[burpg] A Fuller Explanation of Why Cold Flow isn't Happening

From: Armor Harris <armorharris@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "burpg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <burpg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, ME310 Farny <farny@xxxxxx>, Timothy Coyne <tccjoseph@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 11:32:05 -0400

Hey Everyone,

So we aren't headed out to Sudbury today, but this is quite normal in the
course of rocket development. In engineering you have design, analysis,
development, and operations. Development is the hardest part of that cycle
because that's when you actually have to get everything working.

The good news is that we made a ton of progress this weekend and are pretty
close to having a working system. We also couldn't have got the ground
software working properly without Drew and the electronics team going at it
for the better part of two days.

There are *three root causes* to our issues this weekend.

*1) Lack of communication*- An order that was placed with plenty of
schedule margin got hung up in the purchasing process and we didn't know
because of lack of communication by our accountant in the ME department. We
ordered more than $600 in connectors and were planning on assembling the
ground box last weekend. We didn't get those connectors until early this
week, so we were forced to assemble the ground box this weekend, which took
a lot of time away from Hyperion (the ground board) testing.

Then there were a couple of accidents when working on Hyperion because we
were in "make it work or bust" mode. It got dropped, banged, probably ESD
damaged, and something shorted out on the bottom of the board on the 6v
rail.

It happened because it was being worked on in a cluttered workspace without
properly securing or handling the board. Basically there was so much stuff
everywhere that there wasn't a clean enough work environment to just screw
the board down and work on it.

2)* The lab is a mess.* I personally spent about 2 hours cumulative time
looking for tools or parts. We just have to have a cleaner and more
organized workspace with all tools and equipment stored properly. It's
impossible to find anything you need and impossible to find clean
workspace. *So we're cleaning up the lab at 3pm today. *

*3) Threaded Rod Boondoggle-* The Mk IIB crew decided to inexplicably order
the weakest threaded rod they could find, and it might or might not be
strong enough for a cold flow test and definitely isn't strong enough for a
hot fire test. So we need to take the whole thing apart and rebuild it with
stronger rods later this week. Re-doing this analysis and discussing
whether or not the current threaded rods were ok or not cost us several
hours.

Best,
Armor

[burpg] A Fuller Explanation of Why Cold Flow isn't Happening

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