Unreasonable
Rocket will attempt the Level I flights with
their Blue Ball vehicle. They have the Silver
Ball vehicle for Level II.
They had several major problems with the Silver
Ball vehicle in the week leading up to the event,
a leak in the peroxide tank was especially serious,
that repeatedly led them to believe they had no
chance to compete in Level II. However, after a
tremendous effort by the team that included many
long days and nights of work, they had vehicles
ready to compete in both events.
The extra flight window for Masten Space on the
morning of Friday Oct. 30th, meant that Unreasonable's
first Level I flight would be on Friday afternoon.
Oct.30: The team had a Level I window in the late
afternoon. However, the Blue Ball vehicle failed
to get more than a meter or two off the ground in
two attempts. Both times the vehicle displayed severe
wobbling and sideways translation across the pad.
The first time it fell over. The suspicion is that
the distribution of the required 25 kilograms of
payload is causing control problems. The vehicle
is quick to refuel and reset and they wanted to
try another liftoff. However, some damage was discovered
and they decided to wait till the next morning.
Oct.31: New catalyst packs were installed overnight
on the Blue Ball vehicle. Tests in the morning indicated
that the peroxide had become cold in the night air
and so they decided to let it warm up and wait to
fly in the afternoon. After debugging some GPS issues,
they made a flight in the late afternoon. The flight
seemed to go fine until the hover above the landing
pad ended abruptly 5 seconds too early when the
fuel ran out. The damage from the fall was not too
serious but bad enought to kill any chance of being
fix within the available window.
That ended their Level I effort. They will attempt
Level II on Sunday Nov.1st.
Nov. 1st: Unreasonable decided to do some tethered
testing before making its Level II attempt with
the Silver Ball vehicle. Unfortunately, in the final
test the vehicle experience oscillations and gyrations
that broke the tether and the vehicle was badly
damaged. That ended their Level II effort.
