Tuesday 26 October 2010

OPEN LETTER TO DAVID WILLETTS


Dear Mr. Willetts,

Having developed what many in the international world of Rocket engineering see as the best, most cost effective and most innovative Nitrous Oxide Rocket system on the planet, and one that is already producing spin-off technology with wider export potential, I decided to have look at what development support there may be in the East of England.

So I searched and searched for support in such categories as Mechanical Engineering and aerospace technology. On all the sites representing the various Government-funded agencies, form NGOs to Universities I found nothing that fit those categories, except for things aimed at big businesses.

If you’re a small operation, there is absolutely nothing out there.

Here we are, needing to develop high-end engineering capacity and to grow the small-business sector, (the largest sector for employment in the U.K.), and what do we find?
Nothing!

We’ve done more to get youngsters involved in engineering, by taking our rocket-powered car to schools and events aimed at young people, than most others. We recently took the car to the new Ormiston Victory Academy in Norwich, where one of the teachers reckons we inspired up to thirty youngsters to take a real interest in engineering as a career, in one day!

We have had agreements with two universities to work together to develop our technology. Both found it too much work and gave up before we could get started.

If the government wants to promote innovation, the last thing it should do is give development money to institutions and let them pick and choose. Development money has to follow the technology, not the system.

Universities are populated by people on tenure with so much ‘academic freedom’ they can behave as they like with no fear of consequences. Agencies are populated by people from big business who tend to structure their offerings around their own industrial experience. There is no room, or recognition, in this system for the small innovator.

Frank Whittle was a small innovator. Look what we did for him and his little innovation (the GAS Turbine Engine!). Ken Tyrrell took three F1 world championships for the UK, working from a woodshed. Small is beautiful, efficient and creative.

If you want to see what we have, please look at:
www.laffin-gas.com and follow all the links.

One of our spin-offs has world-wide export potential. This is technology we have built and made to work – not simply a nice idea needing money to check it out.

I would like to meet with you, or a senior member of your staff, to go through these issues.

We are true champions of technology education and development who are out there ‘doing’ without help or ‘push’ from any agency or institution. Maybe we are worth a listen?

Cheers

Friday 22 October 2010

NADINE'S THE STAR!


What a great couple of days we have just spent at the most inspirational school! We were treated to smartly dressed, well-mannered students, (“Can I hold the door open for you Miss?”), great food and one class after another viewing the car and rocket technology asking great questions and showing real interest.

Much thanks must go to their own ‘Rocket Man’, science teacher Rod Stevenson, at whose initial invitation we had decided to attend. Rod’s enthusiasm, energy and commitment to his vocation really inspired us all to step up a gear and do some real teaching! Jon London was in his element, teaching and communicating with the students, and playing with rockets at the same time. Class after class came to see the car, which was on display in a nice toasty-warm building all day on Thursday. The day went by in a blur of activity and energy. I really do think we inspired up to thirty young people (male and female) to think more than seriously about engineering as their future career path.

Several students stood out for their brightness, intelligence and inquiring minds. We do, however, have to single out one very special girl for the finest effort and commitment on the day. The title of ‘Team Laffin-Gas Star of the School’ goes to Nadine Gage.

Nadine was just fascinated with the idea of rockets.

“Can it go to the moon?” she asked. I’d been telling the students all day that there was no such thing as a silly question and, considering Nadine’s age; this was a very good question indeed. We explained that the car was only designed to go a couple of miles at the most and asked her how far away she thought the moon was.

“About five thousand miles” was her answer. I told her that it was much further away than that and asked if she could go and find out exactly how far away the moon really is.

An hour or so later, Nadine was back with the answer. Not only in miles but also in kilometers and pointing out that this distance was, in fact an average. We were impressed. I decided to give her another challenge, namely to find out how far away the Sun is, and how long it takes for the light to get to Earth. I told her she might find out something about the speed of light in the process.

While I was busy with another class, Nadine returned, collared David and told him the correct distances in miles and kilometers and followed that up with the exact speed of light in both units!!

Nadine: You are a STAR!!

In the evening we took part in a Community event with plenty of food and a superb fireworks display in celebration of the creation of this utterly outstanding Academy. After the fireworks it was our turn. With the Head Girl on the button to light the pyrotechnic, Sixth-former Sam and ‘Rocket’ Rod Stevenson on the lanyards, Jon gave the count-down over the PA.

Under my direction, the sequence was cued, with each person doing their bit bang on time and the bio-diesel rocket burst into life with a display of smooth power that we have come to expect. Done!! A live-test firing of a truly serious rocket-motor in a SCHOOL!!

We hadn’t fired our maximum rocket, by any means, but it was still big, loud and proud!! What an honour to be the finale for such a great event!

As our adventure continues, we shall be carrying Ormiston Victory Academy’s logo on our car, and we are sure that this has been the birth of an exciting long-term educational and technological co-operation between the Academy and ourselves.

Friday 15 October 2010

HUGE ROCKET TO BE FIRED AT SCHOOL OPENING DAY


When: Thursday 21st October 2010 7:30pm

Where: Ormiston Victory Academy, Norwich

The Laffin-gas Rocket Car team will be firing the biggest rocket ever to fired at a School.

Last Tuesday, we conducted a site inspection at the Ormiston Victory Academy to make preparation for the first public static firing of one of our Hybrid Rockets.

The Ormiston Victory Academy is an amazing new institution rising from the ‘ashes’ of Costessey High School in Norwich. We were greeted at the door by the Deputy Head and Rod Stevenson (a teacher at the school who is also a well-known person in the world of Rocketry). We were then treated to a quick tour of their engineering and technology facilities. At last: A school with lathes, milling machines, band saws, two forges, CNC equipment, a laser-cutter and so on! These tools weren’t sitting idly as ‘not safe enough to use’ but actually working, teaching and producing product!!

We met a few staff members and caught the infectious ambition and enthusiasm they all project. Is English Technical Education finally turning the corner and starting to produce the ‘hands-on’ engineers we so badly need? If this school is anything to judge by, the answer has to be a definite ‘YES’.

In an example of a spirit of ‘Education-Over-Caution’, the school approached us and not only asked us to bring our ‘Laffin-Gas’ Xperimental Hybrid Rocket Car to their Grand Opening Day, they also asked if we could FIRE one of our rockets for them. After agreeing on safety arrangements, and conducting a site visit to test the ground and ensure this can be done with a reasonable degree of safety, we have decided to go ahead.

At over 1,000lbs Thrust, this Nitrous Oxide and Bio-Diesel rocket will be far-and-away the largest rocket ever fired at a school, probably anywhere on the planet.

We’ve long been advocates of this kind of approach to technical education and we are delighted to have the honour of being part of this celebration of a truly ground breaking new school.


Contact: carolynnecampbell@gmail.com 01933 313816 (Rocket)
G.Howe@ormistonvictoryacademy.co.uk 01603 742310 x3438 (School)

Monday 4 October 2010

OFF GOES THE TECHNOLOGY

David and I just finished watching the story of Burt Rutan’s ‘Spaceship One’, on Discovery Science. What a great story and what fabulous airframes and aerodynamic technology it all is. We couldn’t help but notice that the rocket was nothing like as impressive as the craft it was powering. The rocket exhaust was disorgainsed, it pulsed and its power output (for its size) was really not that impressive. On the succesful flight, at the end of the burn, the rocket seemed to be coming apart internally with visible hard debris being ejected.

For years now, Nitrous Hybrid rockets (the type of rocket used in 'Spaceship One') have been using a solid plastic or rubber fuel grain. The ‘grain’ is that part of the rocket that burns as fuel in the Nitrous Oxide. When we started out, that’s what we used, as it was a proven material for this application. These fuel grains had their drawbacks. They are dirty and smokey when they burn. They are hard to get lit and they rely on the available surface area of the inside of the tube to provide fuel for the burn. Folk at the drag-strip did not like the mess the rockets left behind.

So we decided to try a cardboard fuel grain as burning paper left much less mess behind. Unfortunately the cardboard absorbed so much moisture from the air that it did not give the needed power and reliability. One day, while taking a shower, I was thinking about how to keep the cardboard dry. It occurred to me that, if we soaked the cardboard in an oil, then it couldn’t take up moisture from the air. It turned out to be a major breakthrough. After a couple of tests, using rapeseed oil, we discovered that we could get more power and a steadier burn using about one third the amount of Nitrous oxide. Later we tried other oils, the most spectacular turning out to be kerosene. One of our six inch external diameter rockets produced over 1,500lbs of thrust, using less than 2lbs of N2O per second of burn. We have shared these results with many people in the rocket world expecting that these results would put an end to the faith in plastic and rubber as fuels.

So why is the oil-soaked cardboard so much better? Simply, the cardboard is now acting as a ‘wick’ allowing oil deep inside to boil out under pressure forcing oil vapour into the heart of the rocket. The result is that the surface are of the cardboard does not so much limit the power of the burn.

To a man (or woman) the rocket folk have ignored it and carry on with their plastic and rubber fuel grains.

The next major development we came up with is the piston accumulator. We use pressurized nitrogen to push the N2O into the rocket. This is always at a higher pressure than the boiling point on N2O on the day. Systems that use the self-pressurisng property of N2O, by allowing it to boil, thereby producing high-pressure vapour, have several inherent problems.

The first is that N2O in the form of gas is very dangerous stuff and can explode without an ignition source. The second is that it rarely boils fast enough to keep the ‘push pressure’ up and the rocket tends to pulse as pressures and back-pressures fluctuate. The Third is that the N2O boils in the feed-lines to the rocket, making the lines full of a compressible liquid/gas mixture, which causes further pulsing and makes even metering of N2O flow impossible.
We discovered that, as a result of horizontal acceleration, with vertical bottles in the car, the liquid N2O would slosh up the side of the bottle. The Nitrogen, would then find its way around the N2O causing the rocket to lose power and splutter. If we sloped the bottles to allow for the acceleration effect, the Nitrogen would find its way around the N2o as soon as we opened the main throttles.

The solution was to place a free-floating piston between the Nitrogen and the N2O. This prevents Nitrogen blow-by and makes the system impervious to acceleration or to the angle at which the bottles are mounted. Another benefit is that all the N2O can be used without any gas mixing as the bottle empties, making the use of the N2O much more efficient. An unexpected side-effect, was a significant increase in power for the same oxidizer/fuel ratios and flows.

Again, one would think that this development would have been eagerly embraced by users of Nitrous Hybrid Technology. No chance. ‘Very interesting, but we’ll keep on doing it the same old way.’

One wonders how it is, in such a supposedly advanced engineering culture as we have in the UK, that such advances can be simply ignored by so-called ‘experts’.

On reflection, this country has never embraced technological advancement easily or readily. We gave away Frank Whittle’s gas turbine to the Americans and the Russians, while cutting Whittle’s funding and ripping him off for an invention we did not value at the time.

We are not making unsupportable claims about an idea that has yet to be proven. We have the video and the hard experimental data. We have the best power-to-weight ratio N2O hybrid around with the most beautiful and steady flame you could wish to see. We have full throttle control. And it's very very low-cost to build and use. I have done something the armchair engineers and modelers haven't done. I've got into the car, and lit the rockets quite a few times, which is no small thing to do.

With all this in mind, and having failed to get any acknowledgement or recognition for these significant advances, we have decided to take our technology to the other side of the planet, where the imagination and sense of adventure is still strong enough for these technologies to be taken seriously and welcomed with open arms.

Your loss, Britain! We tried and you didn’t want to know.