[back up to 5th anniversary of CSXT Space Shot 2004]
May 18, 2009
by Ian Kluft KO6YQ
San Jose, California
There had been weeks and months of planning going into Stratofox's support for the CSXT Space Shot 2004. I had a lead role in the planning and was the on-site leader of the Stratofox team. When everything was scheduled with the BLM for the lakebed and the FAA for the airspace, CSXT's launch would be attempted during "launch windows" each day during the week of May 17-21, 2004.
I also had another possible scheduling complication. My brother was graduating with his Computer Science degree on Saturday the 15th. I couldn't miss that. Fortunately, he was exactly where I needed to go anyway since he attended University of Nevada, Reno. So the schedule turned out to work perfectly. I went to my brother's graduation in the morning and lunch with family.
Then just as all the family festivities were done, the CSXT Avionics crew arrived at the Reno airport in the mid-afternoon. I couldn't have timed it better even if I had any control of the situation. I'm grateful that I didn't have to choose one or the other.
We had arranged that I'd meet with Eric Knight and his team there. We had all already become friends through previous space launch attempts. At that time, it was the CSXT Avionics Team who knew what Stratofox's technical abilities were. We were still mostly an unknown to the rest of the CSXT crew.
I know enough of my way around Reno, having family in town. I showed them to Home Depot and Walmart to pick up some supplies they knew they would not be able to bring on the airlines. It took some time to get everything on their shopping lists. Then it was off to a Reno buffet dinner. That was it for the day.
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| Ian Kluft KO6YQ with the CSXT avionics on May 16, 2004 before the next day's space launch |
We got there as site construction was starting. The launch pad was set up at the same coordinates on the lakebed which had been used for previous space launch attempts - that was reportedly to minimize changes in the paperwork with the FAA. The flight line was being set up about 1/4 mile to the southwest, where everyone would be facing the launch pad. I selected a spot for the Stratofox camp which was a little behind the front of the flight line and off to the right, where we had been located at previous space launch attempts. That way any potential crowd of spectators on the flight line wouldn't trample our camp. (As it turned out, the spectators milled about everywhere - there's plenty of room at Black Rock!)
Preparations proceeded through the day. We watched as the parts of the rocket were brought out of their shipping containers and assembled. Motor, fins, avionics, nose cone, etc. The video documentary crew was doing interviews too.
Some time during the day we were introduced to the Palmer family from El Dorado County's Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES). They volunteered to help by contacting CSXT, who referred them to Stratofox. They would end up participating with Stratofox, earning their membership and becoming good friends too.
When the rocket was assembled it was rolled out on a cart. One of the cart's tires was flat. So briefly the joke went around that the rocket had a flat tire. That was quickly fixed and the rocket was trotted out in front of the marketing bus of the major corporate sponsor, GoFast Energy Drinks, for a group photo. CSXT team members with their red polo shirts made a sizable group behind the rocket for the group picture. Those of us in Stratofox participated in taking lots of photos with the growing number of the vendors, helpers and spectators at the site.
Later after Stratofox found and recovered the rocket, we would be welcomed as part of the CSXT team from then on. But at this point we were still an unknown to most of CSXT, and had yet to earn that privilege.
After the group photo, the rocket on its cart was brought over the 1/4 mile to the launch pad. All available hands were called upon to lift the heavy rocket onto and then along the rail. Then the launch rail was lifted to the vertical position in preparation for launch. The chartered search helicopter arrived at that time, making quite a bit of drama all at once there.
Sean, Will, Jeremy and Void from the Stratofox team arrived in the late afternoon or early evening.
The pace slowed down for the evening. The CSXT crews went back into town to the motel. We joined them for dinner at Bruno's.
The Stratofox group except for Jay camped at the launch site. Things were covered up in case of possible overnight rain and thunderstorms that fortunately didn't materialize. Some of the CSXT team were at the pad until late in the evening making sure their parts of the project were ready.
We got up in the cold temperatures before dawn on Monday the 17th to prepare for the launch. It was planned as the first of five days which launch windows were scheduled. Everything looked good with the weather. I had been to many space launch attempts before. This looked as good and ready as any. Then again, at each of the previous attempts we thought it would work too. Lessons had been learned and problems solved from the previous launches. In my mind I wondered if other surprises might get in the way again or if we'd really witness the first amateur rocket launch to space this day, or this week. Everyone was hopeful and seemed to have good reason to be.
I ate a quick breakfast. The systems bringup and countdown began. For Stratofox, our pre-launch role was to assist with using our radio communications experience to verify the playa (lakebed) was clear of any people and specifically that there were no freight trains on the section of track that went through the downrange area. Since we all wanted to be at the launch site to see the launch, we made a schedule for the week's attempts which would take turns with the observer positions away from the launch. Jeremy and Void went to the downrange observer site at Cholona. Jay and Will were at the uprange observer position at Gerlach. We could also see the tracks from the launch site. I acted as Stratofox's "net control" station from the mobile amateur ("ham") radio in my truck. CSXT also issued me one of the commercial band handheld radios for the official launch countdown, where I was the "Range Safety" position.
Since there was an official playa closure by BLM, we were fortunate that BLM staffed the playa entrance guard posts and backed them up with their law enforcement rangers. It made it a lot easier on us not to have to do that this time.
In general things looked good. But it was a "hurry up and wait" situation as all the preparations led to waiting for the weather to be within limits. CSXT's weather balloon got data and it supported a launch. CSXT members set the angle of the launch rail based on the weather balloon data. The sun warmed the air and it was a nice clear though breezy morning.
As the weather improved, things changed so that we would be the ones holding up the launch, though with good reason that everyone understood. Our downrange observers at Cholona reported over the radio that a Union Pacific Railroad pickup truck passed them southwestbound on the tracks entering the downrange area. We had been prepared for a freight train to come barreling through. But a maintenance crew in a pickup truck who makes stops was there at a particularly bad time. I kept launch control aware of the situation because we had become a no-go status for launch as long as this thing was there. Indeed, the countdown progressed before 11AM to the poll of the launch directors. Everyone was "GO" for launch except for Range Safety - I was "no-go" with that truck stopped on the railroad tracks.
They kept moving south until everyone from the launch site could see them. But then it stopped again. Then it moved again. And stopped again. The FAA staff (Marshall and Mike) from DC were watching too. I heard over the radio from launch control that the FAA guys approved calling the situation a "go" as soon as the UPRR truck passed south of the point abeam the launch site. We did not have to wait for the truck to reach Gerlach 10 miles away as long as it was headed in that direction.
With that info, I told them to stand by. I watched with binoculars as the truck started moving again. It crossed the line...
I said, "Range Safety is GO for launch!"
Launch control said something like, "All stations are go for launch. We'll pick up the count at T minus 60 seconds on my mark. three... two... one... mark. T minus 60 seconds and counting."
As we had arranged, I handed off the microphone for Stratofox's net to Mike Money AC7TT of Merlin Systems and Steve Palmer KA6DHU, one of the El Dorado County radio volunteers. I grabbed my camera and tripod and ran 100 feet up to the flight line so no one would walk into my photo.
I had the camera set up by T minus 10 seconds. But in the rush I had missed the fact that my camera had been reset for low resolution. In any case, I was ready. I knew from my experience photographing high-power rockets that you never zoom in on a rocket that will have 20G's of acceleration off the pad. You have to get a wide shot. Also, you have to start taking the photo when you see smoke. If you wait for flames, it'll be gone before you can finish pushing the button. I called on every bit of my experience...
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| CSXT space launch 11:12AM May 17, 2004 |
The sound was unbelievable. These big rockets at a distance sometimes don't seem completely real because you see them lift off before the sound reaches you. It made a deep roar as it leaped into the sky with a flame at least as big as the rocket trailing it. The motor was a 14-second burn. We could continue to hear the sound coming back down to us with increasing delay as the rocket sped upward out of sight faster than sound.
But I saw it arc off to the west. I knew that we had prepared for the search to the north. It was off to somewhere we had not prepared to look for it. I immediately knew this was not going to be easy to find, if it was even possible.
When there was no sign of anything wrong through the burn, the launch site erupted into spontaneous celebration. All the people who had put years of their lives into making the rocket work, had just seen their efforts come to fruition. It was coasting upward with what should be enough speed to reach space. We just needed to find out how high it actually got.
Everyone else had done their parts. The responsibility had just shifted to Stratofox. The success of the mission now hung on us getting it back. No telemetry was received from the vehicle after a few seconds into the flight. It was not looking good.
We would later find out that the telemetry stream was stopped by damage to its antenna from Mach 5 heating on the way up. Even if the computer could transmit, it failed to acquire a GPS lock until after landing. The on-board instruments ended up being the primary data for later analysis of the flight.
Roughly 4 minutes into the flight we heard the Merlin Systems people start jumping for joy as they started receiving signals from their transmitters. These were backup transmitters attached to the parachute shroud lines, which meant the parachutes were deployed and now outside the metal frame. That was supposed to happen at apogee, the highest point of the flight. The parachutes for the nose and booster were their re-entry drag devices. So this was a good sign. As long as there was some radio transmitting, we could hunt it. And it had taken the right amount of time to coast to apogee. Now we knew it was falling back down.
Our observers at Cholona, Jeremy and Void, were able to pick up signals from both the nose and booster. They started giving us bearings.
At roughly 8 minutes, we heard two sonic booms from the west. My heart sank because we had been told that we'd probably only hear a sonic boom if the parachute failed and it was re-entering ballistic.
What we didn't know at the time is that even this small a spacecraft will always make a "re-entry boom". So actually it was normal and I was worrying about nothing.
Then the reports from Jeremy in Cholona got particularly interesting. We couldn't hear the nose cone's signal any more but he could. So it gave us a clue that it had fallen behind some terrain for us but not for him. But the stranger thing was that the booster signal, the heavier of the two, seemed to still be in flight. I told Jeremy to just keep recording his data and we'll sort it out later. It didn't take long to disappear off to the north. Very strange.
It turned out we wouldn't learn the booster's story for 6 months. Even though we thought it was bad data at first, he was tracking the booster's parachute after the booster had detached from it. Without any remaining transmitters, we didn't look for the booster on that trip. We would eventually re-start the search for it over the Summer. We recovered the booster on the day after Thanksgiving, just hours before a snowstorm would have closed access to the mountains until Spring 2005.
But that's getting ahead of the story. We only needed the computers on the nose section to confirm success of the space flight.
Since the only working transmitters were from Merlin Systems, they were the ones who rode on CSXT's chartered helicopter. The idea was to see if it could quickly locate either section of the rocket. But a Robinson 422 is a very small helicopter. It didn't have room for the directional antennas. They did the best they could with a handheld omni antenna. The helicopter pilot wouldn't enter the mountains because the winds were so turbulent in the lee side that he couldn't judge the direction it was coming from. It was a good safety decision and the right thing for him to do. They came back with the coordinates where they had the strongest signal from the nose cone's transmitter.
I was glad I had bought all the USGS topographic maps of the Black Rock region. I picked out the one we needed and brought it to the mission control trailer. On the table we plotted the coordinates. It was in the Granite Range almost 20 miles west of the launch site. We would take Hwy 34 through the Hualapai Valley, and then look for which roads, if any, were still in condition to get through.
I asked a couple drivers to go up Soldier Meadows Rd and get some more bearings from a distance. Since this was in the mountains, I was concerned that up close we could be chasing reflections of the signal off various mountain surfaces. It's a real problem when doing direction finding (DF'ing) for a transmitter in mountains.
We got a bit of a diversion when they said they found "something". Yeah, it was something but not what we were looking for, remains of a very colorful balloon. We picked it up and continued.
As we reached the turnoff from Hwy 34, we split up into groups to try the different paths around or through a hill. Sean took a group on the route through it. My group went around the hill and, with some trial and error, found a path that was on BLM (public) land. We stopped and got a good signal at a bearing facing the mountains.
While we were there, a local landowner came up on an ATV. She said she had encountered our other group and opened a gate on her land for them. She pointed the way for us to rendezvous with them. That was where Dave L from BLM decided we were not headed for any federal wilderness areas. So he split.
At this point, the roads looked pretty rough even for 4x4s going the 1 mile to the base of the mountains. They weren't particularly bad roads except that the ride would shake you to pieces. Steve and Randy Palmer got their supplies and radios and set off on foot. We gave them checkin times that we needed to hear from them. But we actually stayed in continuing contact.
During this time, we had been hearing one party on the radio that we didn't know who they were. They hadn't been saying their Amateur Radio callsign like the rest of us. We started to suspect they didn't have one. When asked what their callsign is, they only identified themselves as "Team Volvo". As expected - they weren't one of us. They were some spectators who had heard the helicopter's coordinates and tore off alone into the desert to try to get there first. Well, they said they were trying to help - but they weren't playing by a team effort. More on them later...
With some more exploration, we found one of the trails to the base of the Granite Range from this side was drivable. It was getting late in the day. Mike AC7TT from Merlin and Sean KG6CVV from Stratofox went ahead in one vehicle. I followed in my truck. We had two goals. One was to pick up the Palmer brothers so they could continue their search instead of start walking back. And of course it would have been nice to find the rocket too.
There was a nasty little 4x4 trail that led up a narrow canyon into the mountains from very near the helicopter's coordinates. And the radio signal kept coming from "up there". This road required a high-clearance 4x4 vehicle to get over all the rocks.
We were running out of daylight so I had to make the call to get everyone off the mountain before it got dark. We couldn't afford to not know where anyone was once it got dark.
Mike and Sean got a little further up the road than I did. They liked the signal from around the corner. I picked up Steve and Randy. They had their own idea of a small canyon off the road which would be a good way to go. These ideas would shape the next morning's plan. But we drove off the mountain with the sun setting.
Now we heard from "Team Volvo" again. They had been up that 4x4 trail too. Yes, in a Volvo. Though they were back down on the flats by this point. The nasty little trail had damaged their radiator. They lost all their radiator fluid and needed a ride back to town where they could arrange to get a tow truck the next day. Diane Palmer (Randy's wife) was able to get their RV to the point where they had broken down. We caught up with them there too.
I don't remember the whole conversation. These are guys who have done a lot of interesting technical things with computers and the Internet. Many of us recognized them by their reputations. I won't identify them to avoid causing any embarrassment over these circumstances. But I think in the conversation I didn't hide my irritation about their tearing off with reckless abandon into the mountains in the Nevada desert, and transmitting on Amateur Radio frequencies without a license. Maybe I should have held my tongue - they'd been through enough. And they could see that teamwork also meant the ability to rescue. They believed they were trying to help, though I think with considerable misdirection of their talent. To their credit, they were well prepared and would easily have survived many days if we hadn't been around to give them a ride to town.
The delay for the rescue did get us back into town much later than planned. When we returned to camp, I found that a wind storm during the day had damaged my larger tent, which we use as a sort of group social area. Everyone's smaller tents were OK.
Jay had to head back home to Reno. He had only gotten one weekday off from work.
Some of the things working against us, real and imagined, had started taking a toll on me overnight and in the morning. I was pretty pessimistic because the sonic booms were supposed to be indications that things had failed, or so we had been told. And there was no doubt that we heard two sonic booms. So I thought it was fairly likely that the signal were were chasing might just be a lone parachute with its beacon, and no hint where the parts of the rocket had actually crashed to bits somewhere in the mountains. It was a really bleak picture in my head. I tried not to share my gloomy outlook with anyone else.
It's tough to motivate the team when you're having trouble motivating yourself. But as long as there were still things to try, those were the things to do next. We had to find that transmitter and see how much was still attached to it, if anything. The path was clear up to that point. I could sustain an act of motivation that far. But if things turned out to be as bad as I expected, we'd just have to cross that bridge when we got there. I didn't really want to think about that because our options would run out very quickly.
The CSXT crews were ready to go. They had finished tearing down the launch site the previous day. So they were coming with us this time.
We finished breakfast and loading up our supplies. I carried crates of survival supplies in case we or any part of the group got stuck.
There was a complication with the CSXT team. Eric and his Avionics Team from Connecticut were not coming along. The way I heard the story, there weren't enough 4x4 vehicles for everyone on Eric's team to go, so he stayed behind too. It was a generous gesture. Though I'd have preferred to have all the Hams we could get to be on the radios there.
Trying to make the best of what must be a frustrating situation, we arranged that the only member of CSXT's Minnesota crew who is a Ham, Matt Murphy KB0VUE, would park on Steamboat Mountain and relay updates to Eric and his crew in Gerlach. (It is no longer possible to drive to the top of the Steamboat today. Since 2004, BLM has destroyed the road.)
This time we knew the way up to the mountains. So we brought the CSXT crews up there. In the 4x4 trail that climbs the narrow canyon, most of the vehicles had to stop at one of two points. I played 4x4 shuttle up and down the hill a few times to get everyone up to the search area. Well, almost everyone. Diane Palmer stayed behind at the RV to let others have limited room.
The documentary video crew captured a conversation between Sean and me. Sean wanted to start hiking at a point further up the 4x4 trail. I knew the Palmers also had a spot they liked with a good signal pointing up a canyon starting from lower on the 4x4 trail. I told him we want to "follow the data", which told us both locations should work. If the video documentary ever airs, they got a piece where they asked me to clarify on camera what I meant by "follow the data." We had two receivers and directional antennas (for the frequency of this backup transmitter) which could be the basis for teams going on foot. Since we also had two competing ideas for where to start hiking, I decided to let each team start from one of those locations. Jeremy would lead Direction Finding (DF) Team 1 and the Palmers would lead DF Team 2. We'd cover more ground by working in parallel.
Out of necessity from where I ended up bringing people up the hill as the 4x4 shuttle, I went with DF Team 2. We turned out to have by far the more strenuous uphill hike, with an ascent of over 800' on what seemed like a 45 degree slope (though it must have been less than that.) We saw DF Team 1 emerge in our view around a corner well up the slope from our right. There was more or less continuous chatter on the radio as status updates were sent via Matt to Eric and the Avionics Team in Gerlach. We saw DF Team 1 climb up over a crest onto a plateau. I got some pictures of them from below.
Then we heard Jeremy's voice on the radio, "Please clear the channel for an announcement." Needless to say, there was silence on the radio.
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| Stratofox group photo at the CSXT payload landing site |
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| The spacecraft, three cameras and who knows how many people in Ian's truck for the ride down the mountain |
I can't tell you how much of a relief it was for me. Remember, I was expecting to find a parachute with beacon but not the payload. So the celebration that broke out among everyone was even that much more sweet. We had indeed done our part for the success of the mission, validating everyone else's work that had gotten the rocket to space.
The landing site coordinates were 40.94526, -119.44981 at about 6200' elevation, near Red Mountain in the Granite Range. It was over 18 miles, about 25 km, from the launch site.
Red Mountain was a good name for the place. The nose cone was embedded several feet into the loose rocks on a talus slope of broken reddish-colored breccia rocks. We had been climbing this stuff all the way up. It was very slow going trying to climb up that slope. The nose cone had scratches from where it parted the loose rocks from each other on impact. The white parachute still looked brand new.
And no wonder why they couldn't see it from the helicopter... a red nose cone embedded in a mountainside of loose red rocks. It was practically camouflaged. Only the 6' white parachute could have been visible. And it wasn't much to see from over a mile away in the air.
Eventually all of us got there. It took some begging and pleading to get some of the first arrivals to wait for everyone to see it before digging it out. But everyone did wait. Everyone who wanted their picture taken with it got a chance, including a Stratofox group photo that was taken by CSXT's Jerry Larson with my camera.
An interesting thing happened here. Instead of calling it the nose cone or the payload, everyone started referring to it as "the spacecraft". It had indeed been to space and back. It was spoken out of reverence, not a joke, for the history that had just been made.
When that was done, then it was time to dig it out. At this point, I think I have to thank Jeremy and I don't know how many others for helping me with something... At least Jeremy knew this from our discussions at Stratofox and all our efforts to support space launches. If given the chance, my dream would be for the privilege to have my truck be the first to carry the first amateur space rocket. There would never be another chance to be first.
So Jeremy told me to go get my truck. And after I left, he must have been telling the others what for. I went ahead of the group and down the hill to the lower parking spot to get it. At my truck, Ky Michaelson and Bruce Lee had been listening to the radio chatter from my Ham Radio. (It was too much of a hike for Ky to try.) I pointed them up the hill to where the group was bringing it to the road. Since Ky was the founder and leader of the CSXT launch effort for more than a decade, there was an impromptu ceremony to "present the spacecraft to Ky". He couldn't hold back the tears of joy over a dream accomplished.
When they were done with that, I figured the CSXT folks would just choose to put the spacecraft in one of their rental SUVs. It's their rocket after all. But as they carried it past their vehicles and mine was the only one left, I realized what was happening. Now it was my turn to be overwhelmed with the moment. They were going to let me have my dream too. I would be the driver and my truck would be the first to carry the first amateur rocket launched to space after its re-entry.
I don't think I've ever had more people in my truck. I'm not even sure how many there were. The seats inside the quad cab were full. In the bed of the truck, around the crates of survival supplies, there were Jerry, the spacecraft, one of the documentary video cameramen, plus several more people. The other video documentary camera got a shot of this spectacle leading the parade of 4x4s down for 1 mile down the hill until we got to everyone's vehicles. I went slow enough that a lot of people were able to follow us just walking down the 4x4 trail.
After that first mile down the mountain, we reached the first parking area. We transferred the spacecraft to Jerry's truck. The celebration now turned to the major sponsor, GoFast Energy Drinks. The president of GoFast was there with us. He led a toast (using cold GoFast drinks right out of a cooler of course) to the successful launch and recovery.
From that point, we all proceeded back to Gerlach. Eric and the Avionics Team were anxiously waiting for us at Bruno's. One by one, we all arrived, expect the GoFast bus, Jerry with the spacecraft and a couple others. Soon one of the CSXT crew drove up and asked if anyone had a gas can.
We all had the same reaction... laughter. "You've got to be kidding!" Jerry ran out of gas bringing the spacecraft back to town. The video folks had to get this - not only did the story have a Hollywood ending, this would be a moment of comic relief in it too. Eric also went back with them. After all he'd been waiting, no one could blame him for jumping to go along for that.
Jerry and the GoFast bus finally did make their triumphant entry to town. Yet another spontaneous celebration happened in the parking lot of Bruno's. Then we took the spacecraft inside to the banquet room. There were numerous group photos with the spacecraft, including some for Stratofox. Now that we had done our part and got it back, we were accepted as part of the team.
After everyone were done with their photos, the nose cone was removed from the payload. Every piece of memorabilia that had been placed inside it before the launch now became a story to tell to the whole group that included CSXT, sponsors, vendors, Stratofox and probably others filling the room. The items near the skin were partly melted from the Mach 5+ heating on ascent.
Then the data was extracted from the computers. That was when they realized the GPS didn't lock during the flight, and they they had some more work to do to determine the final altitude. But we knew generally that it couldn't have been up there coasting that long (until the re-entry booms) unless it had at least made it to space. So it was just a detail, not a worry. That information would come as the data was poured over, eventually finalized at 72 miles. You only need 62 miles (100km) to claim a space flight.
Ironically, the data showed that it acquired a GPS lock immediately after its parting-the-rocks landing. So it knew where it was. It was trying to tell us where it was, using a no-longer-functioning antenna. The non-data backup beacon turned out the be good enough. But we had to work for our place in history.
We weren't the only ones breaking out into spontaneous celebration at this news. Actually, as the Internet and news media spread the word, there had been stories of people jumping up and down and doing a happy dance at their office cubicles when they heard the news of the first amateur rocket launched to space. Anyone who builds or wanted to build their own rockets looked to this for hope that civilians can launch rockets to space. It wasn't a government monopoly any more. It was happening all over the world, wherever technically inclined people who understood the significance of the achievement were.
Though we can't claim to be anywhere near their achievement, I can't think of any quote that captured this better than a joke that Buzz Aldrin was quoted telling his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts. After they returned from the Moon and found out about the worldwide news-following and celebration that had been going on, he said, "We missed the whole thing." There was another whole experience going on around the world that they could not see while they were busy on the mission everyone was watching.
Likewise, there were celebrations around the world among those who knew to watch for the news of the first amateur rocket launch to space. And we were so busy, even frustrated at times, looking for the spacecraft while the celebrations were happening. There was a shared experience among the people who watched this, and that was a big part of the event too.