Hybrid Meeting Minutes 10/23/04
In attendance: Tim Brandon, Jim Cloer, Maggie Emery, Eric Hettinger, Brian O’Neel, Michael Pence, Jim Ward, Evan Waymire
What we did today:
We worked on nailing down the philosophy and general goals for the LOX/Paraffin project. We partially went through the compiled list of everyones goals to try to come to a consensus. We did not make it far but we plan on dynamically modifying this list during the coming week and then meeting a week from today (Saturday at noon (10/30)at the Market street Mc Minimums) to discuss it again in detail.
If you're a hybrid team member please make your changes to the following Philosophy and General Goals list:
Enter new material in BLACK. Do not delete old material. Move old material down and color it RED.
Philosophy:
(Discussed)
VALUES
- Make it safe, simple, and reliable.
- All aspects of the LOX/Paraffin motor will be open source. If it’s not open source then it will not be part of the PSAS LOX/Paraffin motor.
- Members commit to completion of tasks on time. If that is not possible, members will ask for help or otherwise communicate to the group so that reasonable arrangements can be made. (Needing help or being short of time, by themselves are normal problems we all encounter. What we want to avoid are sudden and disappointing revelations that come unnecessarily, too late.)
Take ownership and be accountable, if that’s not possible then be honest enough to pass it off.
PROCEDURAL
- Data reduction will be performed by more than a single individual. The results of the reduction will be discussed and a consensus by the group will determine the direction in which to go.
Isn't this a specific actually targeted to something more general?
(Not yet discussed) (PLEASE EDIT)
- Vote on project issues (Michael)
- Take incremental design steps (Maggie)
- Move in incremental steps (Michael)
- During design and testing only adjust one variable at a time (Michael)
- Keep R&D and production separate (Michael)
- Define an initial end goal but be flexible enough to take advantage of discoveries along the way and refine that goal as we approach it. (Jim W)
- Start with very simple design, try novel ideas on later generations. (Brian)
- Once finalized to not modify design unless it can be shown that current design will not meet goals. (Brian)
- We need to be clear about our primary objective and then not get distracted by peripheral concerns. (Evan)
Don’t introduce feature creep or make unnecessary design changes during the process (Brian)
Develop on schedule and to completion the product we decide upon in the beginning (Brian)
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
- Minimize cost per pound of hardware. (Brian)
- Favor simple over complex components. Minimize part count, manufacturing and assembly time. (Brian)
- Favor COTS over exotics or 'one-off'' parts. (If it saves time, money and the efficiency penalty is not great.) (Brian)
Cost vs. efficiency. (Brian)
Simple vs. complex. To the point of sacrificing efficiency. (Brian)
COTS vs. exotics. If it save time or money and the efficiency penalty is not great. (Brian)
HARD TO QUANTIFY
- Productive attitudes (Maggie)
- To learn from other’s mistakes and successes (and of course our own). (Maggie)
- Learn from our history and mistakes (Michael)
- Working to understand the hybrid will help in optimization of the design (Maggie)
- Accept that failures will happen but keep moving ahead. (Michael)
- Do the research and design but remember the importance of actually building hardware (Michael)
- Think of the LOX/Paraffin hybrid as an organism (evolvable) (Michael)
General Goals:
VISION
- Openly develop a LOX/Paraffin hybrid motor for the investigation of active guidance and publish the results. (Brian)
- Assist in the completion of a (lab-ready) LOX/Paraffin hybrid motor that performs at least as well as predicted on paper. (Jim W)
- Assist in the completion of a (flight-ready) LOX/Paraffin hybrid motor that performs at least as well as predicted on paper and meets the needs of our launch vehicle (e.g. guidance features, thrust profile, etc.) (Jim W)
Build LOX/Paraffin Hybrid motor for investigating active guidance (Brian)
Openly develop paraffin technology and publish results. (Brian)
TIME LINE
- Acquire the proficiency to be able to repeat what others have done, first. Afterwards use our success to justify trying things that haven't been tried. (Jim W)
- By Black Rock 2005, have a flight article (as close as is feasible) LOX/Paraffin motor ready for static test fire. This motor will be designed to produce a specific amount of thrust (to be determined by the group ASAP). (Maggie)
- Perfect and understand GOX/Paraffin lab-scale motor then move to LOX/Paraffin lab-scale motor to work out issues. Then move up to flight-scale LOX/Paraffin motor and work out issues. Then work towards flight-article LOX/Paraffin hybrid motor. (Maggie)
- Wait until we have a flight-article LOX/Paraffin hybrid before we start investigating active control (Maggie)
- Design a flight-article LOX/Paraffin hybrid, build a non flight-article version of this design for testing on the ground, making appropriate concessions to hardware (i.e. Cost, availability) to get it up an running within one year form now to start the debugging procedure. (Brian)
- Incorporate into the flight-article design and the non flight-article ground test version of motor a method for active guidance (i.e. TVC, gimbaling) (Brian)
- Build a small scale LOX/Paraffin hybrid first, then a full-scale hybrid (Michael)
- Consider future active guidance (Michael)
- Develop a kit or system for hobbyist (Peter)
- Once GOX/Paraffin hybrid performance is proven, seek outside funding for development of LOX/Paraffin hybrid. (Evan)
- Convert lab-scale GOX hybrid to lab-scale LOX hybrid. Work out any performance issues of LOX versus GOX. Reproduce performance of GOX using LOX (Target chamber pressure = 500psi, target thrust = 50 lbf). (Evan)
- Design/build flight-article LOX hybrid after previous steps completed (Evan)
PROCEDURAL
- Formalize roles during testing operations to increase safety and improve the integrity of the data that is collected. (Jim W)
- Create a schedule (Maggie)
- Be more involved in finding funding. Regardless of whether that's applying for grants, looking of sponsorship, developing something to sell or just being more aware of opportunities as they present themselves. (Jim W)
- Quick turn-around time (Michael)
- Excellent Standard Operating Procedures (Michael)
- Have a designated project manager responsible for calling meetings, assigning tasks, and keeping members on task and accountable for timelines. Also responsible for making decisions when there is conflict. (Maggie)
- Hold regular meetings for brain storming, manufacturing and testing every 2 weeks. (Maggie)
- Cross train team members on manufacturing (Maggie)
- Favor in-house manufacturing to save money and improve skills (Brian)
- Use as many COTS components as possible (Jim C)
UPPER LEVEL SPECIFIC GOALS
- Low g-loads (Michael)
- Motor capable of 10% throttling and active guidance (Brian)
- Motor 95% reliable (Brian)
- Motor 15 second burn, 1000-2000 lbf (Brian)
- Reusable, motor good for 50 flights (5% disposables per flight) (Brian)
- <$1000 per motor (count out-sourced labor, even if donated. Don’t count special deals unless they are relatively constant) (Brian)
- <$100 per flight (Brian)
- Flight article LOX/Paraffin targets: 1500lbf, 15s burn time, construction cost <=$1000, consumables cost per flight <=$100 (Evan)
- Revise fuel grain construction (better insulative liner, easier insertion and removal) (Evan)