The initials K.I.S.S. stood for “Keep It Simple Scientist” - both a design philosophy and a project name.With the able assistance of an intrepid band of E.R.P.S. members, this single engine hydrogen peroxide monopropellant vehicle was originally scheduled to fly in mid-October of 2000. As in many other organizations, however … things didn’t quite go as scheduled.
The first K.I.S.S. flight was actually accomplished on February 10th, 2002 at the Mojave Test Area. The vehicle is 9′ tall, 6″ in diameter and generates 220 lb of thrust from the engine. The propellant is 85% Hydrogen Peroxide. The catalyst is silver plated nickel foam. The vehicle reached an altitude of about 2,100 m but the chute failed to deploy. Impact was 1.9 km downrange. Time of flight was 41 seconds.
This was not the end of the K.I.S.S. program … we learned, improved and returned to fly another day.
As you can see from the above video, just after leaving the tower the rocket angles over into the As you can see from the above video, just after leaving the tower the rocket angles over into the wind. This was why it landed 1.9 kilometers down range. What you can’t see in the video is that the HPR style arming device for the parachute did not arm because the acceleration wasn’t high enough to tell it the launch had happened, and so when the engines ran out of propellent the device did not fire the pyros and thus the chute did not deploy. This is what we call a “technical difficulty” and results in the proverbial Bad Daytm
Postflight Celebration
Fortunately, the nose cone and recovery sections, having failed their primary mission, did succeed in the secondary role and became a “crumple zone” for the engine (which would have taken a LOT of work to replace).
And thanks to Mark Blair, we had a bit of a celebration after and he even got us to commit to re-flying in 3 months (what were we thinking??)!