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Old 10-10-2021, 10:36 AM
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blackshire blackshire is offline
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Default HAT (Oz) sounding rocket data?

Hello All,

Does anyone have more material on the Australian HAT (High Altitude Temperature) sounding rocket than *this* https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/hat.htm photograph on Gunter Krebs's website? The HAT used the same second stage--a LAPSTAR motor with three Aerobee-Hi/150/200/300 sustainer-like fins (although much smaller than the Aerobees') and a cone-cylinder payload housing--as the second stage of the HAD (High Altitude Density) sounding rocket, and:

The HAD (see: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/had.htm and https://www.oldrocketforum.com/show...light=Carnarvon [it is also covered in Peter Alway's "Rockets of the World"]), which usually deployed a 6' (or 2 m) diameter aluminized polyester plastic film Arcas (or was that Arcis, or maybe Arcus...? :-) ) ROBIN-type balloon payload at apogee, for radar tracking of the edge-of-space winds, and thus the air density (although some HAD rounds carried instrumented payloads instead), used a Gosling first stage motor. But:

The HAT, whose first stage (two, clustered Demon rocket motors) was less powerful than the HAD's Gosling, carried a parachute-lowered, thermistor-sensor payload, which radioed the atmospheric temperature to the ground station. (These tidbits of information are from Peter Morton's 1989 book "Fire Across the Desert: Woomera and the Anglo-Australian Joint Project 1946 - 1980.") Also:

Some of Australia's sounding rockets are hardly covered at all, and the HAT is one of these. With the people who developed and used these vehicles now passing from the scene, the window of opportunity for documenting their development and use--not to mention the inspiring, and often-humorous, personal stories about their pioneering work--is rapidly narrowing. If not preserved, their stories will die with them.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
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Old 10-11-2021, 02:26 PM
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Ez2cDave Ez2cDave is offline
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Unfortunately, I have nothing on the HAT.

Hopefully, Peter Alway or Chris Timm will respond, as well.

Dave F.
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Old 10-12-2021, 04:45 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ez2cDave
Unfortunately, I have nothing on the HAT.

Hopefully, Peter Alway or Chris Timm will respond, as well.

Dave F.
I share that hope; someone on the Australian Rocketry Forum (or in the town of Woomera, which was created to support the range proper and still exists; many of its residents work or worked there) may also have such material. (One of the Australian Rocketry Forum Members, who had worked at the Woomera range, posted personal photographs he'd taken of the Redstone-based SPARTA WRESAT vehicle, which orbited Australia's first satellite.)
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Old 10-12-2021, 07:55 PM
PeterAlway PeterAlway is offline
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If I had more than the sort of vague stuff you've already found on the HAT, I'd have drawn it by now! I'm not sure what I have on file at home, but it's nowhere near enough to do proper data for it.

Peter Alway
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Old 10-13-2021, 03:47 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterAlway
If I had more than the sort of vague stuff you've already found on the HAT, I'd have drawn it by now! I'm not sure what I have on file at home, but it's nowhere near enough to do proper data for it.

Peter Alway
Thank you, Peter. I'll see what--or who--I can find. Having had a close call myself, I was reminded (by my doctor, too) that I might not have a whole lot of time to "let slide" regarding this, either. Could you post a list of Australian sounding rockets you could use data on?

The advantage with them is that there wasn't a huge number of them, and not a great many variations of the various types, either (there were two Long Tom and HAD variants; the later HAD vehicles used a simplified first-stage fin assembly, where the fins were affixed directly to the Gosling motor's nozzle [the Cockatoo used that fin attachment method, too]).
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http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
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Old 10-13-2021, 06:17 PM
PeterAlway PeterAlway is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
Thank you, Peter. I'll see what--or who--I can find. Having had a close call myself, I was reminded (by my doctor, too) that I might not have a whole lot of time to "let slide" regarding this, either. Could you post a list of Australian sounding rockets you could use data on?


I'm not getting any younger either. My contemplation of mortality is telling me that I've got a half-dozen or so Australian rockets covered, and I need to use my limited time on things I don't have covered so well. So I will encourage you to follow your own obsessions!

I'm concentrating on US Navy missiles once I get back to artwork next month, and after that, there are under-represented countries I need to work on (I only have one Chinese rocket drawn outside of a couple of ancient black bowder rockets, for instance).
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Old 10-14-2021, 04:13 AM
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Default Documenting obscure rockets (Part 1)

Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterAlway
I'm not getting any younger either. My contemplation of mortality is telling me that I've got a half-dozen or so Australian rockets covered, and I need to use my limited time on things I don't have covered so well. So I will encourage you to follow your own obsessions!
I don't expect to keel over today or tomorrow (but it could happen, judging by the close brushes I've had), and as the rocketry and astronautics pioneers told G. Harry Stine--when he was young--when he asked them, "How can I pay you back for your help?": "You can't--pay it forward!" I'll share what I find with you, and with Chris Timm (and any other interested scale/history buff), so that the material will be "abroad" and available for anyone who wants to use it in a scale & historical data packet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterAlway
I'm concentrating on US Navy missiles once I get back to artwork next month, and after that, there are under-represented countries I need to work on (I only have one Chinese rocket drawn outside of a couple of ancient black bowder rockets, for instance).
I agree--there is a great paucity of documentation of Chinese rockets, modern as well as ancient (which is an embarrassment, considering their place in rocket history, which ^began^ with them!). It's like documenting aerostation (lighter-than-air flight) beginning with Vincent Lunardi, while ignoring the Montgolfier brothers and Professor Charles. The Chinese have also, which is rather unusual, developed a surprisingly large number of meteorological (weather *modification* as well as weather monitoring) rockets. Regarding the U.S. Navy's rockets:

The story of Captain Robert Truax's rocket research in the U.S. Navy, in this video (“The U.S. Navy’s Rocket Man” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XysOVaDpeRE ) covers his life—and achievements—in detail, including rare footage (which is comically mis-matched; a B-17 [a liaison plane] is a “B-25,” the German V-1 is called a “rocket” [it was an Argus pulsejet-powered, winged cruise missile, of course], and the Polaris, Thor, Jupiter, and Atlas ballistic missiles are shown associated with the wrong missile names, but you can easily tell which is which). It also contains historical tidbits involving Dr. Robert Goddard, who was also doing rocket development work for the Navy at that time, and:

In interviews, Captain Truax said that Dr. Goddard, being a professor rather than an engineer like himself, could not be persuaded that hypergolic and storable--but slightly less energetic--fuel/oxidizer combinations (such as aniline/furfuryl alcohol and nitric acid) had operational advantages that the Navy would prefer over LOX/gasoline or LOX/kerosene (which Admiral Raborn argued a decade later, when he advocated the development of the solid propellant Polaris instead of the sea-going version of the Jupiter IRBM [whose LOX/RP-1 propellant terrified Navy missile men, after Operation Pushover--done with a captured V-2--showed what a shipboard missile explosion would do]). Now:

He--Truax--mentioned an incident in which Goddard, who didn't think that liquid propellant rockets could be shut down, re-started, and throttled, gawked out of a window, his mouth hanging open in amazement, as he saw Truax and his team's little hypergolic experimental rocket engine light up, shut down, and throttle up and down smoothly, as precisely as a burner on a gas stove!

Robert Truax was also very active in Project HYDRA, especially the HYDRA-Seabee sounding rocket [see: https://books.google.com/books?id=u...0rocket&f=false ]), and on proposed orbital rockets such as Sea Horse http://www.astronautix.com/s/seahorse.html . The largest one was Sea Dragon (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket) and http://www.astronautix.com/s/seadragon.html ). Also:

This article https://thehighfrontier.blog/2016/0...s-of-bob-truax/ covers his various rocket vehicles (the readers corrected a few factual errors, in the “Comments” section below the article). He made the steam rockets for Evel Knievel’s “Skycycles,” and he even built—and static-fired, as he showed on film (see: https://www.youtube.com/user/SkyRocket117 , plus three other videos about his Project Private Enterprise vehicle) when he appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—footage of the rocket being test-fired. *Here* https://www.youtube.com/results?sea...e+static+firing are other videos of his private, person-carrying Project Private Enterprise (and of his hired astronaut, Fell Peters), and:

Truax believed in using the MCD—Minimum Cost Design—design philosophy (which was developed by the engineer Arthur Schnitt of The Aerospace Corporation, an aerospace engineering “think tank” [rather like the RAND Corporation, which was started by Douglas Aircraft, years before it became McDonnell-Douglas, which Boeing absorbed]). In MCD missile, rocket, and spacecraft design, cost is traded as an equally-important parameter in design, rather than pushing for minimum mass & size and maximum performance (as with U.S., French, and British IRBMs and ICBMs, and space launch vehicles), which is very expensive engineering. (Soviet/Russian IRBMs, ICBMs, their derived space launch vehicles, and spacecraft were/are designed to principles similar to the MCD ones.) MCD rockets are larger and heavier than other vehicles of similar payload capacity, and use simpler (pintle-injector, like the Lunar Module Ascent Engine, made by TRW), lower-chamber pressure, pressure-fed rocket engines. Plus:

TRW, Inc. (Thompson Ramo Wooldridge, Inc. [LTV—Ling Temco Vought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ling-Temco-Vought –was another “three-name” aerospace firm]) built a 250,000 pounds-thrust, pressure-fed experimental kerolox [LOX/RP-1 kerosene-burning] pintle-injector MCD rocket engine, all of which—except the pintle injector—they sub-contracted to a local, non-aerospace metal-working shop to build! It was kept outdoors, where it accumulated dust, yet the engine fired reliably and had stable combustion. Boeing and MDAC (McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics Corporation), in the late 1960s (before NASA had definitely decided to build a Space Shuttle), were very interested in developing cheap MCD launch vehicles (Boeing even built an MCD rocket stage, which—like TRW’s MCD rocket engine—was mostly sub-contracted out). They were so cheap that their first stages could either have been expendable, or parachute-recovered and reused, and:

(Interestingly, a couple of Phase C and ASSC [Alternate Space Shuttle Concepts] designs—both using a pressure-fed, multi-engine, single booster under the Orbiter’s External Tank—used recoverable & reusable MCD boosters; one proposed booster burned liquid propane and LOX [propalox], while the other used RP-1 kerosene and LOX [kerolox]). John R. London’s book “LEO On The Cheap: Methods for Achieving Drastic Reductions in Space Launch Cost” (it’s online free here: https://www.google.com/search?q=leo...sclient=gws-wiz ) covers MCD launch vehicle designs in detail. But Boeing, MDAC, and TRW quietly abandoned MCD rockets when they realized that non-aerospace companies, including ship & submarine builders and metal-working shops, could just as easily build them, too, in direct competition to the aerospace firms (and more cheaply than the aerospace firms could produce the MCD rockets). This was also a reason why Truax’s Sea Horse and Sea Dragon never received very enthusiastic official support from the Navy and NASA, because—if produced—they could have put the “legacy” aerospace companies out of business! As well--speaking of obscure sounding rockets (I've also included "verbal plans" for a scale model of one below)--plus, Part 2 is below (I used too many characters for one message):
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http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
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Old 10-14-2021, 04:14 AM
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Default Documenting obscure rockets (Part 2)

HERE IS PART 2:

Brazil and Germany are busy collaborating on a new family of sounding rockets, too. In addition to the VSB-30 (designed as a “drop-in Skylark 5 & 12 replacement” [see: http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/pres/stsc2014/tech-44E.pdf , https://wiki.acervolima.com/vsb-30 , http://www.nielspapermodels.com/VSB30.htm , and https://www.google.com/search?q=vsb...sclient=gws-wiz ]; they fly the VSB-30 with existing Skylark payload modules, as well as new new-manufacture Brazilian-made ones [the VSB-30 also fits existing Skylark tower and rail launchers]). In addition, they fly an S-31 Improved Orion and S-31 Improved Malemute (the S-31 is the VSB-30’s first stage: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/vsb30.htm ). Also:

They’ve developed and use a single-stage Improved Malemute with three drag-optimized composite fins and a “boat-tail,” as well as a two-stage Improved Malemute-Improved Malemute (see: https://moraba.de/wp-content/upload...les_2020-05.pdf , https://moraba.de/en/moraba/sounding-rockets/ ). Their largest suborbital vehicle, a heavy-payload two-stage guided sounding rocket called the VS-50 https://moraba.de/wp-content/upload...les_2020-05.pdf , is comparable to the U.S. Aries; its solid motors will power the VLM-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLM_(rocket) satellite launch vehicle. You covered its predecessor, the VS-40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VS-40 , in one of your “Rockets of the World” annual supplement comb-binder booklets. (Incidentally, a VSB-30 [see: http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/pres/stsc2014/tech-44E.pdf ] scale model with a T-15 payload cylinder [15 mm <0.590”> in diameter; several companies sell T-15, under different designations], a BT-20 main body [both stages, the S-31 and S-30 motors], and a 3D printed 3:1 tangent ogive nose cone and a transition [I’ve found an excellent maker of these and other 3D printed model rocket parts; more about her below!] would make for a highly accurate VSB-30 scale model powered by 13 mm mini motors, 18 mm regular motors, or both [with a mini motor-powered S-31 first stage, Evan “Buzz” Nau’s gap-staged booster streamer recovery method could be used].) ALSO:

Annette Sostarich, a highly talented 3D printer (her Ebay store is called “Space Crafter,” see: https://www.ebay.com/str/spacecraft...1&_ipg=30&_vc=1 ), makes excellent 3D printed model rocket nose cones, transitions, fin units, and detail parts. I bought some 3D printed MPC Miniroc kit parts from her recently. The parts included 3D printed duplicates (made in very fine-gauge, heat-fused plastic filament) of the original T-15 (15 mm in diameter at their bases) 5:1 tangent ogive and—for the MPC Pipsqueak kits—duplicates of the T-15 balsa elliptical noses, and:

She also 3D printed a few “test” transitions and Centuri PNC-70 (from the Li’l Herc II kit: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/79cen010.html ) nose cones, *and* high-fidelity duplicates—3D printed in resin—of all of the Quest Aerospace “Customizing Parts Set” parts (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca.../93quest22.html ). These injection-molded, small customizing parts (which came on plastic “trees” [“sprues”], just like the parts in plastic model car and airplane kits; some of these parts sets were aluminized, and some weren’t) were originally made by MPC, and were later also sold by AVI and by Quest, in Quest’s early years—MPC (and probably AVI and the early Quest, too—included them in their model rocket kits, as well as selling them separately). Her 3D printed duplicates of these small parts are excellent—PLUS:

Even in the small, T-15 size 3D printed nose cones, she incorporated a “sans-base” tenon (shoulder) that enables her to make all of the nose cones (and transitions) one-piece units. This enables the nose cones to be used [1] either in motor-ejecting models (such as featherweight recovery or tumble recovery, or rear-ejection streamer recovery [like in the Centuri Star Trooper and Nova http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/73cen00c.html kits]—or in front [or rear] motor ejecting boost-glider models such as Estes’s Falcon and Space Plane: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/68estp40.html ), ^OR^...[2] in regular nose cone-ejecting, streamer- or parachute-recovery models (or nose-blow, mid-body break-apart, or motor mount rear-ejection models) in which everything is tied together by a shock cord. All of her 3D printed nose cones have—like the PNC-132 and PNC-160 shown in the 1979 Centuri catalog *here*: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/79cen036.html –an “’X-cross’ tie-on attachment” for a shock cord, a single streamer shroud line, and/or the shroud lines of a parachute. Unlike with the PNC-132 and PNC-160 nose cones, though, those portions aren’t glued to the nose cones’ bases—instead, the ‘X-cross’ tie attachment is “integrally-3D printed” into the base of each of her nose cones.

I hope this information will be helpful.
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http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
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Old 10-14-2021, 09:00 AM
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Ez2cDave Ez2cDave is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blackshire
"How can I pay you back for your help?": "You can't--pay it forward!"


Those are great words . . . Words to live by !

Data un-shared will eventually be data lost and data lost is a huge detriment to Scale modeling specifically, Rocketry in general, and history itself, overall .

Dave F.
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Old 10-15-2021, 08:11 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ez2cDave
Those are great words . . . Words to live by !

Data un-shared will eventually be data lost and data lost is a huge detriment to Scale modeling specifically, Rocketry in general, and history itself, overall .

Dave F.
*Nods* That's why I'm sharing what I have; when I was growing up, older relatives gave me their spaceflight, astronomy, and science books, and I am doing this for two "adoptive nephews" (the grandsons of one of my disabled van drivers, and of my recently-retired physical therapist). Also:

Space flight has now been around for a lifetime (the first instrumented V-2 flew from White Sands in 1946--that was 75 years ago!), and those who brought it about, in all countries, are dying out fast; hence my interest in vehicles that have little or no documentation. G. Harry Stine himself, in his "Handbook of Model Rocketry," admonished those interested in rocket scale modeling & history to measure available vehicles while we can. He pointed out that the missiles and rockets weren't built to last forever, but to be "shipped and shot," and:

He also pointed out that dissimilar metal corrosion is slowly eating the early space capsules, gradually reducing them to piles of powder--"You may end up having the only data on a vehicle [such as the Nike-Hercules at the local VFW, or the IRBM or ICBM at the gate of a nearby Air Force Base] that everyone took for granted for years." (The horizontally-displayed Titan I ICBM in Titusville [just across from the Cape] that was pristine when I saw it in 1975--when my parents and I were there to watch the Apollo-Soyuz launches; we saw Soyuz 19 lift off on television that morning--was much the worse for wear when I saw it online a few years ago, including being missing one of its two first stage engines.)
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http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
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