Updates! (Patreon)

Vice, specifically the Motherboard division of Vice, were at BPS HQ this past week filming for a video covering BPS. According to the producer, it looks like the video will be released in early/mid December this year. The shoot went really well, but took up roughly 53725320986 hours of time. I'm really glad to be back to work again, and speaking of which, here's what's going on.

First, today I'm finishing up fairing separation tests. If you watched the most recent video on the BPS YouTube channel, you'll know the fairing needed a slight redesign. That was taken care of, and now it's time to confirm it all works! Once the tests are complete, we'll move on to full flight prep for the 1/48 Falcon Heavy launch. I am uuuhhhh EXTREMELY excited for that.

Next, while the Vice crew were here, we ran two landing tests! The first was pretty bad as far as I can tell. The vehicle rolled too much, stability was pretty poor, and it bumped the ground too hard because the vehicle burned late. The second test was far better - low roll, good stability, and the burn was just a little too soon. The vehicle hovered at 2m or so, then dropped and ALMOST STUCK IT. Ugh, so excited for that too. Videos of the tests will be posted this week. I think it's really close, we might see a stuck landing within 2018, we'll see...

NEXT - Landing Model Rockets Ep 3 is late :( Sorry! I initially wanted to hit every 2 weeks, but prep for Vice and a few other things got in the way, the next episode is coming out soon! Should be a week or so. We'll be covering landing leg design, and with the episode I'll be releasing the printable STL files for Patrons at the MECO tier. For those interested, the designs will fit 74mm cardboard airframes. If there's demand for it, I can do the 66mm airframe size as well, that just needs a few updates - let me know!

And lastly, Arc! Things haven't moved forward with it, regrettably. As one person, things can sometimes get spread a little thin, and that's what's going on. In order to continue pursuing the tasks I feel are most important to the growth of BPS, Arc is being put on hold for now. The design still feels solid, the software just needs a few weeks of work, and those weeks would be better spent trying to achieve propulsive landing, launching the FH, and documenting/uploading it all online - much of Arc's required work isn't very exciting. That's not always a good reason to not pursue something, but I think it's the appropriate decision in this case.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on any or all of these things. Thanks as always for supporting BPS, everything continues to trend in the right direction because of people like you. 

May your skies be blue, and your wind be low!

Joe Barnard