[amsat-bb] Re: High LEO for cubesat?

[Bruce Robertson]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Robert Bruninga<bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:
>> Much of the debate on the board here arises
>> from our common desire to see the launching
>> of satellites with a larger footprint.
>
> For what it is worth, this semester I will finally get a student
> to work on the 40 year old AMSAT idea of a water rocket.  (Carry
> water to orbit and use solar power to electrolizie the wate to
> H2 and O2 and then burn those in a thruster to raise the orbit
> of a cubesat.

Bob --

Thanks for letting us know about this. It sounds very interesting. As
the water would be under far less pressure than, the nitrogen (e.g.)
in a cold-gas thruster, would the water/electrolysis system be
considered safer to launch? I can see the argument being made that a
leak in a water container would likely ruin a great number of things
on the launch than would an inert gas. OTOH, the (I presume) low
pressure would reduce the likelihood of a leak.

> Mostly the goal is to get from the very low (short lived) LEO to
> a higher LEO to get longer life, but it will be fun to get this
> project going again.  I had a working model about a dozen years
> ago, but it eventually blew up..  Now we will get another one
> built probably...

If such a system were used in flight, instructors could do simple
electrolysis of H2O and combustion on the ground to illustrate the
process quite vividly!

73, Bruce
VE9QRP