I was at the star stuff conference on the weekend and one of the speakers offered to the attendees an opportunity to have their payload fly on their rocket this year!
After asking the speaker, Jamie Anderson, about his rocket technology and payload opportunity he gave me his card.
He specifically works on the rocket engines. They are using a hybrid engines and 3d printing the fuel grain. The company link - Gilmore Space
ANYWAY
I want to grab a few ideas from those interested regarding payload.
It would be ideal to work with a school as well to help ‘sell’ our payload.
I have yet to email him for the specifics but the gist is he is weighing the rocket down so it stays below 70km. We have a roughly shoebox size to work with and 30kg. I will be finding out weather the payload will be ejected from the rocket, what power and transmission limitations are in place, what landing location is estimated, and if recovery of payload is possible.
I already have a contact with a large radio telescope for data downlink if that is a possibility.
Would love to hear ideas form you all especially @seppo@buzz@riumplus@joeman@fatal_exception@merseyless to name a few. (sorry for spamming you)
If you want to do some high altitude measurements, small zero g experiment, high altitude photography, radio tracking, payload design, aero breaking prototype, impact resistant data storage this might tickle your interest.
I’ve got some contacts with local schools, I think the folks at Kimberley Park State, St Aiden’s or All Hallows would be dead keen on this stuff. Happy to assist with this.
We have received a response from Jamie at Gilmore Space.
…I have raised this internally and it looks good.
We are having our CDR for the whole rocket by the end of the this month, so cant provide detailed mounting or physical characteristic requirements until after then.
I would probably say if you could fit inside a 2U cubesat format that would be closer to possibility & keep weight under 10kg.
Probably cant eject the payload on this first launch, and telemetry maybe possible…
The tentitive details thus far are;
Sizing: 2-U space with a weight restriction of <10kg. This may change but gives us something to start designing from. We should be able to make our own given the generous weight requirements. Commercially available units are quite expensive.
Telemetry: Will not be offered due to their own bandwidth requirements. However they are currently happy with us using our own telemetry and ground station. Specs on available frequency bands are yet to be provided but I imagine 900mhz will be available.
Deployment: At this stage the payload will remain inside the fairing and not be ejected. No idea if the payload will be recovered so telemetry will be essential.
This is exciting! So many experiments we can do and such an awesome opportunity for us considering the cost to launch anything ever! - (citation needed)
No news on this yet. Looks like this project might be a fail to launch
I have bought some materials to make the 2U frame, and after recently having some success playing with some comms chips, I might just see this project though even if it doesn’t fly.
Things to make:
Tracking ground station - (easier than it sounds, will use to track and recueive data from orbiting devices) - low priority
Vacuum chamber - Need to acquire pump and build temperature control system
Frame - 2U compliant
Control Moment Gyro - wiki
Communication System - Amateur band, no licence compliant, with long range abilities
Power System - Temperature tolerant power storage (non essential)
Sensor Suit - optical, temp, magnetic, gyroscopic, accelerometer, radiation, etc sensors
