An Explosive Update (Patreon)

^that's an ejection charge being tested earlier today. These charges will be used consistently to eject parachutes on the first flights of the Scout rocket. As flight profiles get smoother, and Scout becomes more reliable, we'll begin landing attempts without necessarily lighting these charges in-flight. They'll stay onboard in case the rocket detects an error during the flight, in which case they'll deploy parachutes to ensure a safe trip back to the ground. 

I'll do more tests which actually eject parachutes in a few days, but for now the goal was to verify that the charges work safely. You can check out a video of them being fired off here: https://twitter.com/joebarnard/status/885618036803338241

Today I also received components from DigiKey(an electronics supplier). These are the parts that will fly on Scout, and verify the new build of the Signal flight computer(the boards are still in the mail, arriving Monday). I expect to fly Scout for the first time within the next 3 weeks. That's probably a conservative estimate, but roadblocks happen all the time, so it's good to overestimate.