MSS Q&A Thread

That picture looks remarkably like AA's Scorpius. Perhaps once the dust settles they should merge into Mastadillo and headquarter some place half way between Mojave and Caddo Mills. Some place say near Truth or consequences NM should be a good compromise.

Congratulations on a great 2nd attempt and superb flight guys!!
Awesome!


Iain

Congratulations all at Masten. Well Done!

Excellent videos also - very high quality, especially the one pointing down!

Just one question - does the nozzle really need to be adjusted at the rate visible in the video - seems to have a very high jitter?

Great SpaceVidCast interview here, Michael and Ben speak for a while, Ben shows everyone around their offices, great stuff

http://www.spacevidcast.com/2009/10/09/ ... z111-2-30/

Funny story about how Ben ended up working there too, kind of billiant infact! Can't wait top see that new craft fly! They seem confident about it

Rob

That version of the controller gets a bit twitchy when the vehicle is at the lighter weights. It doesn't help or hurt, so we're ignoring it for now. It's not actually oscillating nearly as fast as it could; it could do about four times that speed if it really wanted to.

It's influenced by the way the IMU is attached to the vehicle and various resonances in the system. It will inevitably be different on E.

Some companies are of the habit of announcing that they'll be on the moon in two years, or selling orbital payloads at retail price before they've ever flown a controlled rocket. In general, promising more than you can deliver has been a bad habit of New Space, and one that I've really discouraged since starting here.

From where we are now, we'll start increasing altitude this year. We'll probably only make it to 1500 ft. AGL this year, but have enough space to test new maneuvers like fast landing that will be required for suborbital flights.

Next year we'll get into paying flights for sub-suborbital, in the 10kft to 150kft range.

I can't predict beyond there. The goal is to get 100kg to 120km. We will do it as soon as funding, development, and other resources allow.

Orbital is a long way away, and we're de-emphasizing that right now.

Thanks for the update, Ben. It's alot more fun to watch when I know what to hope for. What's Kft? My babylon translation software says it means either Kraft foods, or an Indonesian Television workers association. Neither really fits.

We are dirty American rocket engineers, and so mix units severely. I regularly have data logs that show thrust in pound force, newton, and kilogram force. Yesterday I detanked the fuel from B, and reported that we had 2 gallons left in a 69 liter tank.

k is metric for thousand, ft is english distance. kft = thousand feet. 150kft=45.72km

Hehe, that actually made me chuckle quite a bit


Just make sure, that you don't end up missing earth on suborbital reentry because of mixed up units.... I mean it's not like anyone, ever had such a problem before

yeah . . . is funny.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/northrop- ... -challenge

feed from masten - level 2

Xoie flew first leg, but caught small fire during landing. Some wires were burned and it couldn't be fixed in this window.

Congratulations to Masten team for great lv 1 and thanks for pushing really hard with lv 2.
Even if you don't get the money, the real prize is a working reusable hardware with great turnaround that guys like NASA could only dream of.

There was well over 450 viewers of the video feed. You have lots of fans around the world.

They are trying again right now. They got the chance to use one of their unused windows, because Unreasonable won't use their morning window anyway.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/northrop- ... -challenge

Flights looked good.
Congrats to Masten.

johno

Congratulations to Masten!