The Rocket-Mounted Video Camera project is nearing completion. Prior to the flight test phase, however, prudence demands that we run a few simulations to ensure that the rocket will have a safe and stable flight. Initial Evaluation Before beginning construction, we made a few ballpark calculations using (a free trial version of) RockSim, a Windows-based [...]

It’s hard to believe how rewarding it can be making something this pointless! This is my version of “Hello World” on the Arduino. Instead of just flashing an LED on and off, this variation flashes a three-letter Morse code navaid identifier (something familiar to aviators). The Arduino is a wonderful new open-source physical computing platform [...]

The idea comes from MAKE Magazine, Vol. 7: Hack a $30, “single-use” camcorder and fly it on a model rocket. The project involves disassembly of the plastic camera housing, soldering a stripped USB cable onto the camera’s circuit board, hacking the board’s embedded software to make it reusable, then mounting it in the nosecone of [...]

Note: This is an old list of NewSpace links that I compiled way back in the Principia 1.0 days, and it’s just now making the transition over to the Labs. My apologies if some of the links are broken! News Articles Space Tourism Taking Shape, CNN.com. $100 Million Moon Trip: Space Tourism’s Hot Ticket, National [...]

On August 6, 1997, Korean Air flight 801, a Boeing 747, crashed at Nimitz Hill, Guam, with 237 passengers on board. The airplane had been cleared to land at Guam International Airport and crashed into high terrain about 3 miles southwest of the airport. 228 people were killed, and the airplane was destroyed by impact [...]

Ah, the good old days: sitting in a dank corner of the university library on a rock-solid UNIX terminal, emailing far-away friends with Pine, the coolest email client ever made. Unfortunately, Pine is not included in the Ubuntu repositories, so if you want it, you have to find it and install it yourself. I really [...]

I just reinstalled Kubuntu 7.04 on the Linux box after having upgraded successively from Ubuntu 6.06. I wanted to clean house a bit and get rid of any unnecessary Gnome leftovers. While setting things up I was trying to remember how I had gotten the little system tray application checkgmail to run at startup every [...]

Somewhere in our mid-twenties, we each decided we’d had enough of life on the ground, so we came to flight school. We left behind our old lives and our good friends and our familiar towns. We abandoned jobs and careers that, for reasons we didn’t understand, had become empty. We packed our cars and headed [...]

Designer: Adam Lapensky Motor Manufacturer: Estes Industries Propellant Type: Black Powder Motor Designation: (3) C6-3, (1) E9-8 Motor Diameter: 18 mm (C), 24 mm (E) Motor Length: 70 mm (C), 95 mm (E) Propellant Mass: 0.0682 kg Total Motor Mass: 0.1375 kg Total Impulse: 55.5 Ns Burn Time: 3.09 s Maximum Thrust: 61.74 N Average [...]

Designer: Brad Gambach Motor Manufacturer: Estes Industries Propellant Type: Black Powder Motor Designation: (2) D12-3, Booster (1) D12-0, Booster (1) E9-8, Sustainer Motor Diameter: 24 mm Motor Length: 70 mm (D) 95 mm (E) Propellant Mass: 0.0991 kg Total Motor Mass: 0.1869 kg Total Impulse: 78.39 Ns Burn Time: 4.74 s Maximum Thrust: 89.19 N [...]