I "moved" this from the "General" thread header. It is about electronic payloads and/or something to do after L3. We can discuss general projects, etc. For me, I'm still doing research on what I want to do. My ideal situation is to design and build a modular payload system, so that I can change sensors for whatever I want to do for a launch. The obvious for me is a weather sensing payload. I know, we have weather balloons, so what's the point? Eh, just want to. The project that I'm seriously considering right now is monitoring the transition to Mach 1. We've all seen those neat pictures of jets showing their Mach shock wave and the Ares rocket with its. Does something like that happen to our rockets? I don't know. It seems to me that it would have to. We're just not there to see it. Perhaps a CCD camera mounted upward might show something if a uC senses when the rocket is about to transition through Mach 1 and turns the camera on. Or/and, use a vibration sensor to see if/how much vibration (and what frequency) the rocket goes through. I'm still thinking about this. Any suggestions?
Brent had a great project going on modular sections of his rocket -including payload and different applications of bay internals and options.
In terms of gathering data on various parts of the rocket, rocketmaterials.org has a page on sensors planned for a data gathering rocket. The strain gauges and temperature sensors seem of particular interest for Mach+ flights.
For getting footage of a shockwave, it's probably easiest these days to just run a camera these days. It doesn't cost much to store 1hr+ of 640x480 video. That said, developing sensors and predicting when to turn on the camera sounds like a good project. One draw back most of the time in CO though, the often relatively low humidity near ground level might make creating a vapor cloud difficult. To make things more interesting, a vapor cloud is, I believe, a transonic phenomenon. So, gathering data on relative humidity ranges, air speed ranges, air and skin temperature, and other factors in their creation would be really neat. After a bit of reading, it seems it might also be possible to create this effect with high G forces at subsonic speeds (K2045 Vmax in a min. dia. CF rocket?)
Sounds like a nice project, combines gathering atmospheric data, performance data, and camera work!
I know, all the things I wanted to do in one swoop! I had another recommendation to get temperature from various parts of the rocket going into Mach. JW swears the paint on his nose cone melts when his does. Plus, most of us have seen the Mach rash on the fin can from his last two highest altitude flights. We all make assumptions about what goes on; now we can really find out. One member said that on a camera flight that almost hit Mach, the rocket shook violentlly for a good 3 seconds, while the rocket was on the edge of Mach (it was too large to get there, but it was close). Very cool. 😉
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