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back to article LOHAN slips into tight rubber outfit

Last week, the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team welcomed rocketeer Paul Shackleton aboard our audacious spaceplane mission. Click here for a bigger version of the LOHAN graphic Accordingly, it's an opportune moment to report on progress on the Vulture 2 motor heater, which will hopefully prevent the aircraft's …

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  1. EvanPyle
    Coat

    power connector

    The easiest ways I can think of for an easy break power connector are:

    1. A slip ring on the pole and a small spring contact (think electric racing car) in the outer tube, allows for rotation an some movement with almost zero breaking force.

    2. Ball up some wire in your typical wall wort connector, sits pretty securely until you pull on it.

    3. Small audio connector, 2.5mm. A well used one comes apart very easy.

    4. Paint connections. Attach thin wires to the body of the rocket with electrically conductive paint, the same stuff you use to repair windows demisters.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A space blanket wont help.

    A space blanket wont help when pressed against the engine. Space blankets work by reflecting thermal emission not by insulating them. The silvery surface both reflects more and emits less energy then say a matte black surface would. While the material of a space blanket its self is probably a good conductor of heat. As suggested by "paulc" you want to use an aerogel or foam of some type to insulate it all.

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    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Meh

      Re: A space blanket wont help.

      "Space blankets work by reflecting thermal emission..."

      You mean like reflecting the thermal emissions of the heater layer back in toward the motor where they're wanted rather than letting them warm up the shrinkwrap? That may be why it produces the improvement seen in testing.

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      1. kryptonaut
        Reply Icon

        Re: A space blanket wont help.

        I think that in the test, the space blanket might have reduced the heat transfer to the heatshrink somewhat due to trapped air pockets. But I think it would be far better deployed on the outside (ideally with as little contact as possible between the heatshrink and the space blanket) so that the silvery non-radiative surface is presented to the sky, rather than the efficient black radiator made of heatshrink.

        If you still want the sandwich, at least put another layer of space blanket on the outside so that the external surface won't radiate so much. At altitude, radiation will be the main factor causing cooling.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Am I the only one...

    ... to think that you should also consider vacuum sealing the components together. Then you would have "LiPo Suction" for LOHAN.

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  4. Alan Esworthy
    Paris Hilton

    Maximum sensitivity

    With thanks and apologies to Brian Wragg, might I suggest a substitution for the shrink-wrap, one that might also be useful for your quick power disconnection requirement? If the 57 mm Al tube is close to the size of your heater-and-space-blanket-wrapped rocket motor, then a condom could be unrolled over the assembly to hold it all together. Folding the bottom back over itself and then down again would give you a rubber insulated elasticized pocket to hold loosely twisted power supply wires for the heater. Especially with a lubricated condom, the wires should pull apart readily when the time, erm, comes. This admittedly possibly poppycock [1] idea would certainly be consistent with the spirit of this noble endeavor: clever, effective, cheap, and (when possible) lewd.

    1. The word "poppycock" is all the justification I need for the Paris icon.

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  5. cortland

    Test setup

    If the objective is to keep the motor warm, the thermocouple should have been somewhere inside the alumin(i)um tube, perhaps in something simulating propellant (modeling clay?) .

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