[FOTZeiss] On-Board Video: Hi-Altitude Model Rocket Launch

[Glenn A. Walsh]

--- On Sun, 10/9/11, Francis Graham <francisgraham at rocketmail.com> wrote:


    From: Francis Graham <francisgraham at rocketmail.com>
    Subject: Meridian Passage 1410 OMG!!! A **MUST SEE** rocket video!
    To: "meridian.passage at yahoo.com" <meridian.passage at yahoo.com>
    Date: Sunday, October 9, 2011, 11:47 AM

    Good Noon!
        Derek Deville  of Tripoli and the Qu8k rocket team ( Qu8k= "quake")  sent a rocket to an altitude of 23 miles at Black Rock last weekend.
    He had excellent on-board video coverage from the UPPER stratosphere.
          For the record, at 121,000 feet--23 miles--the pressure is only 93 pascals.  Normal sea-level armospheric pressure is 101,300 pascals.  Since the triple point of water  is 611.73 pascals, if a desert rat had stowed away on Qu8k its blood would have boiled in its body at body temperature.  The density of the air is low too: 0.005 times that of the air at sea level.  Notice that the ejected drogue line did not become taut quicky.  The average air temperature there is -32 Celsius.   
       One of the earliest "near-space" flights was the Bell X-2, which attained an altitude of 24 miles, on September 7, 1956.  Unfortunately, the pilot, Mel Apt, was killed on the rocket airplane's next flight, September 27.
          I had fun identifying the various geographical features of Northern Nevada and Northern California in your video. At 23 miles altitude, the geometric horizon is 685 km ( 428 miles) away, approximately (actually this varies because of the ellipsoidal nature of the Earth). So you should be able to see Lassen peak and the Pacific ideally.  I did not look close enough.  You can easily see Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe.
       
    Here are the links to the video and the website. Watch the video at once. 

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvDqoxMUroA

    http://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html

Francis Graham

gaw

Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
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