Armadillo Aerospace News: Vehicle work

Analyzing the data from last week’s vehicle warm up test showed that while all engines came up to pressure when a big burst was made, with the throttle just cracked open, two of the engines weren’t making any pressure. I added code to let us individually calibrate the “cracking fraction” of each valve, so we can now expect all of them to open within 1% throttle of each other. Still, micro throttle cracking isn’t very even, because 1% in the opening fraction of a 1” ball valve is a lot of flow. If we want to use a tiny idle flow, we may need to add extra valves specifically for that.
PVC cementing the drum adapter directly to the 1” PVC feed hose worked better than trying to RTV it, but by the end of the day’s testing it was leaking a bit again. I need to find a 2” buttress thread fitting in PVC that I can cement both the hose and a support pipe directly to. Read More