Silver Ball goes down hard in slo-mo

Ben Brockert posts a slow motion view of the Silver Ball flight that ruined Unreasonable Rocket's day:

Paul Breed has recently posted the following message:

While diassembling silver the problem dawned on me a stupid coding error!

Posted 11/01/09 | 22:37:03 by TopSpacer | Filed under: Space Prizes

Comments

It still was a superb accomplishment.
Looked like great combustion efficiency.

Has anyone else since Black Knight flown a regeneratively cooled peroxide/ kerosene engine?

In time, you will have all the gremlins beaten down and no coding errors.

Just a fantastic job.
Congratulations to you both.

Posted by Lee Valentine at 11/01/09 23:10:57

Now that the contest has wound down, is Paul Breed going to stow his work away in some dusty garage never to revisit it, or will he keep building hardware and try to make a business of it? What are his plans for the future? If very small teams like Masten and Armadillo have been receiving grants and the like, I don't know why Unreasonable couldn't.

Posted by ZJM434 at 11/02/09 01:11:00

OUCH, well first flights aren't called smoke tests for nothing. I hope you rebuild and try again. You guys have accomplished a lot.

Posted by Mike Lorrey at 11/02/09 10:45:14

when a code error is made on a PC, usually the worst case problem is a Blue Screen. When a code error is made on a flight system, the worst case is hardware loss. SpaceX was bitten by code/control bugs causing loss of hardware, Scaled was bitten by control bugs causing loss of avionics, Armadillo has been bitten by control bugs causing loss of hardware.

On small scale programs, it's not the worst problem in the world, but it is much worse on big programs.

For what it's worth, the Big guys still get bitten by these. Clementine, Viking, Mars Climate Observer
were all bitten by small software errors. Even ATT crashed the US Phone network through a small software bug.

Posted by anonymous at 11/02/09 10:53:04

>Now that the contest has wound down, is
>Paul Breed going to stow his work away
>in some dusty garage never to revisit
>it, or will he keep building hardware
>and try to make a business of it?

Like always we are open to any and all customer proposals, for the next 12 mo independent development will be limited by funds.

Posted by Paul Breed at 11/02/09 12:06:25

This is a biprop engine? seems like very good combustion efficiency. The exhaust is almost invisible, just like it was with black arrow. If the supply problem can be solved, this is a very interesting technology.

Posted by anonymous at 11/02/09 13:39:38

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