Prevented from launching for over two months due to legal and political wrangling the second flight of the Progeny Mk6 was finally able to head up into space and also successfully made it back to the surface intact for recovery thanks to some new tech that reached maturity during the delay. This was the third launch in a series of flights designed to probe out the region of hazardous radiation originally detected above the planet by earlier Progeny Mk5 flights. We have theories on what might be up there, but only hard data will tell us what actually exists. Thanks to the success of this flight we are a step closer to knowing, with two more planned to hopefully complete our initial understanding.
The Flight
Despite the long break between launches regular drills kept everyone ready to resume operations and no troubles arose during the operations leading up to the launch, which occurred on schedule after high surface winds earlier in the day died down to acceptable levels. The Automated Flight Control System fired off the first stage 0.625m booster at precisely 13:58:00.05 local time, which pushed the rocket off the launch base with an initial thrust of 67.2kN for 4Gs of acceleration on a heading of 120°. This force was enough to keep drag at the nose from pitching up the rocket any more than 1.5° before the fins began to spin up and stabilize the remainder of the flight. The lower booster’s thrust peaked at 68.9kN just 3.6 seconds into the flight before the solid fuel core design began a thrust reduction to keep the vehicle’s speed under control as it passed through MaxQ at L+17.9 seconds traveling at 504.53m/s with a dynamic pressure of 77.987kPa. The first stage burned out after 33.67 seconds of powered flight and separated cleanly one second later. A second after that the fins were shredded with explosives to spoil the booster’s aerodynamics and send it plummeting towards the Kerblantic, where it impacted 19km downrange at L+3m9s.
