That's some good field research there
also, I love the Easter egg in the SPB masthead!
We at the El Reg Special Projects Bureau have just about recovered from our trip last weekend to International Rocket Week (IRW), in the somewhat rain-lashed and chilly outskirts of Glasgow. Click here for a bigger version of the LOHAN graphic As followers of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project will be …
...I spent a highly enjoyable weekend there in my youth. Lots of fun. The main high points were:
- Seeing a deeply impressive hybrid nitrous-oxide-and-perspex job take off.
- Someone launching a home-made five-stager; we lost sight of it after the third stage, at which point it was already curving over for a trajectory towards the nearby RAF base.
- Getting the range safety officer drunk and trying out experimental (and highly illegal) solid fuel rocket mixes.
- Building rockets out of baguettes (they fly quite well). The recovery mechanism was a tomato duct-taped to the top.
I bought a bunch of half-As and built a few badly-made waverider rockets, which mostly failed to do anything interesting. Alas, I expect the event is better regulated and much safer these days.
Please don't feel down because NAOMI didn't rise to the occasion; even the mighty NASA has had its share of failures to launch.
In fact you've actually beaten NASA. In 1960, Mercury Redstone I only made it 10cm from the pad before something horribly expensive went sproing! shut down the engines and brought the rocket gently back down to the Earth.
So by my calculations if you keep up this rate of success you should be on the Moon round about 2020.
And I quote:
"The flight statistics can be summarised thus: Maximum altitude 1.5 metres, downrange distance from pad 60cm:"
All I can say is this: liquid no longer in mouth, walking to kitchen to get paper towels.
And I'm still laughing....with you.
Congrats on the 2nd attempt.
I really enjoy the reg projects.
But I'm not quite feeling the amazement of this event. I mean come on, look at the photo's, at least half are your stereotype beardies and geeks. Some of those rockets look no bigger than a top end firework, and theres something cringey about folk holding their small dingers with such pride.
I am myself a geek and I want so much to get turned on by this article and run to the nearest model shop, but fact you can just tape a rocket motor into a pringles tube just kind of shows an almost childish level of skill required to play with off the shelf stuff.
You've got to start somewhere, and this was obviously mainly a fact-gathering exercise with the NAOMI as a fun after-thought. Well done on getting it up on the second attempt, and all the best for the LOHAN project. Leicester Amateur Radio Society loved my presentation of the PARIS flight. As for the International Rocket Week event itself, it is good to see that the art of personal experimentation with minimal commercial equipment is still going strong. So what if your rocket body is a pringles can with taped on fins? Experimenting with weight distributions and getting those fins right will be easier than if you used anything higher-tech.
This all seems to be the Disney sanitised version of amateur rocketry.
Are even the polyethylene/nitorus oxide engines commercial?
Oberth and Godard must be turning in their graves.
Does nobody manufacture their own motors anymore?
When I used to build rockets I first experimented with plastics blowing agents (long chains of mostly N!) then moved on to nitrocellulose, along the way learning how to vacuum impregnate glass fibre bodies and nozzles and the stunning effects of combustion using liquid oxygen.
Has amateur rocketry really been legislated out of existence, or are today's enthusiasts just wimpy kit builders?
How about a "high test" hydrogen peroxide motor for LOHAN?
Realise you may already have settled on propulsion, but this post made me think of you guys...
http://hackaday.com/2011/09/05/engine-hacks-a-pulse-jet-uav-by-any-other-name-would-still-be-a-cruise-missile/
A pulse jet might be a good option, possibly? Does it still count as a rocket? Does it matter if you get the end goal?