Friday, September 07, 2007

I'll sleep when I'm dead.

So much to do, there's plenty on the farm

I'll sleep when I'm dead

Saturday night I like to raise a little harm

I'll sleep when I'm dead


I'm drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin

I'll sleep when I'm dead

Straight from the rocket , twisted again

I'll sleep when I'm dead


Paraphrased from Warren Zevon.

Today I machined the last part.
If it all works the rocket hardware is done.

We have been trying to test it for the last three weeks.
We thought we had a chance to test two weeks ago Saturday.
We thought we would test with one motor last Saturday, alas when we flow tested the motor we were going to use, it was unusable, and may be why our last test failed. So I spent the last week building and carefully QA-ing 5 motors. I've taken detailed pictures of the whole process and after the XPC I'll post the drawings and detailed machining documentation.

So here it is three weeks after I first thought we might test the full up vehicle in a static fire, I've worked 18 and 20 hour days for three weeks and we have a shot at being ready for Saturday. I keep telling people we are testing next staurday,and I'm feeling like a flake. There are always a million details. Example Today my son and I are going over the new igniter plumbing and I realized that we had not put in the necessary check valves. So we are redoing that section of plumbing. (My son is currently driving back from the LA McMaster Carr will call with the check valves.) I'll post more later.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know how you manage to work such hours. Please don't end up sleeping when you are dead :(

Apart from that, I'll just wish you luck. You and Armadillo seem the best prepared teams of those that publish anything. Just look at the pictures the various teams publish of their work areas or the lists of what capabilities they have in-house.

The Masten guys think they can outsource the control code and the entire computer system, for example!