Movies

IAP Competition 2005

IAP Competition 2004

Documentary

Kiyash Monsef is making a documentary film about the rocket team. He has made two trailer videos so far (all are in RealPlayer format): The first trailer (34 kbps/1.9MB, 150 kbps/8.3MB) covers the early work of the team, and the second trailer (34 kbps/2.2MB, 150 kbps/9.7MB) talks about the tests on and detonation of E1.

Ignitor

As part of the development of our next engine, we've worked on building an ignitor which is restartable. We have some videos of early (November 2002) in-lab tests in AVI format (test 1: 3.7MB and test 2:3.7MB) and Quicktime format (test 1: 486kB and test 2:516kB). Later tests, from July 2003, were more successful and controlled (1.9MB test, Quicktime format).

Solid-fuel Rocket & Payload

The solid-fuel high-power rocket is being used as a test bed for various technologies, in preparation for the launch of our main engine. The rocket was first launched in August 2002 (RealMedia: 466kB and 1.9MB), very successfully.

Next, in March 2003, the rocket was used to test the video payload. While the video transmission did not work well, the launch of the rocket itself performed fine (862kB and 1.5MB, and 462kB photo-slides).

In July 2003, some more team members obtained their level 1 certifications for amateur rocketry (2.0MB video of one flight). The following week a bunch of students performed a successful test flight of the video payload (using 2 cameras) on a new test-bed rocket (1.5MB launch video and 1.3MB payload combined-cameras video).

Engine #1 tests

Test #1041

Engine #1 / First Hot Firing (September 3, 2000)

Test #1067

Engine #1 / Second Hot Firing (October 15, 2000)

This was the first time that we were able to get the high speed camera. It can shoot at up to 8,000 frames per second! Due to some video problems, we only have high speed camera footage available. We have here the crucial 20 frames that show our 10 milliseconds of proper ignition -- the shock diamonds:

Large Quicktime (382 k)

Special thanks to Jim Bales and the MIT Edgerton Center for the use of the high speed camera!

Test #1098

Engine #1 / Third Hot Firing / Detonation (November 5, 2000)

For this test, we had a much more complete set of videos - two camcorder shots plus the high speed (HS) camera. Note that, because the HS camera is used at 1,000 frames per second (limiting us to 8 seconds of video), each frame is quite dark because there's generally not enough light available. Hopefully this can be improved in the future. For your reference, the HS video included here shows the detonation slowed down by a factor of 20 - i.e., the 8 seconds of video take 2 minutes, 43 seconds (at 10 fps playback, you're seeing every fifth frame).

Engine #2 test

Test #2108-2109

Engine #2 / First LOX test / Explosion (July, 2001)

• 2108 Front camera (RealPlayer format)
• 2108 Top camera (RealPlayer format)
• 2109 Top (short) camera (RealPlayer format)
• 2109 Top (long) camera (RealPlayer format)