PSAS Current Status as of June 2008

After the proof-of-concept success and then complete loss of LV2 in the August 2005 Bend, OR launch, we are rebuilding (faster, better, stronger?) the LV2 airframe and avionics system. We're calling it 'LV2c'.

Airframe

We're starting up on the fiberglass parts of the rocket (aeroshell and nosecone).

Nose Separation Ring

This was the first component designed, since the nose separation charge was the failure point of our previous launch. Dan constructed a Nose Separation Ring (NSR) which is hermetically sealed, trapping the oxidizer and confining the explosion to a much smaller volume. This has been ready since mid-2007.

Modules

Dan constructed several aluminum 5.5" modules back in February 2008, enough for two complete airframes! The motor housings are also complete. Aside from the dimensions (LV2 had 5" sections), they have the same shape as LV2.

Aeroshell

Tim has been experimenting with vacuum assisted resin transfer molding for the aeroshell. He has run eight tests, each better than the last.

Nosecone

Dan has turned a wooden nosecone on a machine controlled lathe, hoping to use it for forming a composite nosecone. The first test unfortunately pulled many slivers out of this form.

Fins

Dave has designed fiberglass fins, but no work has yet been done to construct them.

Chutes

We have not selected any parts for the recovery system. We intend to use the same configuration as in LV2, but with

Avionics

The 2006 PSAS Capstone team has finished their design of the USB-based node front end. We're in the process of laying it out. We're also working on GPL-GPS to integrate into our avionics system.

Our first launch scheduled for 2008 is mainly for testing our new airframe. We will only be flying an Amateur Television (ATV) module with 2.4 GHz downlink, and a commercial flight computer.

ATV

We have bought several ARM prototyping boards for developing the various nodes. Andrew, Maria, and Glenn intend to design the ATV node during July 2008.

Software

We intend to design new flight computer software to run on our new PowerPC flight computer (a contractual obligation due to a grant from IBM). We have had years of trouble trying to select an appropriate PPC board and get a stock Debian kernel running on this PPC hardware.

In the meantime, the Software team has mainly been working on side projects, such as converting the website to ikiwiki (8 months), software simulators (6 months ongoing), and other open source projects.