P1-powered Death Star in space! (Kickstarter)

mpark

I came across this kickstarter to send a miniature Death Star into space: https://kickstarter.com/projects/blazesanders/1277487702?ref=620900&token=ddb9ff10. Scrolling through it, my eye was caught by the screenshot of... PropTool?! On closer inspection, this proposed project is indeed Propeller-powered!

Note: the campaign is not live yet, and I have no affiliation with this project.

Cluso99

Michael,
Nice to see you’re still around

yeti

...and again more food for the Kessler syndrome. :-(

whicker

I'd rather make the Kessel Run, than a Kessler Run.
(Kessler is a well drink or rail drink whiskey).

xanadu

I would love to know more about the rockets they're using. $5000 to put something into orbit sounds like a placeholder or someone has a nice hookup.

AwesomeCronk

Rockets? I’ve seen high level hobbyists use Pershing Q-motor rocket engines and have obtained videos of earth from space.

AwesomeCronk

BTW, Pershing Q-motor engines are the largest rocket engines commercially available and require a low level explosives handiling license.

xanadu

I read the article again and see that the orbital mission is a $40k stretch goal. I hope that happens, I'd back it.

Buck Rogers

AwesomeCronk wrote: »

BTW, Pershing Q-motor engines are the largest rocket engines commercially available and require a low level explosives handiling license.

Hello!
Actually AC you are indeed right. And as it happens practically every year over in Black Rock NV the same park where the folks who believe they are creating and displaying original art have left, is a very large rock launch meet.

Some of the ones launched there, qualify as sounding rockets from the period when the US was launching hundreds of them every day. And some are for fun.

Back in my far off youth I actually did build and launch the regular sized ones using the engine sizes that the firm over in CO designed then. I am aiming to do that all over again, and to see if a Prop based management widget could be used as a payload on one.
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AwesomeCronk

Buck, Estes rockets are the best! However, Pershing Q-motor rocket engines are likely the best things to launch an object to orbit.

Buck Rogers

AwesomeCronk wrote: »

Buck, Estes rockets are the best! However, Pershing Q-motor rocket engines are likely the best things to launch an object to orbit.

Funny question: Do you know anyone with that license and having launched anything with those engines?

Oh and there's someone who's succeeded in bringing complex controls to model rockets.

And there's an article on the Make Magazine website detailing rocket launch problems that rival some of the problems that we went through during the early days of rocketry.
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AwesomeCronk

I do not know anyone, but I have a pyromaniacal obcession with this stuff. Also, YouTube is a bonus to watch them.

twm47099

Back when I was a Freshman in high school (1962 Don Bosco High School, Ramsey NJ) I was a member of the school rocket club. This was before the commercial Estes type models with the premade engines.

We used this book as our guide: https://amazon.com/Rocket-Manual-Amateurs-Bertrand-Brinley/dp/B001K2SI9M

The previous year the club had made the 2 and 4 foot steel tube rockets in the book each filled with powdered Zn and S. They shot them successfully at an annual event at an Army artillery range in Virginia. The year I joined the goal was to build the same size rockets, but this time filled with solid Zn-S cores. That required melting the Zn-S mix (without exceeding the auto ignition temperature) and pouring it into molds that resulted in thick wall cylinders about 8-inches long. This was all done in the school chem lab.

My job in the club was making the igniters for the rockets. For powder fueled rockets connecting a simple black powder squib or small nichrome filament coated with glue and powdered fuel to a battery was enough to light the powder. The solid fuel rockets required a nichrome coiled heating element to be stretched the full length of the assembled cores and soldered to the copper zipcord and coated with molten Zn-S mix. We used a 120v generator to get the heating element hot enough to light the Zn-S. It was fun testing different designs behind the school gym - lots of flame and smoke.

After casting the cores they were painted on the outside and ends with an asphalt based paint so they would burn from the inside out. The rockets were transported unloaded on the roof rack of one of the cars on the trip to Virginia. The cores were wrapped in cushioning so they wouldn't crack riding on the potholed roads. On launch day we loaded 3 cores into the 2 ft rockets and 6 into the 4 ft ones. We launched 4 of the small rockets and 2 large ones.

The biggest difference between the launch of the solid fueled rockets and power rockets was that the powder rockets took off in a blast of smoke on the pad and then coasted. The solid rockets burned all the way through the clouds leaving thick smoke trails. The Army artillery observer reported that one of our 4 ft rockets reached 10,000 ft (he told us afterwards that was as high as he could report because of the permitted ceiling for the meet.) He also tracked that rocket and guided the recovery team to where it had buried itself all the way to its tail fins. They kept that bent rocket in the school trophy case.

That was a fun year. Unfortunately, the faculty leader of the club got married that summer and moved to be near his wife's family. That was the end of the club.

Tom

Buck Rogers

twm47099 wrote: »

Back when I was a Freshman in high school (1962 Don Bosco High School, Ramsey NJ) I was a member of the school rocket club. This was before the commercial Estes type models with the premade engines.

We used this book as our guide: https://amazon.com/Rocket-Manual-Amateurs-Bertrand-Brinley/dp/B001K2SI9M

The previous year the club had made the 2 and 4 foot steel tube rockets in the book each filled with powdered Zn and S. They shot them successfully at an annual event at an Army artillery range in Virginia. The year I joined the goal was to build the same size rockets, but this time filled with solid Zn-S cores. That required melting the Zn-S mix (without exceeding the auto ignition temperature) and pouring it into molds that resulted in thick wall cylinders about 8-inches long. This was all done in the school chem lab.

My job in the club was making the igniters for the rockets. For powder fueled rockets connecting a simple black powder squib or small nichrome filament coated with glue and powdered fuel to a battery was enough to light the powder. The solid fuel rockets required a nichrome coiled heating element to be stretched the full length of the assembled cores and soldered to the copper zipcord and coated with molten Zn-S mix. We used a 120v generator to get the heating element hot enough to light the Zn-S. It was fun testing different designs behind the school gym - lots of flame and smoke.

After casting the cores they were painted on the outside and ends with an asphalt based paint so they would burn from the inside out. The rockets were transported unloaded on the roof rack of one of the cars on the trip to Virginia. The cores were wrapped in cushioning so they wouldn't crack riding on the potholed roads. On launch day we loaded 3 cores into the 2 ft rockets and 6 into the 4 ft ones. We launched 4 of the small rockets and 2 large ones.

The biggest difference between the launch of the solid fueled rockets and power rockets was that the powder rockets took off in a blast of smoke on the pad and then coasted. The solid rockets burned all the way through the clouds leaving thick smoke trails. The Army artillery observer reported that one of our 4 ft rockets reached 10,000 ft (he told us afterwards that was as high as he could report because of the permitted ceiling for the meet.) He also tracked that rocket and guided the recovery team to where it had buried itself all the way to its tail fins. They kept that bent rocket in the school trophy case.

That was a fun year. Unfortunately, the faculty leader of the club got married that summer and moved to be near his wife's family. That was the end of the club.

Tom

Hello!
Holy Toledo!
Tom that book you cited https://amazon.com/Rocket-Manual-Amateurs-Bertrand-Brinley/dp/B001K2SI9M

I know of it because I'm a fan of his "Mad Scientists Club" series. Oddly enough in the second, actually third book in the series, the resident scientist used a rocket exactly like that one, to trigger rain.

I'm still working on an idea to use a Prop to run stuff for a middle sized Estes engine powered rocket.
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AwesomeCronk

Estes’s engine starters are triggered by 9+ vdc. An L293d h bridge driver connected to 9v and a prop pin should work. I have not tested it yet.
Also, I have seen guys launch Estes engines with gator clip cables connected to the starter plug and a wall outlet. Don’t recommend working with that much power.