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12:35 am
December 6, 2009
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Rocket-To-The-Moon
| | Altus, Oklahoma, USA | |
| Member | posts 685 | |
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Due to its light weight and high strength properties carbon fiber is an ideal material to use in aerospace applications. It is very likely that many components of the CLLARE program will use carbon fiber so it might be a good idea to gain knowledge by constructing the OHKLA rocket almost exclusively from carbon fiber.
Quite a few amateur rocket builders have experience using this material and our highly ambitious launch is the perfect place to push the limits and innovate.
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Main Workgroups: Propulsion & Spacecraft Engineering
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12:45 am
December 6, 2009
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brmj
| | Rochester, New York, United States | |
| Member | posts 402 | |
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My philosophy here is just about opposite this as it applies to the rocket body, actually. Rather than using carbon fiber for the OHKLA rocket's body, I would suggest using surplus or used stainless steel high pressure natural gas or oil pipe in the appropriate diameter. Sure, we'd need to make the rocket a bit larger to deal with the added mass, but I think it would lead to a much shorter development time and greatly reduced cost. I would not be opposed to using carbon fiber for the fins, nose cone and so on, however.
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Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)
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12:52 am
December 6, 2009
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Rocket-To-The-Moon
| | Altus, Oklahoma, USA | |
| Member | posts 685 | |
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Very good point. If we are concerned about rapid prototyping then a simple prefab design might be best to begin with. Once the propulsion system is proven to function then it can be transplanted into something different if we so choose.
By using off the shelf components it may be possible to have a functioning "proof of concept" motor in an afternoon. A couple days of testing and then it could be put into a rocket body.
I'm moving out of my dorm in January so I'll actually be able to experiment with some of this stuff on my own. Shame I live in North Dakota where it is too cold to do very much outside.
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Main Workgroups: Propulsion & Spacecraft Engineering
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1:53 am
December 6, 2009
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
| Admin
| posts 1483 | |
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Rocket-To-The-Moon said:
Shame I live in North Dakota where it is too cold to do very much outside.
Standing at the right distance during rocket test firings will quickly solve that. :p
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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2:13 am
December 6, 2009
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Luke Maurits
| | Adelaide, Australia | |
| Admin
| posts 1483 | |
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On a more serious note, I think that using stainless steel for the body and carbon fiber for the nosecone and fins might be a good compromise between getting something together fast and getting useful experience for CLLARE (although I do wonder how much experience in making a thin, cylindrical tube out of carbon fibre would scale up to something like making the outer cone of the CLLARE spacecraft, if that's what you had in mind).
If we want to go even cheaper and faster, fibreglass would probably do for the nose and fins too.
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Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.
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