Month: December 2014

Extreme testing

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Last week the  electronics team set out to do some testing on a very vital part of the experiment – the ignitors.

To ensure safety and success of the experiment, it is important that these components work as expected. The experiments truly put the ignitors to the test, especially since we overlooked the fact that the wire of the ignitors and sand paper did not work very well together. Several ignitors were destroyed, so the team is really lucky to have Alexander who came in on a Sunday to make new ones before the trip to Bremen.

Thank you Alex, you are our angel!

sandpaper
Sand paper + kanthal wire ≠ good

 

Testing, shipment and last minute packing

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So after some weeks of silence (Yeah we know about that. Sorry, but rocket experiments have a tendency to steal a lot of time :p ) we would just like to give you an update of what is up for the coming weeks, and what has been going on for the previous weeks.

As you probably already know the design is done, and built. Look below for a sight that honestly is most welcome for the SCRAP team. 🙂 We also thought it might be fun for you to see a little comparison with the CADs, just to show you that indeed things turned out as planned.

Finally, there it is.
Finally, there it (she) is. The final result.
...and that's how it was supposed to look. Pretty close, huh ;)
…and that’s how it was supposed to look. Pretty close, huh 😉

But I think you’ve seen this before. So what else has been going on? Well, testing, testing and more testing. On Friday we did a spinning ejection test with great success. Earlier we also did a fun experiment. What happens if you put a fully loaded cartridge on a vibration table and shake it as much as the machines allow?

Ready to blow >:-)
Ready to blow >:-)

Well not much really…

...

True, there was some disappointment, but ultimately the fact that absolutely nothing happened during the test is actually the best result we could have gotten (Obviously Jan disagrees somewhat). Next week it’s down to Bremen to do the whole thing over again, and show them ESA folk that the SCRAP experiment is ready to fly!

Sincerely,

the SCRAP experiment