Commander Kip Quasar's Galactic Zephyr

Overview

Whenever I was feeling a little too under-the-weather to attend school at John Ericsson Elementary, I would invariably spend the afternoon watching the Mel Jass Matinee Movie on Channel 11 (right after "Lunch with Casey"). Once in a great while the feature for the day was a sci-fi classic from the 1950's like Project Moonbase or Destination Moon. The Galactic Zephyr is a tribute to those 1950's classics, a cigar-shaped blastoff-to-the-stars streaking silver bullet.

The Zephyr stands about 13 feet tall, with a diameter of 18 inches at its widest point. The span diameter is 46 inches, and the target dry weight is around 55 pounds. It is equipped to accept a Hypertek 98mm hybrid motor with either a 3500cc or a 4630cc nitrous oxide tank, and has also flown on AP and sorbitol motors. Fully loaded, the rocket weighs between 85 and 100 pounds depending on the motor. On the hybrid M it flies ao a maximum altitude of 3500 feet with a maximum velocity just over 400 feet per second, and on the N motors it flies to about 6000 feet with a maximum velocity of about 600 feet per second.

The plans for the first flight changed slightly from the original communications; the Zephyr's maiden flight was at a Superstition Spacemodeling Society club launch on May 10, 2003. Click [HERE!] for details. The certification was monitored and approved by Paul Holmes, a recent addition to the L3CC. Special thanks go to Andy Woerner for his advice through the early early stages of the process.

The rocket is capable of multiple staged deployment, and utilized this capability for my Level Three certification flight. The Zephyr separated at the waist and an eight-foot drogue deployed at apogee. It descended to about 800 feet at the rate of 42 feet per second, and a second charge will blow off the nose cone. A 6-foot parachute on the nose will pulled a deployment bag off the 24-foot main. The nose cone recovered separately, and the fuslage landed at approximately 13 feet per second.

The rocket is a simple 3FNC design, but the fuselage is slightly more complicated -- the airframe is sculpted out of Styrofoam and overlaid with a Fiberglass skin. Other than the specialized craftsmanship required for this design, it presents only one significant challenge for the certification process: traditional mathematical models for the calculation of aerodynamic stability are not perfectly adaptable to contoured airframes. I overcame this obstacle by using every stability calculation method at my disposal and logically eliminating or adapting those that produced anomalous results.

The fins are canted just slightly to induce a clockwise spin. Because of the shape of the airframe, it is virtually impossible to detect if the nose is out of alignment with the thrust vector. Any misalignment is compensated by the spin stabilization. This turned out to be a wise choice.

INDEX

Introduction (narrative) Flights First Flight Second Flight Third Flight Fourth Flight Fifth Flight Construction Package Scale Dimensional Drawing Airframe Construction Nose Construction Fin Construction Recovery Package Avionics (Control Devices) Recovery Operation Description Recovery Hardware and Components Pyrotechnic Devices Shear Pins Ejection Testing Stability Evaluation Launch Pad Description Stability Overview RockSim Simulation AeroCFDSimulation Barrowman Calculations Conclusions Postscript - the "anti-zephyr" Flight Performance Parameters Motor Description Launch Weight Launch Velocity Estimated Drag Coefficient Maximim Altitude and Velocity Procedural Checklists (MS word document) Pre-Launch Checklist Motor Preparation and Installation Recovery Preparation Parachute and Harness Preparation Control Devices Preparation Pyrotechnics Preparation Launch Checklist Pad Procedures Launch Sequence Misfire Procedures Recovery Checklist Normal Recovery Procedures Flight Failure Procedures Calculations and Resource Files Maiden Flight Video RockSim File M1010 WRASP/RockSim motor data M1010 Flight Simulation M1000 WRASP/RockSim motor data M1000 Flight Simulation Barrowman Calculations Descent Calculations Parts List HyperTEK Manual.pdf

PHOTO BY BILLY DAHLBERG