Invictus Design Updates

The tube coupler on the left, which originated on Flight 1, will be repurposed for Invictus Flight 2. This tube coupler will be positioned above the stage 1 mount to help spread the 25 pounds of force from the G80-13T across a larger area on the body tube, improving the interface and transfer of force. This will be done purely as a precaution to prevent an overload of the rather low cost tubes being used on the Flight 2 vehicle, and to prevent a CATO, also called an explosion. Avoiding a CATO is very important for obvious reasons, but especially data collection. We want to fully understand whats going on this time.

Recovery was not a testable component of Flight 1 due to the mount failures we encountered. Since the mounts on S2 and S3 were mistakenly not sealed up before flight, there was no chance of deployment in the first place, due to there being no ability to create a pressure that pushes the nosecone away at S3 burnout. The hardware was lit on fire by the Stage 1 ejection charges, which traveled up the entire rocket at stage separation. These ejection charges lit two rocket motors, melted two mounts, and lit three parachutes on fire. This means, essentially, we have to design a brand new system for the next flights of Invictus, Invictus HPR, and Invictus-Redshift.

We plan to use a 36 inch ripstop nylon parachute on Flight 2. This will be attached to a 3/16" thick tubular nylon shock cord which will be 15 feet long and perfect to take the loads of the rocket. Pre-made recovery wadding will be used instead of the homemade wadding from Flight 1, even though it did its job well. This is only due to us taking more caution and avoiding risk for this flight as much as possible so we can try to have a more successful design that can be refined further along. Overall, if this recovery system is deployed properly, it has a million times higher chance of working compared to what was aboard Flight 1. 

The flight computer for Invictus Flight 2 has had its schematic completed. It uses redundant MPU-6050 accelerometer/gyroscopes, a BMP280 barometer, and a Teensy 4.1 as the main computing piece. The MPU-6050's have the most important job as the system for burnout detection of Stage 1, which is the reason for the redundancy. The values from both will be compared to create a more indicative final value to ensure a proper Stage 2 ignition. The Teensy will also log orientation data from the MPU-6050s. The BMP280 altitude data will be logged to the Teensy, but will not be used otherwise. In the end, we will try to use this data to create an animation of the flight.