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Day 188 - Skittles in Microgravity - Part 2

Date:	27th May 2017
Location:	Whalan Reserve, Australia
Conditions:	Mostly Sunny, calm, 23C
Members:	Paul K, John K, PK, and GK

Introduction

For the second part of the experiment we wanted to see if we could improve on the micro-gravity environment inside the rocket since the last attempt. We wanted to ease the deceleration rate after burnout by using foam in the rocket which gives the rocket a more drawn out thrust tail-off. The intent here was to slow the ascent of the skittles within the observation chamber. The second modification was to speed up the agitator at the top of the chamber in order to help push the skittles back into the chamber near zero G when the skittles settle against the top of the chamber. We did this by running the modified servo at 8.4V instead of 5V like with the previous launch.

In the video below we have combined previous week's experiment with this weeks experiment for comparison.

We again flew the rocket a couple of times with this experiment and both times it was pressurised to 210psi. The parachute behaved well on both occasions with good landings. Here are some photos from the experiment.

Conclusion

As can be seen in the video the Skittles took 0.8 seconds to reach the top of the chamber after burnout with the foam and 0.7 seconds for water only. So this part of the modification didn't seem to help much.

The faster rotation of the agitator looked like it worked better and you could clearly see some of the skittles floating for a brief period of time right around apogee.

The best part of the experiment was eating it at the end.

Other Flights

This day was also NSWRA's competition day so a few more people were in attendance. For demonstration we flew a couple of flights with the Axion II rocket. The boys had entered their pyro rockets into the competition too. Paul's Black thunder rocket took off at a bit of an angle, which was probably due to rod whip and crashed nose first just before the parachute deployed. We normally use a 3 second delay with this rocket, but we only had motors with 5 second delay. The top of the rocket was crushed, but should be fairly easy to repair by replacing the top 3rd of the body tube. The other flights went well otherwise.

Here are some more photos from the day:

Flight Details