On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Robert Bruningabruninga@usna.edu wrote:
Much of the debate on the board here arises from our common desire to see the launching of satellites with a larger footprint.
For what it is worth, this semester I will finally get a student to work on the 40 year old AMSAT idea of a water rocket. (Carry water to orbit and use solar power to electrolizie the wate to H2 and O2 and then burn those in a thruster to raise the orbit of a cubesat.
Bob --
Thanks for letting us know about this. It sounds very interesting. As the water would be under far less pressure than, the nitrogen (e.g.) in a cold-gas thruster, would the water/electrolysis system be considered safer to launch? I can see the argument being made that a leak in a water container would likely ruin a great number of things on the launch than would an inert gas. OTOH, the (I presume) low pressure would reduce the likelihood of a leak.
Mostly the goal is to get from the very low (short lived) LEO to a higher LEO to get longer life, but it will be fun to get this project going again. I had a working model about a dozen years ago, but it eventually blew up.. Now we will get another one built probably...
If such a system were used in flight, instructors could do simple electrolysis of H2O and combustion on the ground to illustrate the process quite vividly!
73, Bruce VE9QRP