Autumn 2003 update: TacSat-1 funding, FPGA avionics board
- From:
- Elon Musk
- Date:
- September 2003 (HobbySpace reported this update as having 'just come out' on 17 October 2003 without naming the month; it falls between the August update (emailed 12 September) and the October update (emailed mid-November), so it is taken to be the September 2003 update.)
- To:
- SpaceX update mailing list
Excerpt. Only this much of the email has been made public.
Falcon was one of only a few technologies that the Defense Department felt was sufficiently important to receive funding outside of the normal federal budgetary cycle, which is quite an honor. It is decisions like this that really help move the space program forward.
[...]
erosion rates of [the first stage engine] Merlin's composite ablative chamber & nozzle under various film cooling scenarios. Erosion rates so far are within the predicted range.
[...]
..with the addition of ram and a boot rom, this one little board will perform all avionics and vehicle control functions, apart from the ring laser gyroscopes, GPS and radios, which is really amazing. The Saturn V Moon rocket had substantially less capability and the avionics were the size of a house
[...]
double-walled, liquid oxygen feed tunnel that goes from the common bulkhead to the turbo-pump inlet through the center of the kerosene tank.
[...]
multiple sets of aluminum bellows to take out the differential expansion caused by liquid oxygen at -300F on the one hand and room temperature kerosene at 70F on the other.