EVERY FIRE! Liquid Rocket Hot Fire Compilation
Every time we fired a liquid rocket engine during our Subscale Mission.
The Subscale Mission started in 2019 with our first hotfire of our Heatsink engine. We conducted several additional fires as we dealt with hard starts and injector melting problems. We attempted to test a custom regeneratively cooled engine, however that ended in catastrophe as you can see. We decided to descope our regen engine and use our heatsink engine for flight (although this wasn't ideal for reaching a high apogee, our main objective was to prove we could design, build, and launch a liquid rocket).
After characterizing our engine on our ground test stand we then moved to full vehicle static fires. Our 1st static fire hard started but still looked decent. The 2nd one had a number of problems including LOX main valve leaks and a loose igniter, which resulted in ignition outside of the engine. Finally, on our 3rd static fire we hit our targets and validated our vehicle to be ready for launch.
In 2023, we completed our Subscale Mission by launching our proof-of-concept liquid rocket, GoldiLOX, to a height of 5,000 ft. Paving the way for our primary mission, to send a liquid-fueled rocket past the Karman line, 100 km above Earth.
Learn more about the Yellow Jacket Space Program (YJSP) on our website:
https://www.gtspaceprogram.com/