Download Free Description And Performance Of Three Trailblazer Ii Reentry Research Vehicles Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Description And Performance Of Three Trailblazer Ii Reentry Research Vehicles and write the review.

A description of the Trailblazer II reentry physics research vehicle capable of reentering a 40-pound payload into the atmosphere at 20,000 ft/sec is presented together with the description and results of three flight tests. The vehicle proved to be a workable system during flight tests by accomplishing the objective of reentering a prescribed payload. The dispersion of the impact points of the various stages was within the expected limits except that the first-stage impact was much closer to the launch point than was originally expected. Approximate wobble motions of the spinning body at various times were determined from telemetered quantities. It was possible to determine the chamber pressure time history of the third-stage rocket motor and the thrust time history of the fourth-stage rocket motor from the telemetry carried on- board some of the vehicles. The thrust and pressure curves indicated that the thrust was lower during the first part of the thrust period and higher during the latter part of the thrust period than the values expected for a nonspinning motor.
The properties of the reentry plasma sheath are being studied by AFCRL in a series of Trailblazer II rocket flights. This program is divided into two phases. The first phase has been concerned with the structure of the ionized layer that forms around the test vehicles during reentry and in particular its effect on electromagnetic signals, while the second phase is concerned with enhancing microwave transmitter performance under such conditions by introducing chemicals into the flow to reduce the free electron concentrations. This report surveys some aspects of the first phase which consisted of three flights. The first part of the report describes the flight performance of the vehicles including trajectory, velocity history, aerodynamic heating, spin-and-precession, and overall orientation of each payload during its reentry, while the second part presents a theoretical description of the high temperature shock layer for the various flight conditions. Since the purpose of the calculations was to obtain predictions of experimental performance, a number of different models were used. The resulting flow properties are presented in some detail; in particular, the various electron density distributions are shown both in the nose region and around the vehicle. These results are analyzed and then compared with the extensive experimental data. On the conical afterbody where three-dimensional effects due to vehicle angle of attack become important, the observed conditions could not be completely represented by the theoretical models--all of which assumed the flow to be axisymmetric. The general conclusion, however, is that the theoretical properties satisfactorily predict the actual test performance for a wide range of situations. (Author).