Launch Report: Experimental High Pressure Carbon Fiber Water Rocket Test

Continuing our 10th year team celebration, we have more secrets to reveal. Along with the top secret designs which we have begun releasing, we are also beginning to publish formerly secret launch reports from some of our ambitious High Pressure Water Rocket experiments.

The launch report we present now is from experiments conducted on December 26, 2008. For this test, we were testing a new avionics system which was needed for a High Power Water Rocket which we will discuss more in future Launch Reports. The launch was featured in one of our early forays into "vlogging", but we did not publish many details about this launch, as we felt other teams who were in pursuit of our WRA2 Water Rocket World Altitude Record would benefit by studying our designs.

The purpose of the test was to validate the design and construction of a new avionics module, but since the rocket for this module was not finished yet, we used our X-12 carbon Fiber Water Rocket as the pressure vessel for the test. We were anxious to validate the new electronics design and also to be the first team to shoot real HD video with an onboard camera on a Water Rocket.

We now have completed a more fulsome write-up of the events of the day, and can publish more detailed photos of the launch. We can now  provide much more detail because we recently unveiled the design for our U.S. Water Rockets Split Collar Cable Tie Rocket Release Mechanism, which is visible in many of the photos taken at the launch site. Now that the secret of the launcher has been revealed, we can publish these formerly secret launch reports which show the launcher in action.

Please click here to view the complete launch report and watch the video of the flight.