PSAS/ news/ 2004-10-09

Hybrid Meeting Minutes 10/09/04

In attendance: Peter Bold, Tim Brandon, Maggie Emery, Eric Hettinger, Brian O’Neel, Michael Pence, Jim Ward, Evan Waymire

What we did today:

A few things were covered at today’s meeting. The main purpose of the meeting was to kick off the process of outlining the philosophy and goals for the upcoming design of a LOX/Paraffin flight motor. We spent a couple of hours brainstorming and tossing around ideas. Not a lot of headway was made but at least we have started the process.

There were a few points we agreed upon as a team:

  1. Design, build and static fire a prototype LOX/Paraffin hybrid motor in one years time.
  2. Improve our chance of success by keeping the design as simple as possible and hold off on introducing innovative, new or exotic ideas until we get a working prototype.
  3. Have a 15 second burn time.
  4. Once we decide upon a design, do not change it midstream unless that design will not allow for a working motor.
  5. Increase our accountability and have more individual ownership of subsystems.
  6. Cross train on machining and welding.
  7. Work out flexible shop hours.

It is obvious that more individual goal setting and in general “thinking about what the hybrid motor should be” needs to be done. We decided that before we can start discussing philosophy, goals and design specifics all the team members would write out what their general and specific goals for the hybrid are before the next meeting in two weeks.

The topics listed in this meetings agenda could be used as a guide but are definitely not the only things to consider. Please post you goals list here. (.txt format):

Brian briansgoals.txt
Eric ericsgoals.txt
Evan evansgoals.txt
Jim C jimcsgoals.txt
Jim W jimwsgoals.txt
Maggie maggiesgoals.txt
Michael michaelsgoals.txt
Peter petersgoals.txt

see compiled catagorized list at bottom of this page - Oct 22, 2004

We all acknowledged that before anything is physically built for the LOX/Paraffin hybrid we must finish the work on the GOX/Paraffin labs-scale motor. This is essential because we must know things like Isp and regression rate before we can start designing. We also need to work out the low chamber pressure issue and the unusual paraffin erosion issue.

We will be static firing the GOX/Paraffin motor again this coming weekend during the launch of LV2.1 in Brothers, Oregon. We will adjust the metering orifice diameter to see how this will affect the camber pressure. If time permits we will physically perform a volumetric test on the metering orifice to see if it is delivering the amount of oxygen that we have calculated. If we cannot to it before the upcoming launch then we will perform this test shortly afterwards

What’s Next:

We will meet again in two weeks to continue the discussion.

Action Items:

Some areas people have expressed interest in researching

Attachments: