Last Thoughts

Magic Toes

Fire & Ice

A Beautiful Computation

in the Wolfram sense

Curiosity

Diamond Age & Eyes

and even some people

Namaste.

A complicated design…

Lifts with a thunderous roar…

SRB Separation is visible to the naked eye… and the payload joins the ISS…

As the Shuttle is retiring from operation, SpaceX is gearing up to service the space station and other orbital launch needs:

Here you can see the music video of their first launch to orbit.

Like a moth to the flame, before there were flames…

Reflecting our reflections…

and echoing in the dreams of Neil Armstrong…

She lept off the pad with a glorious 30 ft. plume.

Computer simulations estimated she would scream to 100,000 ft. at Mach 3

• 22 ft. tall, 540 lbs
• Booster stage: machined aluminum fin can and inter-stage coupler mounted directly on the Q motor casing.
• Upper stage: Custom wound composites, titanium tip
• Festooned with redundant computers, GPS, RF transmission
• Q booster staging to a P motor with a custom forward thermite igniter
• ~6x the thrust of a cruise missile booster

Here’s my 1-minute Launch Video (airborne footage edited down; it took longer to return than the video run time), and here’s a final test video where Tom detonates the separation charge to make sure the machined aluminum structures will work to separate the booster and sustainer stages of the rocket.

Upper Stage, Motors & machining, RockSim of flight, upper stage test, team photo:

Here is a fun video montage from the weekend.

This Great Gizmo drag race was sponsored by Wildman Rocketry at LDRS27 in Argonia, Kansas, with each flying the same kit:

It’s a rare treat to see them all roar off the pad at the same time, and then spiral around like Keystone Cops. The sparky one at the bottom went into a death spiral and crashed into the farm dirt near me. (Since these are all the same rocket kit, I suspect the difference in flight dynamics derive from differences in nose cone weight.) This is one bank of rockets; there was a second bank off to the left launched at the same time.

Then the big birds came out, with each flying the same sparky M-size motor from Animal Motor Works:

Three rocketeers, scattered across the globe, coordinated designs over the Internet to converge for a surprisingly fair drag race (I suspect Thermite igniters). The rocket on the right came from Australia to rural Kansas for this launch.

Here is a remarkably similar start, but rapid separation (0.5 seconds later) of M motor contestants at DairyAire this summer:

These were a special collections of very close races. Much more typical, especially for me it seems, is to have my rocket still chuffing on the pad while the other rocket screams supersonically out of sight. Here’s an example video of a drag race of my Milk Rocket versus Erik’s (which leaves the frame before mine gets going). It’s mostly interesting for the smack-talking audio, typical of these events.

Not to be outdone by Team Numb’s Beer Keg launch, I improvised with what I had in the desert, and sent my son’s milk bottle up in his Nike Smoke rocket on a K550… and got it 100 ft. higher than the beer (6,258 ft. per the onboard HCX flight computer).

I was racing Erik’s GLR Vertical Assault flying on one of my favorite motors, a CTI L730 which burns a thermoplastic propellant from a Canadian aerospace company. He just rips off the pad and out of the frame, and disappeared into the sky.

I cut a few minutes of mystery from the middle of the video as we were looking up in the sky for our rockets. We both packed orange chutes and only one orange chute was visible in the sky… Who’s rocket was it, and where did the other one go?

Both rockets were recovered in perfect shape. My chute was in sight overhead, and Erik’s was discovered several hours later by others). I shared the “rocket milk” with Team Numb as they were having cookies on Sunday morning. The motor warmed the milk to body temperature… just like mama used to make…

Here’s a rare catch of a fleeting midair moment – the forward retention for the solid-fuel motor has failed and so it thusts forward up through the rocket, pushing the parachute and nose cone out prematurely:

Even the little Estes motors can have a forward closure failure, with glorious results:

Sometimes the nozzle pops out the back, lowering thrust dramatically… and triggering premature separation and release of the smoke grenades:

The early parachute deployment creates an aerial u-turn…

and a convenient return close to the launch pad.

Clusters of motors offer more chances of a failure. With this one at DairyAire, one of the J motors exploded through its aluminum casing during airstart ignition. It ruptured the side of the rocket and blasted up through the body:

A fine family flying the flag for the Fouth. =)

The supersonic shreds spread the laundry in a yard sale in the sky, here with a Q motor CATO:

Sometimes they come back hot:

At times, it looks like an arcade game of Missile Command:

And makes you wonder the comprehensive policy on auto insurance:

My rocket buddy Erik and I have developed a knack for spotting a likely train wreck in the sky. There was a certain lack of craftsmanship in this Sonotube build that cued us to be ready with the camera:

I just held the motor drive down for this one… Click…click…click… It does a hop over Black Rock in the first frame, and the O-size motor separates from the body in frame 14/15:

And a couple close ups of this Twisted Firestarter:

Pop goes the motor.

For launch shots, I shoot with timing priority at 1/3000 seconds or faster to catch the action. This helps freeze the shrapnel in sharp focus. Typically, I am tracking the rocket by hand with a 400mm zoom.

Rockets bursting in air… In this example, a home-brew motor mixed with 8 pounds of black powder hit a bit of a burp midair:

As the solid propellant motors rapidly rise to full pressure and sufficient heat to melt aluminum, a motor casing rupture can burst a rocket apart from within… leading to a shower of rocket confetti overhead. Or at the pad…

when catching the action in frame is a bit of an acquired reflex, as there is very little warning – just a puff of the igniter from the tail end, then BOOM

The big ones feel like a concussion grenade – like this P-size motor overpressure on the pad:

It twisted the launch rail into a chunk of metal and threw it through the air. But most amazingly of all, the white circle in the dust is the shock wave emanating out at the speed of sound.

And when Hollywood gets involved, you get the Big Bada Boom, as with this staged explosion of a V2-like rocket on the pad, orchestrated by The Discovery Channel…

We don’t normally get to see that as we do not use liquid fuels.

► Elton John ♫ ♪
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Team Numb comfortably launched a fat rocket on a P7000 motor to loft a full beer keg over a mile high straight up.

• Keg: 175 lbs of beer. Roots. From Oregon.
• Motor: 60 lbs of Alumaflame solid rocket propellant (looks like gray styrofoam, but burns in a violet flame). This home brew P motor is twice as big as what you can buy, and you can buy a cruise missile booster from Cesaroni Aerospace in Canada.
• Altitude: 6,100 ft. Perfect flight.
• Results: Beer shaken, not stirred, and tapped at the landing site.

The launch donut stayed on the nosecone for a surprisingly long time. The rear-deployed chute shredded under the strain, reducing but not eliminating its effectiveness. So, the keg returneth…. much like the Mars landing bounce:

Here is the team video, with a hearty roar:

I just love the voices… From the team videographer:


“OMG… it’s out dude. OMG. It worked!”

(such faith in the project. 

and the event LCO (Launch Control Officer):

“The beer is down safely. Don’t tap it for a while though.”

And there was much rejoicing at the landing site.