Activity

Adrian,Are you using peel ply and breather when you place the fins between the floor tiles or ????Warren

Here’s the latest status:Next comes fillets and tip-to-tip unidirectional carbon. After thinking about it a bit, I believe that by orienting the fibers so that from the fin root the fibers are angled forward, that will make the fins twist…   Read more»

The fins are coming along. After some sanding they’re 33 mils thick and 1.1 grams apiece.Unidirectional carbon fiber is funny stuff. The fins are now very stiff in bending in the usual way fins bend, and they’re also very stiff…   Read more»

I’ll take that motor tube – I need a mandrel for making carbon tubing.Warren

Here’s the avbay, Beeline side up:And Parrot side up:The avbay is 2.4 inches long. The helical wire is the Beeline’s antenna. The Parrot will keep it off until apogee after the deployment charge has fired in order to eliminate interference.

Thanks, Ed.I’d like to take you up on that sometime, but probably not for a while, unless I lose this one right away. You’ll probably have turned it into motors by then, but I’ll contact you when the time comes.

If you want to make another airframe I’ve got 24″ or so of 29mm motor tube that I’ve been making 29mm cases out of. I wonder how much difference a 29mm 5:1 Von Karman nosecone would make :)Edward

The extra layer of unidirectional carbon brought the thickness up to 0.03 and the mass up to 0.8 grams each. They’re amazingly stiff bending them as if they were attached to the airframe, but pretty flexible in the other direction….   Read more»

Here’s the tube after it came out. I sanded it a bit and hit the middle part with some clear coat. It’s almost 13″ long, and 29 grams. It seems much stiffer and stronger than it needs to be. But…   Read more»

It’s looking like a complete success so far. I couldn’t be happier for those guys. A lot of them are the same folks who worked with me on the failed Mars Polar Lander in 1998, which was a very similar…   Read more»

Should only be a few minutes before we know… then the first image… of the solar arrays. Once we get that, I can go out for dinner and a beer.Warren

Deployment of the solar arrays is the next critical event. Fingers crossed. This is the first flight use of the Ultraflex solar arrays, the same design (though smaller) as the ones in the Orion design.

Watched it live… well, watched a bunch of nervous people at consoles suddenly jump up and down screaming “WooHOO!!!”Nice when we get it right… Lots of hugs going on in Mission Control.Warren

Woo HOO!Phoenix has landed.

Thanks Adrian… live now on the big screen in the living room… well, 15 minutes and some delayed from Mars… and mostly showing mission control.Warren

Yes, a little before then. Here’s the schedule:(Don’t be fooled by the following being in central time. It really starts about 5:30 our time. )’MARS PHOENIX LANDER’ TIMELINE times CentralNOTE: Navigational adjustments before Sunday could shift times by up to…   Read more»

very, very, coolIs it landing about 6:00pm our time?

2300′ on an I285 CTI2800′ on an J285 CTI2020′ on an I300 RMS

Well it’s like this. “SIM” Pretty Darn High. 1/2 the flight will be up and 1/2 theflight will be down. Down with chute. Hard to put in my program for an accurate result.My 4.0 upscale flew real stable and straght….   Read more»

Nice job Mike. I always love seeing upscale estes rockets. I got a 3x upscale yellow jacket in the works. Hope to have it ready for October fest.