MSS Q&A Thread

Way to go guys! Congratulations!

Thanks!

Ben
Congratulations and a job well done! I did not know you guy's knew how to draft (NASCAR) Style! Did you beat AA at the flag? What a Day for the New Space bunch of bananas!

We need to start a league like rocket racing league for the LLC contenders! And keep this going! Maybe even have a mini league for smaller landers like our Quad Pod?

Anyway what a great few days! And congrats to Unreasonable too for making a showing worth remembering with their Blue Ball.

Monroe
Team Prometheus

Congratulations! What an awesome feat!

I've been bursting with pride, and annoying all my friends and family. You guys have really inspired me, and I'm sure thousands of others. Congratulations!

Congrats on the Mid Air re-light guys!
Video is awesome!
What was it like watching it? I could just imagine what all your hearts were doing!


Iain

For all who don't understand what TheFlyingkiwi is talking about, it put up the news + the video on the front page here is the link http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20502/masten-space-re-lights-rocket-engine-in-flight.html

Congratulations Masten!

Can you tell us a bit how you prevent gases from entering the fuel flow during engine shutdown. I can imagine that during the zero G phase this is an issue

cheers,
c.

Very impressive!

One question though. When watching AA videos their rocket hangs in the air like a rock. It does not swerve or tilt. What is different about your control algorithm? Do you simply have more aggressive coefficients in case something extreme happens or do you have less control authority in your actuators?

Keep up the good work!

~Daniel

Funny thing is: back during the 2009 NGLLC runs it looked like it was just the other way round

Here's the video from the ground

http://www.youtube.com/user/mastenspace ... 2Yt5L5TlGM

I was 150 feet away, running the show. It was absolutely heart stopping.

A relevant question. The answer is that we simply didn't bother to do anything about it. Because it was restarting so close to the ground, the tanks were still mostly full, and the bit of aero drag on the way down plus the engine purge was enough to settle the propellants.

I'm not sure what you mean. It swerves or tilts when it wants to go somewhere, we have a wild amount of control authority. The computer is actually set to use about half of the physical gimbal range right now.

To hover, you want the engine thrust line right through the CG, and that line the same as the gravity vector. To move sideways, you have to get the CG off that vector, so the vehicle essentially "falls" in the direction you want it to go.

If you link to specific videos, I can speak to what it's doing. The MSS control system is higher frequency and more tightly wound that AA's, I've seen both companies do flights recently.