The Lander Project

 So... I have been working on this for a couple years now. I only really got the chance to go fast on it since I got my full time job one year ago (more time and money than school). It's been slow progress, since I really can only devote nights and weekends to it.

The goal of this project: produce a small rocket lander that is affordable to operate which provide 60 seconds of flight time, is reusable, and will allow me to fly new and interesting guidance, navigation, and control strategies. Do this as affordably as possible. Also just have a ton of fun and learn a bunch of things.

Since this started a while ago, this series of blogs will start off as a retrospective and move forward to the modern era (IE now). I have a couple names I am toying with: MiniLander or Hoplite. The former being somewhat self-explanatory; plus I have always loved the word Mini because it's cute. The latter is a play on words. It's a light hopper vehicle, but that word is also a Greek word meaning a citizen-soldier armed with a spear and shield. Plus I love historical shit. (ὁπλίτης) 

Here were the first couple parts I picked up for this project. I got a steel pressure sphere, electron beam welded, from eBay fo $50. Little did I know at the time that this was made by Fansteel for a Saturn launch vehicle... what a steal! I also got an LR101 engine from a friend. I wasn't sure I wanted to use it for this lander project, but I know I wanted to use it in the future and they are scarce. 

Here's the LR101 engine... It's a 1000lbf kerosene LOX vernier engine from an Atlas rocket form the 1960s. I won't use it for the lander... but probably a 10km vehicle or something :)

Here is the current cad of the system. You can see it's missing a lot of components, but good enough to size lots of my subsystems.

important disclaimer: don't try this at home kids. I mean really please don't try this at home, and in no way should you find yourself inspired to do so from this. This project has/will take me years, thousands of dollars, and is incredibly dangerous.

Keyboard Photo Dump

Here are various boards I have put together over the last couple years... I think I am pretty much done with mechanical keyboards for now, but may revisit in the future if I want to sell something. Onto other things.

And here is the last scratch built one I made, for my a friend

Linear Actuator, vol5

More fabrication has happened. I'm still being very slow because work is crazy, but progress is being made. There are still some components that should be CNC machined from aluminum, but for now have 3d printed replacements. The second actuator needs some more parts, because I messed up the initial ones :) and I don't buy extras because I $$$

 

another keyboard

 This was the last PCB I had in the fab batch, so I decided to make another. Also a good way to get rid of excess components I have laying around :) This time I decided to solder the microcontroller flush with the PCB without using header pins. It worked well, including the surface mount pads.

Linear Actuator vol4

All the McMaster, eBay, and Amazon parts came in. I still have not worked out my plan to machine the rest of the parts, so they are currently 3D printed. I got access to a machine shop here in LA, which has a couple different CNC machines. They appear to be in all states if disrepair though, and it's unclear if I can really use any of them.

I was too lazy to hook up the driver, so here is a shitty video of the motor hooked up to a drill,

There are already some major flaws here... There should be two linear motion rails to minimize torsion. I also forgot to buy extra collars to keep the linear rods in place. I modified it slightly, and ordered some more components. I don't have the optical encoder in CAD right now, and still need to add the back plate. I have been pretty lazy on this one. But it seems mostly there, the rest of the stuff is small potatoes (I say now...)