Here's a summary of the successful Kimbo III static fire test that took place this past Saturday at the MTA:

Mike Novratil braved the LA Friday afternoon traffic and delivered the vehicle to the MTA that night.  The nearby earthquake the following morning had no impact on the hardware (the same can't be said for those of us trying to get a few hours of sleep in before heading out early in the a.m. to Mojave).

On Saturday, the GSE was installed within an hour (in large part because of the use of QD's for the all the pneumatic lines). There were the usual integration challenges between the vehicle and the Vehicle Test Stand, but Chris, Dave, Dave and Mike were able to figure out solutions on the spot (no field test is complete without some metal cutting/sawing/drilling). Dave Whitener's outer shell looked great and protected the internal hardware from the plume.

After running several simulated countdowns and also watching Steve Johnson's beta rocket launch and Tom's 50 lb-motor static test, we finally started propellant loading around 2:30.  Chris's alcohol feed system worked great and the alcohol loading task only took a couple of minutes.  The team had the same results when loading the LOX from Tom's dewar - the performance of Chris's insulation on the LOX tank and feedlines was obvious.  Overall, roughly 40 pounds of propellant went into the vehicle (we'll try to refine those numbers in the next several days).

The countdown went smoothly and Mark's igniter lit on the very first try.  The control software worked exactly as intended and the gimbal went through one extend/retract cycle before the burn and two cycles during the burn.  Those of us in the block house had our view obscured by the resulting dust cloud during the gimballing, but the folks in the bunkers clearly saw Dan Moser's nozzle go through its full range of motion (hopefully Kelly can track down the videos of the firing; see his first digital images at the end of this message).

At about fifteen seconds into the burn, after the gimballing sequences had finished, several related anomalies became apparent. 
First, the engine started choking in a fashion similar to what was seen on Kimbo I. As speculated beforehand by Tom, it appears that the regulator and/or pressurization solenoid were insufficient for the desired GHe flow rates into the LOX and alcohol tanks.  Consequently, the engine chamber pressure / thrust decayed significantly as the burn progressed.  The lower flow rates also led to the engine burning a lot longer than expected - I hit the abort command at T+68 seconds, in contrast to the 20 to 30 seconds period that I thought that the burn would end.  During this period, the flame was transparent and the primary evidence of the engine burning was the radiation from the bricks in the deflector shield.
         
It was hard to monitor the collected data in real time and after the test we were busy tearing down the equipment.  So, I hope to get some analysis underway this week.  A quick post-test assessment of the vehicle indicated that the airframe and the electrical elements are all intact, without any sign of wear.  However, the extended burn time has resulted in significant erosion of the ablative material at the top of the engine chamber, near the mating interface to the injector.  The injector survived
once again, although one has to wonder about the state of the pintle after four burns totalling close to two minutes of operation.

After letting the dust settle (both literally and figuratively), we are going to regroup and start planning out the flight campaign.  The original plan had been to get into the air next month, but now we have to address the chamber erosion issue, so the launch date is presently TBD. Hopefully we can baseline a date by the end of this week.  Concurrently, Kelly will be processing the photos, videos, etc. and coordinating with Eric on getting this type of stuff onto the RRS homepage.

As always, a lot of credit for the test is due to Chris, Mike, Dave W., Mark, Tom, Kelly, Mike's buddies (Dave and John), Dan, Dave Crisalli, and numerous others who contributed both time and resources.

        Garv