LUNAR’clips Volume 12, Number 2 Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry March/April 2005 Note From the Editor The Range Head, March/April 2005 Geoff Canham, LUNAR #534 Jack Hagerty, LUNAR #002 Made it through tax day ... huge sigh of relief. Now you can Hi folks; relax and enjoy the latest offering from our writers, starting It seems nearly all of the items this time have to do with “the off with the latest news of everyone’s favorite rocket—the Ranch.” Piñata, what else could it be? MARCH SNOW RANCH LAUNCH Also, if you are getting around to planning your vacation for For the March launch we almost had to change the name of next year, we have an update on the plans for the X Prize Cup the ranch from “Snow” to “Mud.” It was pretty soggy. Two 2006, to be held in Las Cruces, New Mexico. weeks of rain had saturated the ground, although the day itself was gorgeous. The one spot that gave everyone trouble was My thanks to all who have submitted articles, and those that the narrow squeeze where the hill runs into the creek at the are promising them, but with one edition of the ‘Clips going entrance to the flying field. While almost everyone made it out it’s time to start planning the next, so here’s the first call through without incident, there’s always one incompetent for articles for the May/June edition. who gets himself in trouble. One fool tried to get on the field in a small I-talian sports car and got a little sideways going in, and managed to swap ends and sink up to his rims on the way out. It took pretty much all the LUNAR officers to extract In This Issue him. I spent about half an hour and $5 worth of quarters at the coin-op carwash the next day removing pieces of Snow Ranch Note From the Editor ......................................................1 from my wheel wells and chassis parts… The Range Head ..............................................................1 Piñata Rocket: The Evolution .........................................3 Utterly Alien ...................................................................6 Spaced-Out IT Guys ........................................................7 Governor Announces The X-Prize Cup ..........................8 February & March Snow Ranch Launches ...................10 Who we are ...................................................................13 LUNAR calendar ..........................................................14 LUNAR’clips is also available on-line at http://www.lunar.org Jack backwards (see also page 11) Of course the more vocal members of the club just couldn’t resist after Joe Heckenbach and Dave Flournoy posted pic- tures on the “lunar.general” mailing list. Charles Winter had probably the best take with the following missive: “I was away with family, but had I know you were going to give a stuck vehicle demonstration, I would have gone out to Snow Ranch! • Were there not enough L's or M's to stick under that thing and build JATO pack? • Maybe the club should build a Snow Ranch Puddle Ejector. • I had no idea your car was so nimble it could do 360's in mud puddle - Those foreign carmakers think What’s the connection to between IT and space exploration? of everything! See page 8. PS: it has nothing to do with the above object • We could post a sign that says: "You must be this tall seen at MacWorld. Copyright © 2005 by LUNAR, All rights reserved. Page 1 LUNAR’clips Volume 12, Number 2 Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry March/April 2005 to pass." (Me or my car? – JH) on what they are going to do, and the ones selected are funded • Did you get a chance to “wash down” the folks that by NASA to carry out the experiment. The two teams made helped to extract your ride? - That can be fun. three HP flights ("J" motors) as part of their development Better luck next time.” process. The Laguna Creek team, which was mentored by Steve Kendall, just took national honors at the final competi- tion at NASA Huntsville! It wasn’t just fun sliding around in cars with no ground clear- ance, we also did some rocketry! Dave Raimondi made a suc- Advanced Scouts – Rob Briody brought out a Boy Scout cessful L2 certification flight, plus, there were three L1 certs troop who are doing advanced rocketry. They built two car- (one of them a Jr. L1). Even more impressive, there were a bon-fiber "J" powered models that they planned to fly twice whole bunch of TARC R&D flights, and the team from Sara- each. I only counted two flight cards for them (one for each), toga HS bit the bullet and went for a qualification flight. They so I'm not sure if they got all their planned flights in. took the "safe" approach and did a single stage, single motor Certification – Seems we were awash in cert flights! We had flight, which we thought would only give them 30 seconds or five L1 cert flights (one of those a Jr. HPR cert), and one L2 so, but they caught a thermal right at the very end and cert. stretched it to 53 sec. One disturbing occurrence in March happened on the way APRIL ROBERTSON LAUNCH out. The club officers always seem to be the last ones to Not to be left out, we had our first night launch of the year at leave, and this time we noticed a number of wheel ruts and Robertson Park on April 16. We also had four Cub Scout “donuts” well off the road onto the fields. LUNAR is the dens, the Boys & Girls Club of San Leandro and several 4-H grateful guest of the Orvis’s at Snow Ranch, and do not want clubs in attendance throughout the day and evening. This was to loose such a precious resource. It would be a terrible shame our first launch from our “new” field, which is actually a cor- if were asked not to come back because someone wasn’t ner of the parking lot. The planned use of the unimproved thinking about the consequences of their actions and ruined it field will probably not work since the grass is too high, even for everyone else. I don't want to point fingers, but somehow I when mowed, since it is not irrigated and is already to dry to don't think that our regular members would do this. I offered be safe. The parking lot thing worked tolerably well, be we to Bruce and Roma Orvis (Bill’s parents) that we could put really need to find a new field in the area. together a work party to help repair any damage. VP Steve Kendall also suggested that we could buy them a load of 4H LEADER gravel to help "pave" the road out at the very end to help with the slick spots. We’ll be talking with them more about this in Robert Tashjian, the LUNAR member who also coordinates the coming months. the 4-H Rocket Day’s that we hold at our night launches, is looking for someone to coordinate an area-wide rocketry pro- APRIL SNOW RANCH LAUNCH gram: A month later things had dried out a little. A lot less sliding “Dublin 4-H club would love to have a rocketry project around and a lot more diverse rocket projects. It was, in fact, and needs a Rocketry Project Leader, so I thought this the biggest confluence of events that I've ever seen in my 13 might be the perfect place to find one! The project would years with the club (which means all 13 years of the club :-) probably start next August-September. (4-H tends to fol- In addition to the two hundred or so regular model and High low the school year as that is when the project signups Power flights, here is a list of all the "special" things that went usually take place.) It could start earlier if you wanted to on: run it through the summer. TARC flights – This was the last chance for teams to fly with “The curriculum would largely be up to you, and would full LUNAR support at a regular launch before the deadline involve meeting with the kids once a month or so plus, of of April 11. We had five teams from three different schools course, a trek out to LUNAR to launch. The Bayside pro- participating that made a total of 19 flights. Seven of those ject typically has a short lecture, maybe an experiment, were official qualification flights, and I'm pleased to report and a building session . If you want more information, that all of them produced a qualification, a couple of which send me email and I can give you a more detailed idea of have since made the finals with scores of 1 or 2 (zero is per- how the Bayside Rocketry project works. fect). “Sharon Clay is the Community Leader for the Dublin 4- Student Launch Initiative (SLI) – There were also two SLI H club, you can contact her directly ([email protected]. teams out there doing R&D flights. This is a much more in- com) or send me email with any questions (rob@tashjian. tense contest than TARC in that the teams have to do some com).” actual science data gathering. They have to write a proposal Page 2 Copyright © 2005 by LUNAR, All rights reserved. LUNAR’clips Volume 12, Number 2 Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry March/April 2005 style, so I needed an unusual way to give them Piñata Rocket: The out. In a moment of brilliance I decided to drop Evolution them from a rocket, but a falling sucker might be kind of painful so I attached a streamer to Tony Cooper, LUNAR#571 each sucker.