Constructed and Launched my own rocket

[Kyle Worden]

This has been in the works for a little over 3 months, coming up with plans, drafting them in Inventor, doing the math and convincing one of the professors to let me use the 3d printer. I named it "origin" here it is just after i finished my shotty paint job.

 

 

Here is the launch that happened today

 

Rocket ended up on top of a 100' tree, so I can't recover it at the moment.

Thanks for stopping by!

[NSEP]

Nice! Are you planning to do another launch? Awesome!

[Kyle Worden]

36 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Nice! Are you planning to do another launch? Awesome!

At this point I doubt I will be able to recover this one, I do plan on pursuing my Level 1 certification from the NAR, but I will most likely purchase a kit to construct for my next launch.

[The Raging Sandwich]

Nice! I'm trying to do something like this, I started a thread about it

[Zeiss Ikon]

Nice.  I did model rockets in 7th and 8th grade (1970-1972), then came back and built and flew them again from 1996 until 2001.  I got out of it because the high power rockets, which were what really appealed to me, were far too expensive for my budget: back then, a Level 2 launch might cost $100+ for the motor, and recovery was iffy enough you took a significant risk of destroying an airframe that cost another $300 to build (upgrade to Level 3 and you can add another zero or even two zeros to those prices -- and this is most of twenty years ago).

One thing I did notice -- I was a much better builder in my late thirties than I'd been at twelve.

[Mr. Peabody]

Nice rocket. I remember when I was a lot younger me and my friends were always launching water rockets. Once after a party we all went outside to give a "demonstration" and literally pumped up a 2 liter water rocket to 50 PSI before letting it lift-off. The rocket blew quite a sizable hole in the ground and covered everyone with mud. The only trouble was that we were all in formal wear. 

[Zeiss Ikon]

21 hours ago, The Dunatian said:

Once after a party we all went outside to give a "demonstration" and literally pumped up a 2 liter water rocket to 50 PSI before letting it lift-off. The rocket blew quite a sizable hole in the ground and covered everyone with mud. The only trouble was that we were all in formal wear. 

There may have been a failure to think things through there.    Good thing you didn't pump up to 100 psi instead; there'd have been twice the mud.

[Mr. Peabody]

30 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

There may have been a failure to think things through there.    Good thing you didn't pump up to 100 psi instead; there'd have been twice the mud.

If we had pumped it up to 100 PSI there would have been an explosion. The most we ever managed to pump them up to was 55 PSI before they exploded.

[-Velocity-]

When I was fourteen my father took me to a high-power rocketry model launch.  Some guy was trying to qualify on H and I motors, and his rocket was tiny (for an H or I class rocket) and it had these giant, rounded, forward-swept fins.  So when it came time to launch, the predictable happened... the rocket leaped off the pad like lightning.  About 10 feet above the pad, the fins all separated, and the rocket went spinning out of control.  Luckily, it was a pretty short-burning motor.  Needless to say the guy didn't qualify for H and I motors.  Hopefully he learned his lesson!  To be honest, it was a little embarrassing for me.  14-year-olds don't have great social skills but even I knew better than to laugh loudly and hysterically at the guy's (Kerbal-esque!) failure.  Which is exactly what I couldn't stop myself from doing...

Congrats on your rocket!  That's a lot better than my first rocket fared.  It just rose about 10 feet and did a slow spiral back into the ground.  That said, I was 10 years old and had built it from a bunch of toilet paper tubes packed with... you guessed it... toilet paper!, but still... you could have done as bad as that guy in my story above!!!!  

About 15 to 20 years ago back when I was in middle school, I used to do a lot of model rocket launching, but I grew up in Alabama and had to contend with a lot of trees.  So my "designs" either were deliberately unrecoverable (i.e., lacking a recovery mechanism, extremely overpowered or fused to explode, and frequently shoddily-constructed) OR l had to under-powered them.  Later, common sense prevailed and I started flying some of the Aerotech rockets.  There was one rocket that Aerotech sold that was like seven feet tall and 3" in diameter, and even with a G-engine I actually could recover it in the small fields I had available to me.  The long plume produced by their "white lightning" propellant in their G motor was truly awesome to behold, especially when it was oh-so-slowly lifting that big heavy rocket off the pad   The first time we launched it with a G-motor (the rocket could only fly with F and G motors) was in town, and my mom thought we were going to be arrested because, in her words, "it looked like a cruise missile taking off!!!"  It actually did, honestly.

Aerotech actually used to sell a fun little 24mm diameter, 7" long motor, I think it was the "G55".  Its narrow aspect ratio allowed you to create some pretty fast rockets, though in hindsight, I bet it could have gone even faster if they had used a slower-burning propellant or was end-burning.  If I remember correctly, it burned for only 2.2 seconds.  It produced white smoke and white flame (being one of their "white lightning" propellant motors).  My last single-use rockets I made where essentially just a 26 mm OD tube around the G55, with a nosecone on the end.  I used a dremel tool to cut some fiberglass fins for it, and shaved them to an edge.  Those things went FAST.  I think it could have even gone supersonic because there was a noticeable delay, maybe up to two seconds, between seeing the white smoke trail end and hearing the heavily-doppler-shifted motor noise cut off.  I never found where one landed and never even tried or expected to.

ANYWAY, what kind of motor did you use?  I assume Aerotech is still around, and I now that I live in Arizona, and I was actually thinking about maybe launching rockets again.  I used to use the Aerotech reloadable motors a lot and they were actually a bit cheaper than single-use motors, ASSUMING you recovered your rocket.

Speaking of that, haven't you heard of chainsaws?  That's what my father used one time back when I was like four and his rocket got stuck in a tree.  It was only slightly dented when he got it back   I ugh... don't condone such behavior... especially if it's not your land... ahem.  But hey, that tree looked sick.

 

Edited June 9, 2017 by -Velocity-