European Agency of Space Stuff

Routine Mission (1955-01-25): A simple SR-2a sounding mission that succeeded with no complications. Routine Mission (1955-06-25): This mission necessitated a modified version of the SR-2d with the second stage engines and fuel removed and the first stage power reduced somewhat. This made the rocket slow enough to be capable of re-entry, allowing for the returning a biological experiment. It was a successful mission.   Routine mission (1955-11-23): For this mission we were tasked with taking up an ' advanced biological payload' in a sub-orbital trajectory and returning it. The modified re-entry capable SR-2d was selected for the job. Buddy the dog has successfully returned to Earth safely without any issues and earned his wings! Historical Aside: The first dogs in to space were strays called Tsygan and Dezik, sent up as early as 1951 on R-1 rockets . Dezik perished on a second flight after the parachute on their capsule failed. Tsygan survived the programme and would be adopte...

Reminder: Our mission objective is fly a sub-orbital trajectory travelling over 3000km across Africa, putting us in Egypt (or thereabouts). Our payload is not expected to survive re-entry in to the atmosphere. Just a video this time, I don't want to spoil anything: Next Post: Dogs (and cat) of space

Date : 1954-06-13 Amidst news that the Soviets may be developing an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), their so-called "R7" project , we have been tasked with producing a rocket capable of reaching from Western Europe to Moscow. The objective is simple in its audacity: Increase our rocket's capabilities from 600km downrange to over 3,000km, creating an Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) before the two superpowers. We have a range of new technological innovations on our side: We have developed a newer, lighter, aluminium alloy for our rockets. We have improved our existing main rocket engines (on par with the Russian RD-102). We have improved our avionics to the point we can control our rocket launches. We have also developed a new upper stage rocket engine similar to the US AJ10-27 engines, which use nitric acid/aniline and are the latest generation of the SR-1 engines we flew right back in 1951. Historical Aside: The Russian RD-102 was never actually d...

Having received more contracts regarding film and biological sample opportunities, I decided to take stock of our options. From the selection available, it was clear that continuing rocketry missions would be more profitable at the current time than continuing with the Y-1 project. As a result, I'm shelving the Y-1 for now and focusing on the many rocket contracts available until we have some breakthroughs in our technology. Which leads us to... Routine Mission (1953-10-11): Sent up an SR-2c payload to complete another downrange filming contract. About half way through the mission the rocket experienced thrust loss, meaning that it was impossible to complete the mission objectives. The engine then cut out entirely at around 90% of the burn. Naturally, this is the first failed mission of the project, as the universe spites us for going off piste. I did manage to recover a little bit of film data, but all in all, this was a wasted four months of engineering. Despite this failure, I d...

Routine Mission (1953-02-27): Sent up an SR-2c payload to complete a biological capsule contract. Went smoothly without issues, netting a big ol' payment which was immediately funneled to R&D. To complete our next mission from the French Ministère des Armées , to take an early film camera and photograph a stretch of North Africa from a height of at least 100km while travelling over 200km, will require a variation of our SR-2 design: This monster of a single engine-staged rocket is capable of taking the 160kg payload over 200km high and nearly 650km downrange, all the way to the west coast of Africa, where parachutes can bring the film down safely for study. The mission was completed successfully on 1953-06-04. We now have 40k in funds and 39 (!) in unspent Science™. 20k of those funds are going to be push straight in to ongoing R&D, which continues to be our main priority. The sooner we can unlock new materials technology, the sooner we can make the leap to more powerful en...

Date : 1952-10-30 Funds : ~15k Unspent Science : ~26 Scheduled Science : 14 Routine Mission (1952-10-27): An SR-2a launch was scheduled to perform a routine sounding rocket contract but had to be scrubbed when the rocket engines failed to ignite on the launch pad (!). There was no adverse effect to the rocket. Routine Mission (1952-10-29): The engines were repaired and the launch was completed successfully. Here's our plan for the next couple of years: There's no plan to start any new programmes. For now, I expect to keep adapting and progressively enhancing the Y-1 and SR-2 designs to meet our new short-term objectives. Our next SR-2 flight will complete a requested biological payload mission. We will then perform some further Y-1 rocket-plane experiments (the second of which will require upgrades to achieve), slap a camera on the SR-2 for some cartographic snooping, then attempt to fire the SR-2 rocket significantly downrange . Historical Aside: Downrange rocket flight tests...

I noticed in the final simulation that sometimes the design re-enters on the opposite end of the payload than I'd planned. Rather than adding more ablative steel I had a bit of a rummage through the other equipment we already have. I decided to re-purpose a thrust plate. Thrust plates are designed for separating fuel tanks from rocket engine(s) and allowing the mounting of multiple engines. Since they sit directly above rocket engines, they are rated for around 2000K instead of the 700K of steel, making them effective as heat shields for our purposes. As you can see, the flight went well:  aaaand touchdown: Our payload returned successfully and we're now drowning in Science™! We also have enough money to fund the Y-Plane project, finally coming up next...

Proudly presenting the SR-2c This design is quite different from SR-2b. Instead of relying on two large RD-101 engine stages, the second stage is now powered by an engine that's part-way between the SR-1 and SR-2 engines offering 28.8kN of thrust in atmosphere. Historical aside: In fact, the engine is based off an engine designed for use by rocket planes: The XLR11 used by the X-Plane project. We're re-purposing it here, but we'll probably also stick it to our plane as our new project after the SR-2. The overall rocket has a significantly higher delta-v than the SR-2, easily capable of achieving 40% of that needed to get in to Earth orbit in fact! Delta-V is the 'main currency' of space flight and reflects a rocket's total change in velocity over time, a reflection of its overall capability. Our long-term goal is to get our delta-v up to 10,000dV, at which point we should be able to achieve a Low Earth Orbit of 2,000km. I have also added launch towers to en...

My initial concept for the SR-2b was to adding staging to the rocket design to be able to get more distance out of it and perform sub-orbital re-entry tests: This design certainly fit the bill in some respects. On a good day it could achieve a height of 250km, double what we'd managed previously. Having similar fuel tanks and engines reduces the tooling cost significantly. It also had no issues around recovery of the payload vehicle (a biological sample)... when it worked. Despite these plus points, I ran in to a major issue with the design. Notice how severely tilted the wing fins are; this was the level of spin stabilisation required to achieve the needed level of spin to keep it going straight. Precession is a natural consequence that comes with spin stabilisation . If the spinning of the rocket is too strong, a large degree of precession occurs. Precession is best demonstrated with a spinning-top example: Source: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/top.html As our leve...

Here's the SR-2 first flight video (raw unedited): No problems! Nice, easy flight, sneaking our payload up to a comfortable 140km. Still, this is quite modest given the capabilities of our rocket. We'll want to take the core concept and develop it at a bit to push the envelope and score some more contracts. In the next post we'll look at developing the SR-2b, a multi-stage variant of the SR-2 taking advantage of our rocket's untapped power.

Project : SR-2 Sounding Rocket Purpose : Demonstrate the ability to carry non-trivial payloads out of Earth atmosphere on sub-orbital missions The most critical component of our SR-2 rocket which will distinguish it from the SR-1 is the much more powerful engine. The engine we're using for this rocket is equivalent to the RD-101, a derivative of the German V-2 rocket engine, capable of ~400Kn of thrust on launch as opposed to the ~7kN of the SR-1. No that is not a typo. Historical Note: Both the USA and the USSR cloned and then improved upon the V-2 rocket engine design. The RD-101 was completed by the Soviet Glushko Bureau ( OKG-456) with no German engineers involved, but based heavily on the V-2 design. The RD-101 would go on to be used in the R-2 short range ballistic missile (NATO Name: SS-2 Sibling). The R-2 rocket was originally considered for the first Russian manned sub-orbital flights, but this was skipped in favour of going straight in to orbit in the flight ultimately...