Well first, I'm getting engaged! I finally found the girl of my dreams. Smart, funny, sweet and beautiful. I still don't know why she picked me but I'm not going to argue!
The FIRST Robotics Competition is going full swing, you can read more about our team here. I should also say that this year I was nominated for the Woodie Flowers Award by my team for the St. Louis Regional. I highly doubt that I will win but I can't really communicate how that makes me feel that I was nominated. These kids are what it's all about.
It seems like I'm switching back and forth from other projects lately. After all, there's only so much you can do on something without having the funding to back you. Hence the no work on the DARPA TX Project.
However, there is a project that I've worked on in the past that is pretty fun and doesn't require a lot of funds. This is, of course, the Rocket Plane. Here's the Build Log for the Rocket Plane v3 along with a video:
This one was pretty awesome, but I can do better. And being an engineer, of course I have to over-engineer it.
Rocket Plane v5
The next version is going to be at least twice as powerful if not more so. This means at least 4 F-class Engines putting out 42 Newtons of Force each. For those non-metric people, that is about 38 pounds, on a 5 pound plane. With a Thrust/Weight Ratio of 7.6:1, for about 2.5 seconds this Plane will move pretty quickly. In comparison, in the video above that Plane had 4 E-class Engines, which are about half the power of F-class Engines.
To really over-engineer this, here are a few pictures of the development process so far:
CAD of the Plane itself...Looks like I need to work on my parametric modeling skills. I will not be sending a flying brick into Lower Earth Orbit, thank you. Besides the normal Rocket Engines this Aircraft will host a variety of electronics to gather good scientific data, such as a GPS, Accelerometer and Gyroscope. Additionally, to reduce the costs in the future I'm going to install a parachute recovery system so it won't hopefully nose-dive into the neighbor's lawn. It starting on fire is an all together other matter.
The next Launch Pad. So far it's pretty similar to the last one, but I would like to make the takeoff angle adjustable.
If you're telling yourself right now, "Holy crap, is that a Wind Tunnel Simulation?" you deserve a cookie. This is a free program in beta testing from Autodesk called appropriately Falcon. As you can see, the current design is a flying brick. I hope the actual design is more aerodynamic.
Of course, what engineering project wouldn't be complete without a full Matlab Simulation? I plan on developing a GUI in Matlab to help figure out the optimal parameters for the design of the Aircraft, including the optimal engine, Takeoff Angle and Angle of Attack . At the very worst, I'll have lots of pretty graphs when I'm done.
If this project sounds interesting and over-complicated, you're absolutely right! And of course, I'm going to need to find the other member of the Rocket Boys. Derek, get out the Gorilla Glue!
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