Category Archives: Rocket City

Prize Competitions Launch Innovation

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SS1

SpaceShipOne was winner of the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for suborbital spaceflight.         Credit:  Scaled Composites

For the first time, Huntsville is hosting the NASA Space Apps Challenge, “a global prize competition that will bring together aerospace, creative and software communities to design, code, manufacture and assemble innovative space solutions in a 32-hour competition.” This event, organized by New Leaf Digital and AIAA, is taking place this weekend at Huntsville Steamworks. I’m excited to support it and can’t wait to see what innovative ideas and solutions are launched at this competition.

Prizes spur innovation and stimulate creative solutions from a wide cross section of individuals across the planet, and Huntsville has its share of smart, creative individuals and teams. Kudos to New Leaf Digital and AIAA for putting this event together to enable local creative minds to showcase their disruptive innovations!

Innovation is changing the world more rapidly than we can keep up with. We are seeing science fiction turn into reality overnight. Innovation-based competitions are a great catalyst for making things happen quickly because they have hard deadlines and often offer amazing rewards.

Prize competitions aren’t new for me, so I’ve seen the benefits of them firsthand! I participated in some amateur challenges when “amateur” meant “doing something for the love of it,” and I’ve been a part of competitions that offered high-dollar prizes.

My first experience in prize competitions was with HARC, a company I co-founded in the 1990s. We had an entry in the CATS (Cheap Access to Space) prize. My goal has always been to help facilitate/enable affordable access to Space, so this was a fun project.

This competition offered a $250,000 prize for the first private team to launch a two kilogram payload into space, 200 km or higher, by November 8, 2000, using a privately developed launcher as specified within the rules. (The competition was announced in 1997.) The Space Frontier Foundation and the Foundation for the International Non-governmental Development of Space (FINDS) organized this competition to show that space is not purely a government domain. This prize excited us, our community and even a local angel investor who financed us.

We designed, built and launched a hybrid rocket from a balloon from 27 kilometers. Laughing gas was our only propellant. Our attempt to attain an altitude of 200 kilometers fell short at an altitude of 15 miles when the launch vehicle failed upon engine ignition. We did fly the tank’s payload a few more hundred feet high. No competitor was able to achieve the objective within the allotted time. In fact, our team was the only one to have an “Official Launch Attempt.” But the competition helped advance private space enterprise.

This was a great learning experience for me, as I spent numerous evenings in my home garage with a great team of innovators, some who would later work with me and for me in my aerospace endeavors.

Before the CATS Prize, I, along with some of these same rocket enthusiasts, participated in breaking a world record as the first amateur team to build and fly the world’s highest rocket to space in an informal Space Shot Challenge. HAL5, the local chapter of the National Space Society, worked after hours to make this project happen. We worked at my home “man cave” two nights a week. I was honored to be the team lead on this historic low-budget rocket project. I signed up in 1994, and we poured concrete soon after at my dad’s farm. We tested all our motors there. It was so exciting and loud fun. We tested hybrid propulsion systems from 5-lb thrust to 1,200-lb thrust. Our first attempt to launch was in 1996. In 1997, our rocket reached 36 miles, breaking previous altitude records.

This feat was recorded in the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records. Although this prize was not monetary, it came with bragging rights to be able to say, “We were the first amateurs to get close to space (technically 50 miles, by the U.S. definition)!”

I supported this effort from 1994 to 2000, when my contributions to aerospace led me to Mojave, Calif., for another prize, the Ansari XPRIZE. I served as lead propulsion engineer for SpaceShipOne, which won the $10 million prize as the world’s first non-government Space program.

That experience was a precursor to the founding of my first company, Orion Propulsion, which grew to a $6.4 million company in five years before I sold it to Huntsville-based Dynetics.

I had the opportunity to be team leader for the Rocket City Space Pioneers, a formidable team formed by Dynetics in the Google Lunar XPRIZE Competition. To win this prize, a privately funded team must be the first to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon’s surface, travel 500 meters and transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth. (By the way, raising money is more difficult than Rocket Science!)

The Rocket City Space Pioneers ultimately merged with Moon Express, and I worked with that company as chief propulsion engineer before operations were moved to Florida. Moon Express today is one of the top teams in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition, and one of only two to have a launch contract. We hope to see the “Spirit of Alabama” land by 2018.

Recently, I founded Pickens Innovations, Inc., to deliver responsive, value-added aerospace and other technical solutions to commercial and government customers. These competitions provided hands-on opportunities and forged relationships that became the foundation for my latest business to provide affordable and innovative solutions.

I expect to see great things from some of the participants in this weekend’s competition. Best of luck to all!

Why Kids to Love’s KTech Program Resonates with Me (Part 2: My Story)

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I am a product of the public education system that included attending a local trade school. This was half of my curriculum for my junior and senior years while I was at Lee High School in Huntsville Ala. I wasn’t a great academic student because I had focus issues that stemmed from my home addictions aka I always wanted to build something fast, test a homemade rocket motor/rocket system, or just blow something up.

Not everyone will be at the same place in career planning just because of their age. I was a very late bloomer. My dad was the same way! He was a late bloomer, but a brilliant designer and builder. He dropped out of high school and used his creativity to join the Navy as an underage youth! He excelled in electronics and radar. His love of electronics stemmed from his tinkering at a very young age in his home garage. After leaving the Navy, Dad took a few college courses, got married, and over time had six kids. He decided to attend the University of Alabama in Huntsville at night and weekends working towards a physics degree. He eventually finished it. He then launched himself into industry for a bit, but was too free spirited to fit the mold! He would later go on to create many great products in telecommunications as well as aerospace! He also received many patents along the way.

As for me, I went to college for a year after high school, but was not yet ready to get serious. I returned to Huntsville and fell back on my electronics training as well as my go-fast gasoline engine experience to plug into companies using my trade skills. I hired into Chrysler at age 19 and was making $30k a year in 1983. That was big money then. The job was good, but after a few years I felt I had more potential. I decided to take a few classes in math and science and even machine shop at a local vocational school to learn both manual and CNC training.

I finally received a bachelor’s degree in business. I then left Chrysler via an employee buy-out program. After a few months of tinkering, I later went  to work as a BMW mechanic making less money, but having fun! They claimed my electronics troubleshoot training was a unique skillset they desperately needed. Later I went from being an instrumentation technician at Wyle Laboratories to being promoted to an engineer, all within three months of being hired. Miracles can and do happen! I was blessed and did not feel worthy, but I tried my best to not fail. I was now an engineer, but not the typical engineer with an engineering degree. I have to be honest and tell you the learning curve was steep, and this was the beginning of naps for me when I came home from a crazy day of engineering. I have since outgrown the daily power-nap routine. I guess I finally acclimated.

My tech school experience helped ground my garage tinkering – taught me how to build hardware and test things. With every failure, I reached deeper into the math and science so I would not repeat my past hardware failure history. The science and the fun dragged me deeper into the textbook learning, and it was an iterative process that is still going on today! My dad is 83, and he is still developing products that people are buying! Everyone is not excited or disciplined to do equations and analysis. At the end of the day, someone has to take the formula that another smart person has come up with and make it into something real.

Creativity and passion are innate – these characteristics cannot be taught, but people can be great when they choose to be so!

Kids to Love KTech provides an advanced and accelerated industrial robotics program (15 weeks to graduation post certification testing). The program that was set up by industry partners to generate quality graduates with the training to accept good-paying jobs where they can make a difference, and ultimately help fill a need in industry.

For more information about this program, see my previous post.

Kids to Love

Making a Difference through Skilled Trades Program

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Alabama, a Treasure . . . February Adventures

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Alabama is not typically thought of as a tourist destination, but we would do well to check out what people from all over the world come to experience. I have been honored in February to participate in two very memorable events, both in Birmingham. As a result, I discovered some jewels in the state that Alabamians should take advantage of.

The first event was an emeritus ceremony honoring Earl Pearce. I, along with two other former AIAA Earl Pearce award winners, presented this great man with a section coin for his achievements.

The second event was an opportunity to race the new Porsche 911 and be interviewed on Bloomberg Radio.

I was born and raised in Huntsville, so I’ve been an Alabamian all my life. I’ve visited the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, the number one tourist attraction in Alabama, dozens of times, as well as other attractions here, but Alabama has much to offer.

The Earl Pearce event was held at the Southern Museum of Flight, a very cool museum featuring all types of flying machines with a special tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen.

Did you know you can attend driving school in Leeds, Alabama, just outside Birmingham, and drive a fast car like a professional race car driver? I raced a Porsche on the speedway at the Barber Motorsports Park. The Porsche Sport Driving School is based at the park and draws students from across the country and around the world. The new Barber Proving Grounds allows companies like Mercedes-Benz to bring in their representatives from all over the world to test their cars to their limits. I was fortunate to experience a condensed version of the Porsche driving school in one day as I competed with a former fighter pilot and a car designer for the best time. It was an exhilarating experience.
And right there on the property is an amazing museum that has the world’s largest collection of motorcycles, in addition to bicycles, sports cars, and race cars. An expansion is underway that will add 84,650 square feet to the 144,000-square-foot facility. Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum was named one of 16 intriguing places to see in 2016 by CNN.
On the way back to Huntsville from Birmingham, I did a stop-off at the Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman to see 125 famous historic buildings and shrines of the world. These were built by a monk with great craftsmanship and patience.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the rest of 2016 has to offer. Don’t forget to check out what’s in your own backyard!

Hanging Out with Paul Allen

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I had the privilege of attending the National Space Club annual Von Braun Awards dinner Wednesday night at the U.S. Space & Rocket’s Center’s Davidson Center for Space Exploration. The special guest was Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist. He was on stage with Dynetics’ executive vice president, Dave King, to discuss some of his past and current projects and future endeavors. Some of these activities are featured in Paul’s latest book, “Idea Man.” Paul is definitely an idea man.

Apparently, Paul had been to Huntsville once before many years ago working with NASA on doing an integrated computer based on one of his products. He said computers would be used for guidance and control.

He obviously is best known for working with Bill Gates and spooling up Microsoft. He is also a significant funder for SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). He is a huge space fan. He was the sole funder of the world’s first commercial spaceship to ever send a man into outer space, return him safely, and do it again within two weeks, winning his team Scaled Composites a $10M Ansari XPRIZE.

I got to meet Paul my first month working for Scaled Composites on SpaceShipOne. I was the propulsion developer/engineer, and Burt Rutan (my boss) asked me to put together a short overview of hybrid rocket motors for Paul and his team. I put together about 10 charts, but thought it would be even cooler to fire a hybrid rocket motor. I just happened to have a portable suitcase hybrid I designed and built, and decided to fire it for Paul as part of his baptism by fire into his new endeavor known as hybrid rockets.

Everything worked as planned, and Paul yielded a grin after the firing inside my office (which, by the way, was also a lab area). I would later see Paul at the XPRIZE winning flight of SS1.

He did a great service to our nation by putting his money to work. He talked about the SS1 investment and how a band of only 30 people did that entire program under Burt Rutan’s leadership. My short stint working at Scaled was amazing and helped me to bootstrap the start-up, Orion Propulsion, which is now owned by Dynetics.

Now Huntsville is leading a Paul Allen space project called Stratolaunch. Many of the former Orion (now Dynetics) guys are having a bunch of fun working on a very cool project. Dynetics is responsible for the technical integration of the air launch system and the mating and integration system. Paul Allen has done things that have incubated small businesses to grow and ultimately help accomplish some great feats.

It was cool to hear all of Paul’s stories and I hope to hear more of how many rockets got launched to places we can only dream of, maybe even to some mysterious beacon in the universe picked up by SETI, another Paul Allen funded project!

Stay tuned!

Rover Talk in Huntsville

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Huntsville is a really cool place to live, as I have said many times. I am reminded why I like it when cool talks are being given like the one I heard last week at the Huntsville/Madison County Public Library. I have been a member of the Huntsville chapter of the National Space Society since 1994. HAL5 has been doing some great outreach in our community to raise the visibility of space exploration and things relating to it. For the club’s October meeting, the guest speaker was Planetary Scientist Dr. Barbara Cohen speaking on Mars rovers. This is obviously a very hot topic right now due to the latest successful landing of Curiosity.

She covered the highlights of successful rover programs to include Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and then Curiosity. Let’s face it: The idea that there is a full-size car/rover at this very moment driving around on Mars looking for evidence of life in a very cool region of the planet is just amazing. The general public is eating it up. Dr. Cohen talked about Curiosity and the huge crater near three-mile-tall Mount Sharp which rises from the center of Gale Crater. This region is rich with interesting geography/topography. They already see major evidence of past water being a land mass mover. Curiosity has some cool tools with which to explore rocks and soil, too. Dr. Cohen mentioned the 30 mj laser used to cook rocks and look at them optically and the related spectrum to decide its makeup that could include carbon which is critical for life!

I really enjoyed this talk and the IHOP experience after it. These talks are held monthly and they are a great way to interface with the science community and just have some fun. Space Exploration is also very cool! I am looking forward to what Curiosity might dig up and discover. Let’s stay tuned and keep looking up!

Propulsion with Kids

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I had an opportunity to spend Saturday afternoon with my nephew, DJ Turnure. It was a special day for DJ and me because we got to assemble an Estes Rocket and go fly it in a very special place in Huntsville. You might say, “Big deal, Pickens. What is so earth-shattering about flying a model rocket with a kid?” Well, this was not just any kid, and it was not just any place we flew.

DJ is only 6 years old and he loves science and math! In fact, in the Seattle school he attends, he is top of his class in math. What was really cool also is that DJ has never gotten to see a model rocket fly, and he has certainly never gotten to help assemble one or press the button followed by the loud swoosh! Well, Saturday was his lucky day. I decided to take him and his dad, Doug, to the local hobby shop to pick the perfect rocket project. My requirement was that it had to be one that could fly no higher than 500 feet. It was so windy, and the field I wanted to fly in was fairly small.

DJ picked out a really cool rocket, and we ran by my mancave to pick up things like a launcher, a control box. etc. I then carried us all to the old Huntsville Airport. This place was really special to my heart because back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I was just starting to fly model rockets with friends. I had a dream to someday make a living possibly with rockets, but no one could have ever believed my journey would have been so cool. I remember when many friends and family members would oblige my request to join me for launches at this site. The rockets were cardboard and rarely did anything cool, but my sister, mother, friends, and other family members would still come out on a Saturday just to see me send one skyward, just to see me run to retrieve it just like all the other folks who caught the rocket bug.

“The Rocket Bug” is what I hope DJ gets out of launching rockets this weekend with his Uncle Tim. Maybe he will grow up someday to be a mathmatician and solve some problem like gravity reduction, warp drive, or safe fusion. I do know one thing: he and I both had a blast and he did a lot of hard running to chase rockets that were launched on a windy day! Sometimes it really feels good to revisit your past and share some experiences and remind yourself of where you have been!

Space in Vegas

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I was in Las Vegas recently visiting an amazing Space visionary, Robert Bigelow, when Curiousty landed on Mars. I was actually walking down the strip trying to find a place where my iPhone could capture enough bandwidth to stream down the landing of that spectacular and scary event.

As I walked the strip, I saw a huge series of large screens that proudly displayed the live event! How cool was that! NASA in 10 foot-tall letters stretched across the sky in Vegas. It was so cool to stand there with all the vacationers from all over the world and watch history unfolding. I would have not put my money on that mission. Sky cranes, hovering rocket platforms, and hundreds of events happening perfectly. As it would turn out, NASA and JPL definitely still have the right stuff and it really felt good to be an American while in Vegas! Definitely not a typical money-spending Vegas trip, but it was an out-of-this-world experience that inspires so many of us to continue our quest to explore space, or maybe win a Google Lunar X PRIZE!

Practicing Innovation

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Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself. Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different (Lat. innovare: “to change”) rather than doing the same thing better. (Definition from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

As an inventor, an engineer, an entrepreneur, a speaker/motivator, and even a hobbyist, I’ve always believed in thinking “outside the box” to come up with creative solutions.  Often that involves taking risks. When we continue to do things the way they have always been done, we get left behind. It takes doing things differently to move ahead. I’ve seen this happen over and over.

Pickens Innovations is based on this philosophy. I recently left Dynetics as Chief Propulsion Engineer and Commercial Space Advisor to offer consulting services to space and technology companies in various areas, as well as technical product development and marketing.

My unconventional thinking started in my garage with projects I dreamed up and built. It led me to Mojave, Calif., where I served as the Lead Propulsion Designer on SpaceShipOne. It eventually inspired me to start a business. Other Space companies wanted to launch rockets and most failed; I wanted to sell shovels to coal miners. And I did. And it worked.

I sold Orion Propulsion to Dynetics in December 2009 after growing it to a $6.4 million, 40-person company, thanks to my dedicated team’s focus, hard work, and willingness to innovate. Running a small start-up Space company gave me valuable insight into developing and marketing products and working with government and commercial customers and meeting their schedules, quality demands, and cost needs.

Although the bulk of my experience has been in the Space industry, I am branching out into other technical areas. I have been developing devices to support various needs in the medical field. I have formed companies with some colleagues to develop multiple medical devices that could be very instrumental in saving lives. I have several ideas in the medical arena that I am excited about pursuing.

I love to solve complex problems with simple and affordable solutions. I see many needs in the science, medical, and aerospace arenas. I am always hand sketching concepts and designs that are attempting to solve problems that really bother me. Lately, I have been thinking about altitude compensating nozzles and all the great benefits they could offer a first stage launch system if they could be made simple and affordable. I think I am getting close to building some hardware to prove to myself that my approach is not far-fetched.

I will be speaking at lunch on Monday, August 13, at the Technology Symposium of the Space & Missile Defense Conference at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville. I’ll be talking about disruptive technologies and innovation. I hope to see you there. This is the first year the conference has dedicated an entire day to technology.

My website and LinkedIn profile reflect my new direction and the services I am offering. See my YouTube-based video resume.

Please use the Contact Form on my website to get in touch with me.

What do I read

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I often get asked by friends and folks via email and other discussions what websites I like to read? What are some good rocket sites? What are cool technology sites? Where do you get your news of the industry, or how do you keep up with everything going on in the business? I am updating my website with new links to my favorite websites finally. These are in no particular order.
Continue reading →

Going Back to My Roots

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Fri, 02/25/2011 – 15:36 — Tim Pickens RCS…
I’ve been honored to have had multiple opportunities to speak lately about the Rocket City Space Pioneers’ Google Lunar X PRIZE Mission. I spoke to both Huntsville Rotary Clubs this month and am scheduled to speak at the NASA Software and Systems Engineering Forum in May. One event I am really looking forward to is next Thursday, March 3, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Huntsville Public Library. I will be giving a presentation to the Huntsville, Alabama L5 Society (HAL5), the Huntsville chapter of the National Space Society (NSS). http://chapters.nss.org/al/HAL5/
HAL5 was formed in 1983 by a good friend of mine, Gregory H. Allison, former executive vice president of the NSS and chair of the 1993 International Space Development Conference (ISDC). Greg worked hard to get a local NSS chapter going with encouragement from several of Dr. Wernher von Braun’s team members, particularly Konrad Dannenberg.
HAL5 is a grassroots, space education, and advocacy organization whose members share the enthusiasm that space development can stimulate our world with immeasurable benefits in the areas of education, energy, environment, industry, resources, and ultimately room to grow for our society.
Over the past 25 years, HAL5 has sponsored numerous educational projects and activities in Huntsville and hosted a continuing series of public lectures, forums and events on topics related to space at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and the Huntsville Public Library. Topics have included the International Space Station, space science, launch vehicles, planetary defense, and public and private efforts to achieve affordable space access.
I first joined HAL5 after attending a meeting at the Huntsville Public Library in late 1993. It was then that I learned this local chapter had some really cool ideas and people as members that I resonated with. The group had just finished up the most successful ISDC in NSS history, and it had happened in Huntsville. Now they are doing it again in 2011.
Profits from their hard work running ISDC was what allowed some really cool history to begin in Huntsville with an Amateur Space Shot attempt that would reach 36 miles in 2006. I was honored to be the Team Lead on this historic low-budget rocket project. I signed up in 1994, and we poured concrete soon after at my dad’s farm. We tested all our engines there. It was so cool. We tested hybrids from 5-lb thrust to 1,200-lb thrust. We worked at my home “man cave” two nights a week. That was a magical time. It was also a precursor run for what would become my full-time career and later the founding of a company I called “Orion Propulsion.” That is another story.
Anyway, we built a few rockets, and on May 11, 1997, HAL5 made history for amateur rocketry altitude and the world’s first high-altitude ignition of a hybrid rocket. This feat was later recorded in the 2000 Guinness Book of World Records.
Here we are 16 years later, and we are looking at another ISDC. We have some great guys running the show like Yohon Lo and Bart Leahy and many more folks making it all come together. Greg is sort of a “gray beard” advisor these days.
The theme for this year’s ISDC is “From the Ground Up . . . How Do we Get There?” I’m looking forward to that conference being in the Rocket City this year! The theme pays tribute to Huntsville’s journey from humble beginnings as a cotton town all the way to its current “Rocket City” status.
I am looking forward to seeing a successful ISDC 2011 in Huntsville. I am also looking forward to seeing what cool ideas and projects could be offshoots from such an energetic event.
Godspeed, HAL5!

Tim Pickens displays some of the team’s earlier work in his garage “man cave.”


HAL5 Team Members at Project HALO Test Site in 2003.

The Past Meets the Future at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center

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Sat, 02/05/2011 – 19:45 — Tim Pickens RCSP team leader
I had an awesome night at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center (USSRC) here in the Rocket City Thursday night. It was an incredible experience to be having dinner underneath this behemoth moon rocket known as the Saturn V. Incredible!
We were at a special awards ceremony honoring Dr. Georg von Tiesenhausen, 96, an original German rocket scientist, NASA engineer on the Saturn V and lifelong educator. He received the Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Education from Neil Armstrong! How cool is that? This was a very rare and cool experience for all of us here in Huntsville and Alabama.
We had several team members and students in the audience. We had students from the University of Alabama Huntsville and the Huntsville Center for Technology. I had the honor of meeting Neil Armstrong and dining next to Owen Garriott. They are both great guys. I got to ask Owen what it was like riding on top of the Giant. I also got to meet “Dr von T.”
Dynetics and the Rocket City Space Pioneers sponsored the event and had a great opportunity to share our Google Prize entry with the local space community. Governor Robert Bentley, just recently sworn into office, was there, celebrating his birthday on this momentous occasion. He had great things to say about the USSRC and was looking forward to continuing to support the facility. I have to agree that the Center is amazing, and it is one of the centerpieces of Huntsville and the state.
The evening was inspirational. We are truly grateful to these space heroes who paved the way for what we are doing today!

Engineering Meets Education Kick-off Meeting

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Wed, 01/26/2011 – 19:53 — Tim Pickens RCSP team leader
We had a great time at our Engineering Meets Education (EME) meeting at the Huntsville Center of Technology (HCT) a couple of weeks ago. We had a great turn-out of engineers, scientists, students, HCT faculty, and other interested folks. We were fortunate to have the culinary department prepare us chili, sandwiches, and a wide assortment of goodies to eat.
I would like to welcome our new partner, Siemens, who has provided 100 seats of Solid Edge to our RCSP team to help us design our Google X PRIZE entry. Bill McClure of Siemens was at the meeting to introduce Siemens’ cool suite of design software. Other representatives from the company were also in attendance.
We spent the evening introducing the teammates, sponsors, prize details, and talked about technical challenges. We also brainstormed about how EME could best serve our team’s overall technical direction, but also provide a great learning and educational experience for our students and other participants.
Mike Evans, an HCT CAD instructor, gave examples of how he had been working a design project for us with students and team member engineers. Mike Sutullo is one of our team engineers who is with Teledyne Brown. Teledyne is leading structures for our team. Mike Sutullo is volunteering his time to walk the students through a design project to help us figure out how to package and erect an antenna system on top of the lander. He described the student, instructor, and mentor engineer relationship, and how a concept became a design, and ultimately a working prototype the students built using their stereo lithography machine.
Mike Graves, RCSP technical lead, described the technical challenges before us, and how the HCT would be instrumental to our building and learning. He brought along Charles Tullock, an engineer from Dynetics, to discuss the many areas we could pursue as a team.
At the end of the evening, we had a healthy group discussion from the audience. We actually had experts at our meeting who worked on the original moon rovers that our astronauts drove in the early 70s.
It was an awesome and productive evening. I want to thank the staff of HCT, the RCSP, and the good folks of North Alabama for supporting us. We have a lot of fun experiences ahead of us.

A Week of Excitement for the Space World and the Rocket City Space Pioneers

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Fri, 12/10/2010 – 19:54 — Tim Pickens RCSP team leader
After the nail-biting rocket launch of our Dynetics FASTSAT (Fast, Affordable Science and Technology SATellite), we were all ready for a little R&R. FASTSAT was Dynetics’ major investment into the world of satellite design and manufacturing. We had several experiments onboard from different customers. The launch and deployment have thus far been amazing.
We are now settled back in from the Thanksgiving holidays. It was good to get away for a few days to Chicago to visit friends and go shopping with family at the huge Macy’s downtown, despite the fact that I was sick. It gave me a lot of time to think about how tough of an economy we are in and the fact that new sponsorships will not come easy for our Google RCSP effort, and we will really have to be creative and effective to bring in funding. We have got some great talent at Dynetics working on the new RCSP website. It will offer all the bells and whistles. We will have much new content that so many folks from across the company have been contributing. We have been amazed at the interest this project has generated! Stay tuned!
Changing the Face of Space Access
Wednesday brought the amazing launch of Falcon 9, America’s first commercial launch vehicle capable of taking cargo and maybe even human passengers to orbit and ISS sooner rather than later. My hat is off to Elon Musk, Tom Mueller, and the entire SPaceX Team. Having worked in the periphery of the launch vehicle world over the last 16 years, and heavily in all areas of propulsion, I can assure you that this was no small feat for the money and time spent developing these incredible technical marvels. These guys are truly amazing, and their success is no fluke.
In case you have not heard, this is the rocket we are riding on to take our RCSP Google X PRIZE entry to the moon. We are offering to carry others as well to help pay for our ride.These guys are making America competitive again in the launch business! Congratulations, Team SpaceX!
Local Educational Outreach

http://twitpic.com/3ep8do

On another cool note, we had an amazing opportunity to go to the Boys & Girls Club in Triana, Alabama, which is on the outskirts of Huntsville. Several of the RCSP team members visited the Club, which has an after school program for students from elementary to high school. Alan Harmon of Dynetics, who volunteers with the Club through the Madison Rotary Club, asked us to share some experiences with the students. We loaded up our high-tech toys and set out to show the children what rocket science is all about. We have a portable venue, which includes a rocket engine that runs on laughing gas and plexiglass (fuel), a helicopter drone that is flown with the iPhone via a direct wifi connection, and a scooter with a real jet engine.
We started the day with the suitcase hybrid rocket engine test. We covered the basics of what makes sustained combustion possible, the three key ingredients. The kids answered the hard questions. They gave us a big countdown . . . and the igniter fizzled. Within two minutes, we had recycled back through, and the kids did another countdown which resulted in a loud engine firing that burned for about 10 seconds, producing a bright yellow flame with mach diamonds visible. The children really liked it. It was cool and loud! They asked us to do it again. We were out of fuel, so we went on to the next venue.
We decided it was time to show them a scooter that looks like one some of them have in their own homes, I am told, except on the back end, it has a jet engine mounted to it. It has an electric starter, and it took a while to get it going in the cold winter breeze. We finally did get it spooled up, and it was screaming! It produced about 28 pounds of thrust as I rode it down 6th Avenue in downtown Triana. The kids said they had heard jets passing over the town, but never on the street and in town.
Once I made a couple of 10-mile-per-hour passes in front of the Boys & Girls Club facilities, I shut the engine off and “safed” the system so the children could see it up close. Several of the kids climbed on deck as I pushed them up and down the road. It was fun.
After the cold outside activities, we all went in to the gym and I gave a presentation of who our RCSP team is and why we are going to the Moon with a Rover. We covered the Russian and American Space Race, and where we are today as far as manned missions are concerned. The children asked several questions, and it was obvious they knew a lot about space. We showed off the cool Lander model the Huntsville Center for Technology high school students built for us – students just like them.
I showed the youngsters cool videos from home projects from my daughter, friends, and other enthusiasts of space and rockets. They seemed to really enjoy the videos.
Once the presentation wrapped up, we flew my AR Drone Helicopter. It uses the iPhone as the camera display as well as the controller. It is just like flying a video game. Many of the children have video games, so I let some of them take control and fly the drone through the gymnasium. The children did an amazing job. They had no close calls or incidents. I was the only one in the almost empty gymnasium to land the drone in the Christmas tree! My hat is off to these youngsters!
All and all, I think all of us kids had a really good time, and hopefully we inspired and recruited some new future engineers, scientists, and technicians.

http://twitpic.com/3efsps
Tim Pickens, RCSP team leader, demonstrates his jet-powered scooter for the students at the Triana Boys & Girls Club during an educational visit this week.

Inspiring Young People to Dream and Achieve

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Sat, 12/04/2010 – 23:07 — Tim Pickens RCSP team leader
Inspiring young people to dream and go after their dreams is so important. The Google Lunar X PRIZE gives us a venue to inspire and educate. I’m excited about the opportunity to visit a local Boys and Girls Club next week to talk about our mission and to have some fun.
I will be talking to the kids about our mission to the moon and firing a rocket engine. I will also show them the prototype lander that students at the Huntsville Center for Technology built as an example of what students just like them can do.
I want to let these young people know it doesn’t always take a lot of money – just imagination, dreams and some work to make something fly.
I also want them to get excited about a Huntsville team building a lander and rover to go to the moon. I want to remind them that with ambition and hard work, dreams can become reality.
Thanks to the X PRIZE Foundation for inspiring us to dream and achieve!
I am looking forward to sharing with the kids about my home projects such as my rocket bike and jet-powered scooter that I just might try to demo. Boy, is it loud and cool! It runs on kerosene and is a real jet engine that can push the scooter at speeds up to 30 mph. I demonstrated my scooter at Dynetics’ recent FASTSAT Launch Party, and “kids” of all ages had a blast. The kids always get a kick out of anything that makes noise, fire, smoke, and looks like stuff that they have at home, like bikes and scooters.
Relating to these students is important to me, and that is a huge part of challenging them to dream and build. I am a product of the local school system, including two years of tech school in the 11th and 12th grades. It is clear to me that you can do anything you put your mind to, and I want to make sure the kids leave with a sense of wonder and inspiration to stay focused and chase their dreams.
I sure hope the weather cooperates! We’ll post some videos of our visit to the Boys and Girls Club.

RCSP Dynetics Launches FASTSAT with Fun Party

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Wed, 11/24/2010 – 15:57 — Tim Pickens RCSP team leader
Friday night, November 19th, at Dynetics was amazing! Our first satellite, known as FASTSAT (Fast, Affordable Science and Technology Satellite), was launched aboard a Minotaur IV rocket. FASTSAT was developed in-house with NASA and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation (VCSI), also one of the Rocket City Space Pioneers, as partners. The launch occurred at 7:25 p.m. CST from Kodiak Launch Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
FASTSAT separated from the Minotaur IV rocket approximately 22 minutes after launch, entering low-Earth orbit 406 miles above Earth and immediately began powering up the spacecraft.
To celebrate the launch, Dynetics employees had a huge launch party with plenty of good Mexican food. We had some down time between launch and waiting to hear the satellite wake up. I got to entertain the crowd with my TEDx talk on “Re-energizing Space through Innovation,” and even got to fire up my jet scooter in the parking lot. Boy was it loud! We kids loved it! I also let the kids help me fly my R/C electric helicopter indoors with my IPhone. It is really cool – it uses the gyros and accels in the phone to control the helicopter via wifi. The onboard video camera allows you to get a bird’s-eye view from the helicopter while in flight. That video is streamed to my IPhone, which is also used to control the helicopter. It is really cool. The kids had a ball with that one.
All and all, it was an amazing night of fun at Dynetics. I am sure our office party rocked it more than any other gig in Huntsville on a Friday night. Gotta love the Rocket City!