Shareholder Value
Purpose
Shareholder Value is being built to test liquid rocket engines, hopefully more than one.
Objective
Every new launch vehicle program is an engine development program. The same is true whether you are going to Mars or building rockets in your dorm. The first configuration will be firing a 5 kN ethanol-LOX ablative engine for multiple 10 second burns.
Design
Shareholder Value was constructed of a welded assembly of 1.5” x 2” box tubes. To these, castors were added almost as a last thought, these turned out to make moving the stand significantly easier. Aluminum panels were created to mount the main fluid panel that houses the isolation valve, both vent valves, and the pneumatics. The main run valves are mounted directly to the stand sides and the engine mounts to another aluminum panel on the front. The run tanks are mounted on two vertical posts.
Avionics
The avionics involve a Teensy 4.1, a few voltage regulators, some MOSFETs to drive the pneumatics, a few instrumentation breakout boards, and an RS-422 adapter that communicates to the bunker computer. This is all mounted on a custom backbone pcb to feed everything power and data and is powered by a 24V source that plugs into a wall outlet. The Teensy runs a state machine that can individually toggle all valves in a test state as well as specific sequencing during test operations. The bunker computer has a PyQt gui that sends command state signals and receives all telemetry from the stand. The stand can record at several thousand samples per second.
