Spaceola Testing & Launch Prep
What's happening behind the scenes to make this possible?
Inspired by Estes™ Model Rockets as young rocketeers, Spaceola engineers adopted economical, environmentally safe, and disposable cardboard tubes for first and second stage rockets.
"We know how lucky we are as retired NASA people to get a second shot to do what we love," said Nancy Roman.
Spaceola is on the testing fast track, excited to get to Mars as inexpensively as possible using time-tested technologies.
Spaceola engineers and technicians loading Elsie and her tractor into the disposable cardboard booster at the Spaceola launch center.
Spaceola testing the most recent design iteration of the main booster. Engineers discovered that the booster exceeded thrust expectations. Slide rule calculations didn't miss by much (very 'retro-woke').
The promise of achieving three primary goals - launch inexpensively, environmentally non-destructive, and frequent launches - are satisfied with the design and delivery of the massive new Spaceola cardboard rocket booster tubes.
First among the ideas were model rocket engines engineers remembered from childhood. But they were thinking much bigger. They envisioned a rocket engine on a huge scale with with excellent thrust and thrust duration.
Spaceola salvaged curve tracer, optical microscope and decapsulation tools from local space collectors previously used on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. With few exceptions, the gauges, knobs, connectors, and screens worked perfectly!
In addition to cardboard tubes, Spaceola developed other rocket engine concepts at the Spaceola Rocket Engine Test Facility. Here an Intern at the performs complicated tests with an experimental engine.