Odyssey Hot Fire 01
- Cameron Sexsmith
Background
This was the first ever hot fire for the Odyssey hybrid rocket engine. This was also the first hot fire of a rocket engine ERPL has done in well over a decade. The fluid system was completely new and had only supported high pressure water flows in the previous months. The purpose of this test was to validate the engine with a standard test without any throttling.
Result
The test proceeded smoothly and tracked very minor issues with data collection and plumbing. The engine was ignited using the ignition system described in Igniter. The engine performed substantially better than expected. Thrust and estimated chamber pressure was within tolerance for the nominal designed values. Mass flow rate was slightly less than designed, however, noise and oscillation in tank weight data makes this measurement difficult to obtain an accurate value.
