Shaman Posted April 22, 2006 Posted April 22, 2006 Build a rocket. A nice mini-game on NASA site: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/RocketScience101/RocketScience101.html 51PVO Founding member (DEC2007-) 100KIAP Founding member (DEC2018-) :: Shaman aka [100☭] Shamansky tail# 44 or 444 [sIGPIC][/sIGPIC] 100KIAP Regiment Early Warning & Control officer
Pilotasso Posted April 22, 2006 Posted April 22, 2006 When I was a kid I made experiments with home made rockets. I had no money to buy dedicated kits so I improvised some. I used to buy firecrackers (the other stupid kidies used them to blow stuff up) and extracted the gunpowder. I filled tubular shapes such as pens and electrical tubes with that and made the launches. Once I made a holow chair aluminum leg fly up to 50m (150 feet) using detonation propultion! I surpaced Skunk works with this! :D (indeed climb speed was fenomenal) Some of the other rockets I made lost equilibrium and flew everywhere but up. LOL very dangerous. One of my most ambitious projects was to launch a rocket propelled capsule with a hamster from a blimp. The capsule was suposed to be re-usable and hopefuly the hamster as well :D by the means of a deployable parachute. But it required so much gunpowder we would need several firewords boosters to make it work(some of my friends even planed paying a visit to the local fireworks depot but the plan was shelved and deemed too dangerous for our health) I built the capsule and tested untill it worked but the launch never hapened. SO the hamster lived to see a few more weeks. It died crushed under school books after they fell of the desk to the box where the hamester was streching its legs. Instead it was turned into a pizza. Then we were left without volunteer "pilots". I left rocket making soon after this, I had a few friends with whom I was going to make a project group but our projects were too ambitious for our possibilities and meanwhile I stoped making rockets alltogether. .
Guest IguanaKing Posted April 23, 2006 Posted April 23, 2006 I used to build rockets with the same kind of propulsion out of cardboard paper towel tubes, and attached fins made out of poster board. They flew beautifully, I even managed to track one all the way up with an old 8mm movie camera. Then I ended up getting a great-paying job for a 16-year-old and started building the kits. My favorite one was the scale model of the AIM-54. Man...it was so huge I thought it would never get off the ground...but, holy cow did it climb. Just like a bat out of hell. :D These days, if I were a young kid and tried my homemade rocketry, I'd probably get arrested. After Columbine, kids using explosives for science has pretty much been ruined. :(
F22FighterPilot Posted April 23, 2006 Posted April 23, 2006 This is an interesting topic because I love to build rockets. Nothing too advanced though, just the kits you can buy in the hobby store. But it's lots of fun and very educational. I need to get some more parachutes, I accidentally melted the one on the last rocket I launched. lol:doh: Windows XP Home, 768 MB RAM, Pentium 4 @1.5 GHz, Nvidia GeForce 2
Force_Feedback Posted April 23, 2006 Posted April 23, 2006 Had my share of rocket building as well, I made the exterior shells out of laminated paper (light and stiff) and my "engines" were the rocket motors from fireworks. I never made anything spectacular, except for once when I made a parachute in the nose cone, but didn't realize the CG would be too far up. To make it worse the thing had an exploding upper stage (extracted from those little moondarts) to release the chute. Well, the thing flew, but it didn't exceed 5m and it flew in an erratic circular pattern before exploding. I guess if I'd pick up my old hobby now, I'd be either doing some time or be suspected of jihadism or something, because my country and its people are scared of everything that exceeds 85Db. Plus, in my country you're only allowed to launch fireworks on December 31st from 10:00 to 2:00, after that you may get fined, and if you're underaged you'd get some kind of alternative punishment. <-- this is not a joke, this is the way fireworks work in our country, so it's no surpise everyone is so scared of everything here. Oh, and fireworks that comply with European standards (which are higher than American ones, ie less powder) are often not allowed to be sold or used in my country becasue they're afraid some retards will blow off their hands, leaving people that love fireworks with whiny bangs. Of, you can also get fined for "smuggling" fireworks from Belguim or Germany. Creedence Clearwater Revival:worthy:
Guest IguanaKing Posted April 23, 2006 Posted April 23, 2006 We have the same thing where I live, fireworks are illegal, and its a $50 fine if you get caught igniting them. The funny thing is, it seems to be perfectly legal to sell them, since there are fireworks tents that are constructed everywhere in Denver near the fourth of July. Granted, they only sell the wimpy stuff, but even THAT is illegal to ignite anywhere in the state. For more powerful fireworks, we can just drive up to Wyoming and buy those. A funny message I heard on a local radio station: "You can have my illegal fireworks, when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers...which are...over there somewhere." :D
Andrew_McP Posted April 23, 2006 Posted April 23, 2006 A funny message I heard on a local radio station: "You can have my illegal fireworks, when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers...which are...over there somewhere." :D LOL! :-) Andrew McP
Recommended Posts