Black Knight - BK14

Black Knight BK14 was a two-stage vehicle with the second stage and head configuration being similar to that deployed on BK08.

The ignition of the second stage was to be initiated by a Phillips ionisation gauge (as on BK09).

Upper atmosphere experiments carried were

• a cosmic ray scintillation counter and
• electron temperature measurement.

Results

Unfortunately there was a premature "run-out" of kerosene which occurred at T+128 seconds followed by fourteen seconds "cold" burning; the final shutdown actually occurred at the correct time.

Subsequent analysis of records indicated that a leak had developed in the kerosene supply system which accounted for the excessive kerosine flow rate.

The initiation of second stage separation was dependent on the operation of an inertia switch. However due to the drop in first stage performance, (caused by cold burning), the acceleration was insufficient to correctly operate the switch.

This led to failure in all the post burnout events, such as:

• second stage separation,
• spin,
• ignition,
• head separation and
• recording.

After this failure alternative methods were required for arming the seconds stage which were not dependant on first stage performance.

Because the second stage did not deploy correctly, there was no change-over of selected telemetry channels to record upper atmosphere measurements.

Number Stages Date local
time Empty
wt [lbs] HTP
[lbs] Kerosene
[lbs} All up
wt [lbs] Burn-out
time [s] Apogee
miles

14 2 9 5 61 21.37 2 062 9 992 1 176 13 230 128.2 258