Thursday, July 12, 2007

Booming with Orion Propulsion

Greetings from Rocket City, Huntsville, Alabama. I'm here with filmmaker Mark Greene shooting video at Tim Pickens' company Orion Propulsion.

After watching a tank burst test Orion did for NASA, we headed out to a cotton field near the airport to see the crew light up the 2,700-pound-thrust hybrid rocket engine Pickens built for his pickup truck.

That test was for Miltec, which wanted to test their engine health sensors in, er, field conditions. Why'd you pick Orion for this, I asked one of the Miltec guys. "They do about the fastest turn-around in the business," without cutting corners, he said.

Today it's off to Marshall Space Flight Center for a look at the historic test stands and then more interviews at Orion.