Hey everyone,
We had to scrub the next cold flow/hot fire test for this weekend. It was
not due to lack of effort, but rather some gremlins in our GSE system.
Last weekend, we had flow rate issues that made a lot of the test data a
poor representation of the system's target performance. While it was a good
shakedown, and all the issues we came across were acted on, we are still
not able to achieve flow rates in the lab necessary to make testing this
weekend worthwhile. We were after a single cold flow test to verify changes
and then move onto hot firing, so this cold flow can be moved to proceed
our next test date, by which time we will have a ground system that can
perform as necessary. It is difficult to justify a test the weekend before
finals of a system that will lead to results similar to what we already
have.
With that said, we are still up against pressure losses in the system that
we are having trouble explaining. Preliminary tests and inspections are
relatively inconclusive. We are going to have to investigate further and
run pressure drop tests across various components and systems, which will
now be the focus of this weekend.
For those of you who put in the long hours preparing, thank you for your
hard work.
Study hard for finals and have a good weekend,
--
Joseph M. Beaupre
Boston University
Director, Rocket Propulsion Group
Electrical Engineering 2015
