Category Archive: News

Today marks the official retirement of the Mk4, the sixth design iteration of the Progenitor program. It launched five times, the most of any Progeny rocket to date, and although it suffered three failures it ultimately achieved the goal of being the first rocket to break out of the atmosphere and enter space for a brief period of time. The Mk4 represents the culmination of the iterative Progeny rocket design, building on previous single and multi-stage designs developed earlier in the program, and very little will be changed moving on to the Mk5, which will focus mainly on kOS scripting for automated flights. Program engineers have reviewed all the data from the five flights and have released numerous conclusions that will lay the foundation for flights of the Progeny Mk5.

Terminal Countdown

Although the Mk4 held no capability for automated flight, we were able to implement some automation on the ground side of things with the Automated Firing Control System (AFCS). This very basic system was designed to be manually triggered and then monitor the countdown timer to send the launch signal at precisely L-0:00:00.0, so down to the millisecond. Precise launch times will become important when looking to reach a specific orbital injection or even reach a certain area of space at apokee for a sub-orbital launch. Read the rest of this entry »

We did it. We made it. SPACE! At last! Of course our accomplishment was somewhat overshadowed by the Monolith Incident that occurred during the ascent but nonetheless we have finally achieved the #1 primary goal of the Progenitor Program after 16 launches – flying above the atmosphere of Kerbin. You can relive all the major moments in the flight by visiting its vessel page on our Flight Tracker and using the Prev dropdown list to look back. You can also view detailed telemetry data from the flight for a closer look at what the rocket was doing for the eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds of its journey up to 135km and back down to Kerbin. The ascent up to MECO can be watched at the bottom.

Let’s dig into the flight analysis. The rocket launched with its lower booster solid core reduced to 81% thrust, which produced 106.6kN or 6.08Gs at the time of ignition, climbing to 110.4kN or 10.106Gs by the time the booster flamed out and was discarded at L+6 seconds while traveling at a velocity of 377m/s. All three fins were shredded a second later, fouling the booster’s aerodynamics. It impacted 1.3 km downrange. The second stage booster was lit off at L+14 seconds after the rocket’s pitch had dropped roughly 1.5° during the coast. At 52% thrust, it began the push with 22.2kN producing 0.944Gs and ended at L+19 seconds with 23kN pushing the rocket up to 4.97Gs, now traveling at a velocity of 426.3m/s. The second stage impacted only 847m east of the launch site after having its fins shredded as well, falling back nearly along its ascent trajectory as its spin kept it upright, engine pointing back towards the pad.

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