christheman200

Just put a lens from a harddrive or CD reader in front of the camera.

Just quick update to say that everything is going well. The school year has started up, and I should have 2 or 3 classes to work on this project for the rest of the year. We have a 3D printer, which I am going to be setting up over the next week. I now have an 8 foot 4 inch tall water rocket in my house. I'm developing the recovery system for a general unguided flight test, which is quite close to being done. It will be based off of Arduino/Freeduino boards, and since I only have an Uno at the moment I may have to wait for my Pro Mini Freeduinos to come in before I launch. Losing a 40 dollar Arduino isn't my idea of fun, even though the whole rocket has cost much more than that so far. The head of our First Robotics team is working on a table which will balance a ball by shifting the table upon which it sits, and this happens to be pretty similar to my gimballing engine. Hopefully her work can help me out with my project. California was awesome! I passed by SpaceX, Tesla Motors, Space Shuttle Endeavour, the Orion Capsule, got past the front gates of JPL, and toured Caltech. For those of you who know him, I met Veritasium after my campus tour. There were also numerous giant telescopes.

Slosh may be a large issue, but I feel that it is unlikely to cause much grief. Your post made me realize that the air may leak out if g forces start going upwards. Under a parachute this should not happen. I haven't seen that gimballed rocket before. It looks very interesting! I might just steal some of that code.

Getting back to this thread. The project is far from dead! I'll be travelling from LA through San Francisco starting Thursday for a week or so. If any of you can manage to get me a tour of Caltech, JPL, SpaceX, etc., send me a message. That would be a really big deal for me! I only have about a 50 percent chance of getting tours of the above at the moment. As such, there won't be much construction and testing going on for a while. To make good use of this time I've created 6 pressure vessels, which will have cured by the time I get back. What's happened in the time since my last post? I have pressure tested a tank to 100psi through launching a water rocket, and even after many massive impacts the bottle held strong. I haven't created a coupler to chain together multiple tanks yet. I've also assembled 6 more tanks, which will cure while I'm in California. Recently I created a gimballing nozzle from Styrofoam, albeit without a nozzle, yet. I am going to figure out how to easily make a flexible nozzle over the next week. Last night I hooked up a servo to my arduino, and I hope to control it with a wii nunchuck, acting as a crude gyroscope, which will be taken from accelerometer data. Here's a video of the last launch of the day: The plan is as follows while on vacation: Figure out how to get the nozzle to gimbal Find an easy method of connecting pressure tanks Learn some control logic I have no knowledge of control logic, so this is where I will need to spend some time learning in the future. If you have a favourite tutorial on control logic, feel free to reply with a link.

I think you guys might have had a chance of performing some real science in space if you had stopped changing your objectives and goals as you went along. Flying by Mars as a first space mission for any agency is absolutely ridiculous.

I'd like to see you propose crashing into Phobos to the IAU.

Webster is beyond top of the line... and very expensive, definitely not what you guys need. SurplusShed is ok, but you can buy an 8 inch dob with mirror for $400, or less. Much more value there.

Tons of them. I suggest you join cloudynights. They can give you an outline of the different mirror makers. I'm not going to give any specifics because they all grind to different levels of precision.

Hey, go and post this on cloudynights.com We are the largest astronomy forum on the internet, and you'll get a lot more (helpful) help. I've built a lot of equipment, and I would suggest buying your own equipment at first. If you don't have experience with similar projects, it will take you a good number of months.

I've now modelled a gimballing nozzle, to be 3D printed in ~1 month. By fiddling with an online simulator, I have found that my craft will have around 60-75 m/s of delta-v. I'm debugging my own simulator at the moment. As well, my website is very much a work in progress.

There might be a few too many variables with a moving centre of mass to get a properly stabilized craft. As well, most of the weight belongs to the water held in the bottles, so there wouldn't be much mass, making the craft even more vulnerable to effects from the hose. If you have some free time today (a couple of minutes), would you mind finding a lightweight valve that you think would work with your method? I've been a bit stumped in what to use. What type of fitting should I use to let the nozzle gimbal? I've also put out a request for a graphic logo over in the space lounge: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86074-In-Need-of-Some-Graphics If someone wouldn't mind making a logo for the project, we'd be looking much more professional!

I just spotted this thread, and I've got to say that it seems genius. What I love about KSP is that its community is filled with people who dare to try the "impossible". I'm currently working on an automated landing water rocket on a thread in the science labs here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84593-Curiosity-Style-Egg-Drop-Lander/page9 From what I learn in this project, I might be able to give you guys some actual help. Keep going with this project. I vote for a Phobos flyby, because if we can even manage to pull off a cubesat launch, I think we can use our collective minds to do whatever we want.

I've been hard at work on a real, automated landing water rocket over on the science labs forum http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84593-Curiosity-Style-Egg-Drop-Lander/page9 Having very little experience in graphics, I'm in need of someone who wouldn't mind whipping up a small logo for me. I'm imagining (and have sketched) something resembling a bottle rocket, with lander legs, touching down on the bottom of the circle which is the perimeter of the logo. It would be nice to have the words "Lansdale Engineering" around the outside. If you know anyone that could make this for me, it would be greatly appreciated if you pointed them my way. Thanks for reading through!

FCI, it is not feasible to run the craft off of an external source. The lines leading into the craft would destabilize it. I have already constructed two large water chambers, with two more on the way.

I have started an official twitter account! You can follow me at @LansdaleEng, or via https://twitter.com/LansdaleEng I will be posting daily updates on the lander, as well as engineering related subjects. At the moment, my father and I are working to put up a custom domain, and set up a blog sorts. Plans for today include working on a simulator, and making some graphics.