It was a beautiful day on Saturday, Feb 17th 2018 when GRAVELER II, an 8-inch diameter, 80.5-inch long R-class solid rocket motor, was successfully fired, becoming the the largest successful composite case static fire by an amateur group based on total impulse! The motor delivered a total impulse of 42,000 lbf-sec, producing a maximum thrust of 4864 lbs. Graveler II was fired in a carbon-epoxy motorcase with a carbon-phenolic nozzle, all of which were designed and fabricated by USC students.
Graveler II, short for “Ground Traveler,” was a static test of the rocket motor for the upcoming Traveler III space shot rocket. This test was a key milestone in the development of Traveler III, validating the motorcase and nozzle design while also providing important data to characterize the performance of the rocket motor.
The amazing IR images at the end of the video were taken by a camera generously lent to the team by FLIR Systems