This blog covers the day to day progress of water rocket development by the Air Command Water Rockets team. It is also a facility for people to provide feedback and ask questions.

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

Axion G2 flights

A few photos from this weekend's launch of the Axion G2 rocket with the lower half of the Polaron G2 boosters. This configuration represents only about half of the final Polaron G2 capacity.

 Ready for launch

Boost phase - This rocket was launched at full pressure.

Near apogee shot from sustainer. 
The cars (in the lower center left of image next to the rocket) were at the launch site. 


I'm still working on full flight report and highlights video from the launch weekend.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

G2 update

As we continue development of the Polaron G2 rocket, we are preparing to launch a smaller version to test the launcher at full pressure with both the main stage and boosters. We have tested the launcher release mechanisms individually at full pressure, but this will be the first time we do a high pressure synchronized release.

The boosters in this test are only the lower half of the final flight hardware G2 boosters. Each of the boosters in this test has a capacity of 5.25L. We are using a rebuilt Axion G2 rocket for the main stage with a capacity of 8.2L. All up for this test the we will use 8.6 liters of water per launch.

We are also testing the new booster retention mechanisms that will be used on the final rocket. We have previously tested half the mechanism on the main stage, but now we're testing the booster half of it as well.

We'll be launching this rocket at our high power launch site in about a week and a half.