4 ms·
It was hard enough with two Estes engines! Often that second stage went off into the wild blue, never to be seen again, at some weird angle, or even spinning!
by systems_glitch 3y ago
It was hard enough with two Estes engines! Often that second stage went off into the wild blue, never to be seen again, at some weird angle, or even spinning!
- vidanay 3y agoLOL. Me and my friends designed a two stage rocket, and of course we insisted that our first attempt use "D" size engines. The first stage took the rocket up about 75-100 ft and when the second stage lit off, the rocket somehow kicked over and was flying perfectly horizontal. The problem was, we were launching from the bottom of a retention basin at the local park district so we started out at -40 ft altitude. This meant the rocket went zooming across the neighborhood only slightly above tree top level.
- Arrath 3y agoOh that is just brilliant. Model rocket shenanigans were a highlight of my childhood. Turns out, duct taping extra motors onto the rocket body as a cluster of second stage engines, initiated by cannon fuse itself ignited by the first stage didn't work so hot.
- WWLink 3y agoI had a few model rockets, but I also made some completely custom ones out of index cards wrapped around a small motor. I added curved fins so one would spin. THAT was interesting! One of my (normal estes) rockets was hanging from a tree over a bike path by the park for like a week until I finally brought a ladder and some poles to get it down. Honestly I'm surprised nobody ever tried to grab it lol. Edit: The very first estes rocket was from a kit - our teacher had a "rocket week" and we all made and launched rockets. Mine went up, a fin fell off, then it u-turned, and then went straight for the math teacher.
- Metacelsus 3y agoyeah, the problem is if they don't ignite at exactly the same time, you'll get unbalanced thrust and wild spinning! lots of excitement there!
- foobarbecue 3y agoSo YOU were the ones that started that fire in October Sky
- vidanay 3y agoWell, my grandfathers surname was Hickman, and I was born in WV. (I know, Homer Hickam is different...but it's close)
- weard_beard 3y agoSame latin root
- systems_glitch 3y agoMet him once in college, I was in the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech, which is where Homer Hickam ended up as well. Very humble guy, at least in the few minutes I was around him. Fun fact, while at VT he led the creation of the original Skipper cannon. He and a bunch of other cadets thought it was shameful that VT had no cannon and VMI would trot out this little deck gun ("it was really more like a mortar!" according to him) at football games and shoot it off. He amassed a bunch of brass uniform bits and approached a foundry in IIRC Radford about it. They laughed about how a cannon made of uniform brass would blow up, but traded them for gunmetal brass. The first time they fired it was a salute for President Kennedy, but the assassination happened before they had time to drill a touch hole. They rounded up every ketchup squeeze bottle they could find, put the charge of powder in that, and taped a piece of fuse in the spout. The ketchup bottle assemblies were lit and slid down the barrel. Years later, a bunch of drunk cadets on Skipper Crew blew the original up. They kept cramming charges down after misfires, I think they had three in there when it went. The explosion blew up the caisson and threw shrapel, some of which embedded in Slusher Tower and is supposedly still there. The pieces were gathered up, mostly reassembled, and at least when I was there resided in the Corps Museum. Anyway, yeah, rockets!
- vidanay 3y agoMy favorite Hickam story is the ultimate "Do you know who I am?" "And I am on the National Space Council that oversees NASA," https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/08/22/nasa-internship-reportedly-lost-after-twitter-spat-homer-hickam/1066538002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/08/22/na...
- yabones 3y agoWell, if your goal was to create an anti-ship cruise missile, I'd say you're about half-way there..! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brahmos_ER.webm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brahmos_ER.webm
- chasd00 3y agoin the high power rocketry the newer flight controllers that have staging capabilities have lockouts now. We can configure logic like "only fire the second stage igniter if N seconds have elapsed since stage 1 burnout AND the rocket is traveling at a min of X ft/sec AND no more than Y degrees off vertical". It makes things a lot safer and more convenient 1) an M motor igniting 45 degrees off vertical 20k feet up means a long drive let alone a long walk. 2) an M motor igniting at a negative velocity ( descending and likely pointing down) is very scary heh.
- vidanay 3y agoWe had Christmas paper tubes, balsa fins cut with a dull xacto knife, a hand carved nose cone and a super glued washer as a thrust ring.
- systems_glitch 3y agoThat sounds about right :P There's some really cool stuff nowadays, but I certainly didn't grow up with it!
- polishdude20 3y agoA year back or so I built a thrust vectored model rocket with two stages using an Estes E12 and an F15 motor for the second stage. The flight computer had logic in it to only light the second stage if the first stage had been successful to lift off the ground and the rocket at some vertical angle plus/minus some degrees and the velocity was positive upwards and non-zero. Luckily this first attempt worked out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPtFv-cwcfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPtFv-cwcfQ The first stage was designed to be pushed out by the second stage and a bit before the first stage was completely out or the rocket would lose too much control authority.
- euroderf 3y agoA buddy & I noticed that 1/4A and 1/2A engines only have a bit of propellant, all at the bottom. So we hacksawed off the empty part to get a rocket body less than 2" long. Glued on some fins and a paper nose cone. It went up about two feet and then tilted and zoomed off sideways. Enlightening.