kevin[/url]

[AdrianParticipant]

Well said, James and Steve!

[John A. WilkeParticipant]

Congrats to you guys for taking on an incredible project. Sorry it didn’t work out this time, but I’ll bet you’ll be back with another attempt. The coordination of skill sets, schedules, etc. on something like that is astounding.

No one was hurt, no fires were started, and most everyone that was involved is probably a lot better flyer today as a result of participating in the project. Against that backdrop, you had great success!

[BEAR]

Ditto on the comments from Steve, Adrian, and James. I am grateful to have been allowed to be part of this thing. I look forward to helping rebuild the Proton M. There were so many skillsets involved in this project, it was rather astounding. I was amazed at how evryone worked together on Sunday morning for the assembly. It was incredible. I am also grateful for the friendships, realtionships and bonds that were started and developed. Without this, I do not know if I would have the friendships that are growing now. Again thanks, and to each and everyone involved. Saddle up and let’s do it.

[Author]

Posts