August 24, 2003 notes

 

Plumbing complete

 

All engine plumbing and wiring is complete on the big vehicle.  We loaded water into the big tank and tested all the valves, with pretty good results.  Our distribution manifold has a leak in the weld which will need to be fixed, and the fill port 2” threads were loosened during the filling process when the giant hose pressurized itself and whipped around a bit.  We can’t just weld the inlet fittings, because the check valve is stainless steel, while the rest of the hardware is aluminum, so we may need to weld flanges onto each side and bolt them together.

 

If there was catalyst in the engines, the big vehicle is now capable of flight, but we still need to get the drogue cannon worked out before it can land properly.  We also need to make some honeycomb panels to protect the base of the tank from exhaust at launch, but we are running out of things to do on it.  The base will need a fair amount of rework when we put the full size engines on it, but the basic layout will probably remain the same.

 

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2003_08_23/plumbed.jpg

 

We made a special aluminum plate to allow us to tack weld future engine retaining rings in place while under pressure.  Welding the anti-channel rings in is very good for several reasons, but previously it has given us somewhat variable compression, so we had been planning to make a tool to fix this.

 

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2003_08_23/press.jpg

 

We also did some work with the high power video transmitter for the high altitude flights.  We mounted the video overlay character generator inside the transmitter box and permanently spliced it into the video stream, which worked out nicely.  This 20 watt transmitter should give us a signal all the way to 100km, and the overlay board will allow the main computer to display primary data (GPS position and event sequencing) past the point where the 1 watt 802.11b system fails.

 

 

Space suit pressurization

 

The suit outlet port was fairly easy to remove (the regulator was missing from it anyway), so I made a two part adapter that clamped in and gave us an AN fitting to work with.

 

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2003_08_23/adapter.jpg

 

The normal suit inlet port is not so easy to pull out, because it is bonded directly to the suit liner.  If anyone knows where to get fittings to match up with this (on a Sokol-KV-2 suit), I would appreciate a pointer:

 

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2003_08_23/inlet.jpg

 

One of the zippers on the suit gave us a lot of trouble, and it appeared to be a different style than all the other ones.  We eventually got it closed, but the suit leaked too much to even blow up.  We patched several holes in the internal liner, and eventually got it pressurized up enough to hold its shape, but it was still leaking a lot past the zippers.  Russ got inside it, and it held pressure better with him pushing the liner against the zipper.  We put 2 psi in it with him inside, and got some sense of the difficulties of moving in a pressurized suit.

 

We finally figured out that the internal liner actually needs to be folded up and tied off after getting the person in it to keep it air tight.  After doing this, we tracked down and patched a couple more leaks in the liner, and we were able to get the pressure rising fairly rapidly.  There is a squealing leak at one of the suit glove bearing joints at some rotations, and one of the other connection ports leaks, but the suit would hold several psi pressure with 2scfm of air flow.

 

http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2003_08_23/pressurized.jpg

 

We increased the pressure some more, and at 0.3 bar / 4.2 psi, still below the normal operating pressure of the suit, the bad zipper failed, ripping the entire length down, and making a very loud pop that was rather, err, exciting, to those of us listening closely for leaks (Russ was not in the suit…).  Upon closer examination, the zipper that failed was only hand stitched in with a single seam, while the other zippers all have triple seams of close spaced stitches.  It is likely that the replacement zipper was sewn in after the suit was discarded by the Russian space program to make it more saleable on the novelty / collector market, with no concern for its functionality.  We are going to have a new replacement heavy-duty zipper sewn in.