Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 14:48:17 -0800 From: Ian Kluft To: AeroPac members Cc: Pat Gordzelik Subject: Re: [AeroPac Members] RE: [THPRA-General] CSXT booster rocket found On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 09:55:21AM -0800, Jamie Clay wrote: > Very cool! > > -----Original Message----- > From: Pat Gordzelik [mailto:potrocs@...] > Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2004 9:43 AM > To: THPRA-General@... > Subject: [THPRA-General] CSXT booster rocket found > > Greetings all. > > Ky Michaelson called me yesterday afternoon to tell me they found his > booster section that went to space. As you may recall, they found the > nose cone-payload section, but looked for days to find the rest of > the rocket to know avail. Chuck Cummins even went up there on a > hike/seek expedition but to no avail. > > However, the BLM was searching for wild horses/burros last week and > spotted by chopper "something that looked like a rocket laying > horizontal on Granite mountain. They radioed in GPS coords, and that > info was later relayed to some of Ky's team in California. Ky was > going to depart yesterday via commercial airline with Jodi to assist > in the search, but after a 3 hour delay due to equip malfunction, > they scrubbed the flight. However, his CA team did manage to > instigate a search in spite of a winter snow storm outside of Reno, > and did indeed find the rocket. They sent pics of it to Ky, it looks > to Ky that about 2 feet of the airframe is missing, which he equates > to exposed retaining bolts that probably superheated on the way up > and failed during deployment/descent. They estimate that the > airframe/fin empennage was doing approx 90 MPH when it landed on > Granite mountain. The search team also reports finding 2 cigarette > butts laying beside the airframe, and it was surmised that probably > hunters had found the rocket at some time, probably sat down on it to > have a smoke, never knowing just what the heck they had found, as > they never bothered to report it! > > Now heres the killer part. It was found 26 miles from liftoff point, > and probably within 1 mile of where Chuck was searching. Sorry Chuck > ole buddy, you were dang close!! > > Ky told me he would get more details to me soon, as well as coords of > exactly where the rocket was found. Due to the snowstorm, the > recovery team will have to come back with vehicle and equipment to > haul the rocket out. I'll report to you further details when I get > them. > > Pat G I'm a member of the Stratofox team who recovered the rocket. We're the ones referred to as Ky's California team in the message above. Over the coming days as we collect pictures, videos and personal accounts from the recovery expedition, we'll have more info showing up at our club's web site at http://www.stratofox.org/ - please have some patience while we put that together for a public recording of the history that has been made. It will show up in increments as it becomes available. With the booster having been found, we now have permission to talk about it. Please allow me to make some corrections. There's always stuff that gets mangled in the transcription from a phone call. :-) * In the interest of crediting the right volunteers for their accomplishments, the person who was hiking 1 mile from the booster was Steve McMacken, a member of the CSXT Avionics development team, and a very avid hiker. He left the rest of us in the dust on a search on Aug 15. I observed from a ledge another mile away (looking at Steve on the hill where the booster was sitting on the other side) watching for his safety and acting as a Ham Radio relay for him. CSXT founder Ky Michaelson was with us on that search. * It wasn't by accident that Steve and others were looking so close by. There's a neat detective-story to be told about that... short story is that from a high-quality audio recording of the re-entry booms made by Stratofox's Jeremy Cooper, CSXT's Jerry Larson was able to determine that the booster did have its parachute deployed above 100,000' on re-entry. His estimated booster search area turned out to be amazingly close. But when we were searching in August, we were driven away by approaching thunderstorms every afternoon before we got to cover enough of the area. When the wet season arrived early, we thought we had given up the search until next Spring. * A BLM helicopter crew found the booster on Nov 10 while doing a survey of wild horses. They didn't radio info anywhere - they wrote down the coordinates and a description, which they shared with other BLM staff at the Winnemucca office. Staff members who had been at the launch knew to contact CSXT and Stratofox. When BLM contacted us on Nov 15, their description including a sponsor's name "Fuscient" was enough to positively identify it as the CSXT/GoFast booster. Pilot Ken Samuelson took aerial photos on Nov 17, giving us our first glimpse at the condition of the spacecraft. The parachute was nowhere to be seen and it was lying heavily damaged next to a small impact crater. From the damage in the photo, it was obvious that the impact was subsonic. So that confirmed the parachute had been deployed on re-entry. A guess made by CSXT members, it may have become detached from its parachute while descending through the jet stream winds in the Stratosphere. Stratofox member Jay Lawson and two friends reached the booster site on Nov 20 and took more pictures which we used for planning the expedition to get it out of there. Since it was so close to where we had been searching in August, he was able to leverage a lot of information we had on the area from that trip. But in the next 6 days, more rain and snow fell in the mountains, seriously deteriorating the condition of the dirt roads. Incoming bad weather accelerated all our plans by a day, and prevented CSXT members who built the rocket from taking part in the expedition. They reached Gerlach a few hours behind us. We were going to run out of daylight as it was so they agreed we should go ahead without them. The Stratofox convoy of 6 4x4's went on the afternoon of Friday Nov 26. Since we usually go 4x4'ing in Summer, Stratofox member Diane Palmer who is also a member of El Dorado County (California) Search & Rescue recruited fellow S&R members Ray Pledger and Tom White. They regularly rescue people from the snow in the Sierras in Winter. As it turned out, two of our vehicles (includuing mine) slid off the road in mud or snow enroute to the booster, and needed to be pulled out of the holes we had fallen into by Ray and Tom. CSXT's Eric Knight and Jim Hoffman got aerial video of the Stratofox teams arriving at the booster from Ken Samuelson's plane. We picked up loose pieces from the site, including using metal detectors to find pieces under the snow. Everyone loaded the now-12-foot booster (originally was 15 feet) onto my truck. We started the drive out at about 5:30PM, an hour after sunset, and got to Gerlach at 7:30PM. Many thanks to Bruno's Restaurant for staying open late for us. (We had called ahead via satphone.) The booster was stored indoors overnight and then transferred to Bruce Kelly's truck, where he'll take it on the next step of its journey to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. (Bruce is editor of High-Power Rocketry Magazine and a former president of the Tripoli Rocketry Association.) On Saturday morning there was 2 inches of snow on the ground in Gerlach. So undoubtedly Friday was our last chance this season to go get it out. We couldn't have done this at this time of year without Search & Rescue professionals on our team. As you can imagine, we're not encouraging anyone to try going there with such hazardous conditions. So even as we post pictures and info about the recovery, I hope you'll excuse us for remaining a bit vague on the location for everyone's safety. Though you may be able to figure it out from the pictures, we'll ask for your cooperation in keeping that to yourself. I've mentioned a number of names in this article but there are still many more people to give credit to for the success of the recovery expedition. We'll do that on the Stratofox web site. Ian Kluft San Jose, California