This is the second update on the DARE study tour. Nine DARE members traveled to the west coast of the United States to present a paper at the Joint Propulsion Conference (JPC) and to visit various aerospace companies.
Friday the 12th Sea Launch in Long Beach was visited. We got a full tour of both the command vessel and the floating launch platform. While at the moment of visit no launch vehicle was in processing, it was still very impressive to walk about the truly massive launch equipment of Sea Launch. It’s not an every day experience to be able to stand at the actual launch site of a rocket – we were allowed to get all the way up to the actual flame bucket where the Zenit rocket held during launched.
DARE members at Sea Launch with John and Donald.
After visiting Sea Launch and taking a short break we traveled to San Jose to present a paper at the three day Joint Propulsion Conference on the hybrid rocket research being conducted within DARE . The paper can be found here: Sorbitol-Based Hybrid Fuel Studies with Nitrous Oxide for the Stratos II Sounding Rocket. Besides presenting our paper, we got the chance to meet up with a large number of people conducting research on both hybrid engines as well as other space related subjects. It was especially nice to see that a lot of hybrid rocket research is being performed by students from all over the world.
Tobias Knop presenting at the 2013 Joint Propulsion Conference
Directly after attending the JPC, we visited Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, which is one of the largest satellite construction firms in the world. While our stay was fairly short we still got the opportunity to see some satellites in construction and to ask a lot of questions.
The second half of that day we had an appointment with the hybrid rocket research group at the Stanford University. We met up with the folks from Stanford earlier at the JPC. Us being able to allow their laboratories at Stanford is of special interest because a lot of our work builds on the research performed at Stanford. Being able to talk to the people who performed this research was extremely valuable. Beyond that it’s also great to get to know the persons behind all that work themselves.
DARE members at Stanford University