Northwest Indian College Space Center
First Nations Launch
4/29/10 – 5/2/10
Northwest Indian College
Space Center
I would like to introduce you to the NWIC Space Center. We as a group
have learned so much in the past four months about building rockets,
both high powered and bottle rockets. We would like to gather data and
examine how high it travels, the way the rocket spins and the effect
those have on a rocket. What can be learned from measuring and
analyzing roll and vibration during a rocket’s flight?
We are figuring out the drag, thrust, lift and weight to the rockets and
seeing how that affects a rockets travel and what we can do to improve
it. We will be presenting two Hi Tech H45 rockets and see how they
compare and contrast mainly looking at roll and vibration. Everything
has an effect whether it is the paint job, electronics, recovery system and
the weather. These are our general experiments, we are rather new
compared to many but we will achieve our goal attaining our knowledge
we need to gain so that the next time we enter a launch situation, we can
be polished and prepared.
Microcontroller
Electronics
Video
Camera
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Altimeter – height, velocity, acceleration
Light
Digital video camera
Detector
Data storage
Vibration detection and quantifying
Roll detection and quantifying using variation in light
Each of these are tools used to measure and capture the different aspects
and scientific viewpoints of rocketry. Just another way to learn about
our rocket.
Altimeter
The R-DAS Tiny altimeter is a tool that measures
and stores data as the rockets increases its
altitude. It also measures and stores speed and
acceleration.
R-DAS Tiny
Mounted upside down to create more usable space.
Digital Video Camera
 This helps us with viewing what we can do to improve our flights.
 Shoots 1 hour of video with a 4 gb Micro SD Card
 3 x 1 x ½ in size
Video
Camera
Electronic Experiments
 Temperature – how hot are
the gases that eject the
parachute?
 Roll – does the rocket roll
and if so how much?
 Vibration – how much
vibration is there during a
rockets flight?
Payload & Extra
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What can be learned from measuring and analyzing roll and vibration
during a rocket’s flight? We will be presenting two Hi Tech H45 rockets
and see how they compare and contrast. Everything has an effect whether
it is the paint job, electronics, recovery system and the weather.
Our experiment is we are going to measure roll. Roll being the rotation of
the rocket along it long axis while it is in the air. We measure roll with
TSL230R. (Texas Advanced Optoelectronics Solutions)
TSL230R Measures light to Frequency. Meaning that when the H45
Spins it measures light frequency differences as the rocket rotates.
Vibration we will measure the vibration on the rockets and see how that
effects how high the H45’s will travel.
Recovery System
Building a Recovery System
First you glue the shock-cord to the rocket body when you aren’t
using a piston. When the shock-cord is successfully glued and dried
proceed with installation of the flame resistant blanket. When the
flame retardant blanket is secured to the shock-cord, tie the two
ends of the shock-cord together, the Kevlar and Ripstop.
Neatly but securely begin looping or placing half the shock-cord
within the rockets body because you have to create a loop in the
middle of the shock-cord which is where you attach the parachute.
After the loop is made, tie or loop the parachute onto the loop
created from the previous step. Then you fold it up properly and
stick it in the rocket and that is the recovery system.
Click to Start
Shock Cord
Harness
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Shock cord: tubular nylon and Kevlar.
Parachute: Ripstop Nylon. The parachute cords are also called shroud
lines/paracord.
Some of the rockets involve pistons and others live without. A piston
protects the parachute from the hot deployment gases and pushes out
the parachute and the rockets without pistons have to protect the
parachute from the hot deployment gases with a flame retardant
blanket.
Folding the Parachute
Typical Non-Piston Parachute Setup
For the Hi Tech H-45 the Kevlar is attached to the fin can and then the
nylon is attached to the Kevlar. The shock cord is then attached to the
parachute and the shock cord is also attached to the nose cone.
Typical Piston Recovery System
For a model like the Tomahawk, the shock cords attached to the piston
then attached to more shock cord then its attached to the parachute then
to the nose cone.
Piston
THE END
NWIC SC Team Members
Maria Williams
Kyle Koos
Talia Graves
Michael Wright