Video Amateur Rocketeer Derek Deville's Qu8k Rocket Flies to 120,000+ Feet (Video) 165
Video no longer available.
Derek Deville is a rocket hobbyist. A lot of us have messed with Estes Model Rockets, which start at about $13 for a pre-assembled rocket that can go 800 feet straight up. Derek's rockets are on a whole different level. His personal rocket altitude record is closer to 33 miles, which is about 150 times as high as the entry-level Estes rocket -- and takes more than 150 times as much effort to build and launch. Derek's employer, Syntheon LLC, helps him out a lot with tools and materials. Lots of other people help him, too. Derek has been mentioned on Slashdot before. This video is a chance to get to know him a bit better. And anyone who shoots rockets to the top of the Stratosphere for fun is worth knowing, right?
Fastest Deville I've ever seen (Score:2, Funny)
Car analogy not required!
I bet (Score:3)
I bet Chuck Norris could drive a car into the stratosphere.
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Rockets are fun, but fairly expensive as hobby (Score:4, Informative)
and his toys are definitely not on the cheaper side.
Re:Rockets are fun, but fairly expensive as hobby (Score:5, Funny)
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ROI on a used rocket? Stellar. (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the return on investment on a used rocket?
>What's the return on investment on a used rocket?
Let's see. Two guys apply for a high paying engineering job. One has a degree. The other is a world class rocket builder. Who get the job?
Two guys date the same hot girl. One has a nice house. The bother is a world class rocket builder with high paying engineering job. Who gets the girl?
I'd say its a pretty good investment. Of course, he could play safe and invest in housing instead. Because we all know that house values never go down.
Re:ROI on a used rocket? Stellar. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see. Two guys apply for a high paying engineering job. One has a degree. The other is a world class rocket builder. Who get the job?
The guy with the degree of course. HR will throw the other resume out.
Two guys date the same hot girl. One has a nice house. The bother is a world class rocket builder with high paying engineering job. Who gets the girl?
The guy with the big house of course. "Hey want to come back to my place and relax in my hot tub?" Or "Hey want to see my rocket? --SLAP"
You really need to re-adjust your perspective of what is attractive to women and employers.
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What's the return on investment on a used rocket?
>What's the return on investment on a used rocket?
Let's see. Two guys apply for a high paying engineering job. One has a degree. The other is a world class rocket builder. Who get the job?
Two guys date the same hot girl. One has a nice house. The other is a world class rocket builder with high paying engineering job. Who gets the girl?
In a just world, the other would in both cases. But this isn't a just world.
Perhaps if the hiring manager was an engineer himself and could see the value in practical experience instead of "playing it by the numbers", and perhaps if the girl was a geek herself, things would work out the way you describe. And if that's how it worked out for you, bravo!
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Two guys date the same hot girl. One has a nice house. The bother is a world class rocket builder with high paying engineering job. Who gets the girl?
The one who is more interested in girls than boys' toys, I should think.
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If living in a really nice home is what you
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Scan to 2:37 for a shot of his PE resin girlfriend (Score:2, Funny)
Seriously, I really cannot imagine why this is in a rocket shot next to the other PE resin stuff. My best guess is that he was ordering from a shop and they said, "hey do you want a couple of cast lady parts *with* nipples?" Seriously, why include nipples. I bet there was a reason the lower half was turned around away from the camera.
Yes, mod this troll/offtopic, but this is a bio of his shop/life, so I thought it was relevant. Msg to fellow nerds, have a girl do a walk through inspection before camera's ro
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What's wrong with nipples? Most shop mannequins where I live have them.
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2.) He works for a MEDICAL SUPPLY COMPANY. I can't imagine they'd have any reason to prodouce various fascimilies of the human body. None at all come to mind...
Advanced, High-Power Rockets (Score:5, Informative)
Derek's rockets are on a whole different level.
To be sure. Derek's rockets are classified by US Federal Aviation Administration regulations as "Advanced, High-Power Rockets", not Model Rockets. See CFR Part 14, 101.22 [gpo.gov].
Woah! (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot has its own video player?
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No, they're 'rethinking video with Ooyala'.
Which is to say that they're using a video player even worse than JWPlayer in terms of performance and stability (seeking leads to the infinite spinning disc, the video catching up to the buffering leads to a complete halt, and the video plays back with drops and hangs (literally, I couldn't interact with the thing for 20 seconds just now).
They don't have much choice if they choose Ooyala as the distribution platform of choice for some reason, but then I have to qu
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No, they're 'rethinking video with Ooyala'.
Which is to say that they're using a video player even worse than JWPlayer in terms of performance and stability (seeking leads to the infinite spinning disc, the video catching up to the buffering leads to a complete halt, and the video plays back with drops and hangs (literally, I couldn't interact with the thing for 20 seconds just now).
You think that's bad; I can't even get to the video. The advertisement plays perfectly, though. I should know, I refreshed three times trying to get past the infinite spinning disc when it's trying to load the video.
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The only Audacity I can find is an audio player. Can you elaborate?
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Audacity is an audio recording/editing/playing app - I used it to record the audio so that I more easily seek through it for the transcript.
( I can additionally use it to slow down playback while keeping pitch so I can more easily keep up with what's being said - I'm not a stenographer - but usually it's not needed. )
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Ah, ok. I was hoping for an app that would grab the video and play it reliably. Getting tired of all those sucky FLV players.
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VLC plays back FLVs quite well - the problem is getting the FLV in the first place.. I couldn't be bothered trying to find out how ooyala tries to keep the file from users.
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One of the worst video players I've ever used, it seemed almost as if mouse movement alone was enough to reset it back to reloading the video from scratch. I had to FF that at least 6 times just to watch about half of it because of the constant resets.
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care to tell me which video format supports all of them?
130000 feet ~= 10km (metric) (Score:2, Offtopic)
I have never understood using feet for measuring vertical distances.
Re:130000 feet ~= 10km (metric) (Score:4, Insightful)
Are vertical distances somehow different from horizontal distances, or distances in any other orientation?
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I don't know about your feet, but mine are usually horizontal.
Sorry to hear that. Maybe a different cologne or something would help.
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I have never understood using feet for measuring vertical distances.
Actually it's 39 624 meters
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Actually, MacGyver2210 kinda answered a similar topic elsewhere on this web page:
Sorry, unless you're within Apple's reality distortion field, Flash is the web standard for video players.
So, you see, it's standard and that alone makes it right.
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I have never understood using feet for measuring vertical distances.
Hey baby, my house has 0.003048km high ceilings.
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I have never understood using feet for measuring vertical distances.
It sounds more impressive than using furlongs, rods or chains because you get a bigger number.
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Which do you prefer, rods , cubits, or furlongs? Is it OK to use cubits for the height and feet for the drift?
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maybe it comes from the dark age, probably they were pilling up some corpses and found that counting the feet sticking out of the pile was a great way to measure its height... else i cannot think of a good reason to have a foot vertically oriented.
Hot kinky Sex is the first one I thought of.
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maybe it comes from the dark age, probably they were pilling up some corpses and found that counting the feet sticking out of the pile was a great way to measure its height... else i cannot think of a good reason to have a foot vertically oriented.
So what do you call a point one vertical metre high? That's right...a metre high. I cannot begin to understand why you think vertical measurements require a different unit than horizontal ones.
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You are right. Also i should correct myself in that the /. title says 120000 which is 36576m. (and not 130000 feet)
Sorry.
Endoscopy.. (Score:5, Funny)
He works for a company making flexible endoscopy devices. Yet he's building a rocket. Should we be worried?
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BACKGROUND - The founders of Syntheon were formerly involved with a medical-device company named Symbiosis, of which I ran IT. Myself, Kevin Smith, and Ted Slack conducted a large number of rocket tests in the parking lot of Symbiois, which led to the formation of a company named Environmental Aeroscience Corporation (I came up with the name, because our rockets used a safer chemical reaction than solid fuel rockets). We were joined by a well-known amateur rocketeer, Korey Kline (who was well known for, amo
Am I the only person (Score:1)
that thinks his name sounds oddly similar to "daredevil"?
Maybe he should strap himself to one of his rockets for charity or something.
qw8k? (Score:2)
How are you supposed to pronounce this? queightk? qwa-eight-kuh? Are you supposed to forget there's a "t" in 8?
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I guess it's sort of like Megadeth's latest album, TH1RT3EN. I imagine that's pronounced th-one-rt-three-en.
Or the movie Se-seven-en.
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yes, you're supposed to forget that there's a "t" in 8.
The video does mention how this is pronounced.. specifically.. at 3 seconds in:
Re:qw8k? (Score:5, Funny)
"Quake." Seems a bit silly, but I am not going to argue with someone who makes rockets with more range than an early Scud.
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Turn in your geek card, son. You're pathetic. Oh, to answer the question, QUAKE. As in the old FPS game. Oh, sorry, you're not a nerd, that's First Person Shooter. A game where you run around an old castle shooting other people who are also running around shooting you, on the internet. It used to be my favorite.
Now go back to your NASCAR show.
Sheesh, we never used to have dweebs like that at slashdot.
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Wow, what an unabashed jerk you are.
Of course I know how to pronounce it. It's just a silly spelling, which was my tongue-in-cheek point =)
Thinking of old first-person Id games, do you know what day the original Doom was released, off the top of your head, sonny? 'Cause I remember downloading a copy from the local BBS when it came out on 12/10/93. Did you ever purchase a copy of the original Hovertank 3d direct from Softdisk? Do you remember who was revealed to be the "real" villain of Doom II if you pl
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I wonder on whose lawn they'll fight?
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Yours, of course.
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Wow, what an unabashed jerk you are.
I? You savage the rocket man by acting like a twelve year old punk and call me a jerk? Congrats, you get the hypocrite of the week award.
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It only just now occurred to me that you're a troll. Good one, I fell for it.
Ballistic missile defense (Score:1)
Longer term I have the same concern about nuclear weapons. What if somebody found a simple, cheap way to make highly enriched uranium? It would be a disaster.
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The US govt's seemingly quixotic investment of hundreds of billions [cdi.org] in missile defense seems more justified in light of this. When "some guy" can do it, it can't be long until almost any nation can.
Longer term I have the same concern about nuclear weapons. What if somebody found a simple, cheap way to make highly enriched uranium? It would be a disaster.
You don't need highly enriched uranium, just enough smoke detectors.
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Actually, about 200 of them plus some lithium batteries and mantles from coleman lanterns. The americium-241 in the smoke detectors is used to convert the thorium-232 to make uranium-233 with the lithium used as a catalyst. The uranium-233 is fissionable or can be used to make a dirty device. There are a couple of other requirements that I have left out, but are commonly available from big box stores as my intention is not to have anyone actually do this. The point being, though, is that it isn't too ha
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Actually, about 200 of them plus some lithium batteries and mantles from coleman lanterns. The americium-241 in the smoke detectors is used to convert the thorium-232 to make uranium-233 with the lithium used as a catalyst. The uranium-233 is fissionable or can be used to make a dirty device. There are a couple of other requirements that I have left out, but are commonly available from big box stores as my intention is not to have anyone actually do this. The point being, though, is that it isn't too hard.
If it's not that hard, how come Al Qaeda (or whoever) haven't done it yet?
There are only really three possibilities:
1. Terrorists are squeamish about using nukes;
2. The security services have managed to intercept and prevent every attempt to use one, or
3. You're wildly exaggerating the ease of construction.
Number 3. seems the likeliest of these to me.
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There are only really three possibilities:
1. Terrorists are squeamish about using nukes;
2. The security services have managed to intercept and prevent every attempt to use one, or
3. You're wildly exaggerating the ease of construction.
Number 3. seems the likeliest of these to me.
Yeah, I'm wildly exagerating. Just tell that to the boy scout in Michigan who was arrested for building a breeder reactor doing exactly what I described.
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I think the flaw was in his neutron gun, very inefficient. We basically did this in college in the 1980s in my nuclear engineering class. We didn't use smoke detectors, but did use 100mcg of Am-241. However, our neutron gun was much more significant as were the sources of other ingredients. We were not actually attempting to start a breeder, but instead were investigating different neutron gun designs.
Regardless, even if the kid wasn't successful building his reactor, he produced enough radioactive waste
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You'll need more than 200 billion detectors though. Good luck with that.
Or hire a lot of illegal immigrants to take apart detectors. Many drug dealers did this with Sudafed tablets back when you can buy the pills without papers. They bought them by the boxes, hired illegals for low wages to tediously pop the tablets out of the packages and crush them into a container. A PBS show about meth (or some other illegal drug) interviewed various people about this. One meth house in AZ (I think) is where they hired some illegals and gave them $6/hr to "process" sudafed tablets, illegal
1st time was enough (Score:1)
We don't need an article every time this kid decides to launch one of his toys.
Slashdot - is it really so fscking hard... (Score:4, Informative)
... to have videos that work through company firewalls - ie use port 80? youtube can manage it along with dozens of other sites. Why can't you??
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There's nothing incompetent about it junior, its the way most large companies do things these days. When you leave school and get a job you'll find that out.
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Life at my company is good.
Peons get Google maps and the company site.
Managers get what I give them.
I get everything.
Transcript - although you really should watch this (Score:4, Informative)
Title: Derek's "Amateur" Rockets Fly to 120,000+ Feet
Description: Derek Deville builds amazing rockets. For fun.
[00:00] <TITLE>
The Slashdot logo with "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." scrolls and zooms along the left side of the view, superimposed over a 'small' rocket's take-off event.
[00:03] <TITLE>
Derek Deville and the Qu8ke (pronounced "Quake") Rocket
[00:03] Timothy>
Derek Deville is a serious amateur rocket maker.
Today, Derek was kind enough to allow me both into his home workshop, and here in the former Chess Hall of Fame, his current workplace, where many of the parts for Qu8ke were actually fabricated.
[00:16] <TITLE>
A picture of a workshop with a large cylindrical casing on struts with a man, Derek Deville, is in view.
[00:16] Derek>
This is a filament-wound composite casing, aluminum-wrapped with a phenolic carbon fibre-wrapped nozzle.
This is a 5,000lbs thrust hybrid motor.
We fired this one already.
These have enough fuel to burn for 34 seconds.
We've tested full duration burns.
[00:33] <TITLE>
A rocket motor test, with large high velocity exhaust plume, is shown.
[00:54] <TITLE>.
Back to the workshop, the view pans to a large cylindrical metallic object standing upright and a set of other cylindrical casings stacked up beside it.
[00:54] Derek>
This is the aluminum test version of that.
I wouldn't even dare to lean this all the way over; it's too heavy, it's still got propellant in it.
It's another 12 inch.
There's another 12 inch casing over there, and a bunch of 6 inch stuff.
The 12 inch ones are what we call the Hyperion Two, and the 6 inch is the Hyperion One.
[01:14] <TITLE>
The video pans upward along a set of racks, revealing a rocket with stabilization fins laying across the top struts of the racks.
[01:14] Derek>
You can see up there is a 16 inch full-scale nike smoke.
It doesn't have a nosecone on it, it's got a different nosecone on it, temporarily.
[01:23] <TITLE>
The view changes to a zoomed in view of the rocket being discussed.
[01:24] Derek>
But that is one I made a P-motor for and flew at an LDRS [...]
[01:28] <TITLE>
The view changes back to the view of the racks, and follows Derek around the workshop.
[01:28] Derek> ...
[...] some years ago.
If you swing around over here besides the funky mannequins
Oh, here's a piece of finstock.
This is the finstock that was used for Hyperion.
[01:39] <TITLE>
Derek is shown holding the piece of finstock.
[01:39] Derek>
This is an extrusion that we had made, so it had that profile matched to 6 inch diameter casing and then had the fin... so that when we trim this to be fin profile, and fin profile with leading and trailing edges, and drill it out.. and then this would be secured directly onto the motor casing.
[02:01] Derek>
So this is a compression-molded phenolic nozzle that forms the convergence, the throat, and the divergence.
These are glued into a XX grade [ia] phenolic liner with another compression-molded phenolic forward closure.
The injector would seal right in here and then eject, you can see the tapered cone, the way that the nitrous impinged the fuel grains.
This is a fully-consumed fuel grain.
This is about a Q motor.
[02:40] Derek>
And then 12 inch versions here.
Similar to what was done with Qu8ke, we had kevlar molded nose cones made for Hyperions back in the day.
That fits the 6 inch motor casing.
[02:55] <TITLE>
The same rocket launch from the opening title is shown.
[03:00] <TITLE>
Video following Derek around the machine shop is shown.
[03:00] Derek>
This is the Syntheon machine shop.
This is where all the Qu8ke machining parts were made.
We've got a standard lathe and a precision, smaller, lathe.
Nose cone parts were fabricated here.
Standar
Ass! (Score:2)
At 2:37.
No lie.
I have to wonder (Score:2)
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Haha good point. But since he's got to get an FAA clearance to make a test flight I'm sure he's got the proper clearance already, making him less likely to be scrutinized under a microscope. That is, until he start messing with rockets that does have lateral movement (i.e. a missile).
Perhaps US is one of the very few countries today that it is relatively easy for an individual to test or launch a rocket without getting government interference/harassment. Try to do this in a country like China, you and yo
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when he will get the visit from humorless dicks in dark suits wearing mirrored sunglasses, asking about his finances and political leanings - assuming he hasn't already.
You mean venture capitalists?
Re:Honestly, (Score:5, Insightful)
I have done effluent studies for rockets of this size and they produce about 70 pounds of water, about a pound or two of HCl, about 12 pounds of aluminum oxide, and about 4 pounds of carbon or so and some other mostly benign stuff per 100 pounds propellant. To put this in perspective they pollute less than a big rig running for one hour and do so in very remote areas where the material disperses to immeasurable levels immediately.
To the folks that are concerned about stratospheric pollution, these rockets burn out in the air and coast about 2/3 of the altitude or so.
Pollution from rockets is a straw man argument. There are too few flown worldwide to ever matter.
JJ
Re:Honestly, (Score:5, Funny)
[quote]and do so in very remote areas where the material disperses to immeasurable levels immediately[/quote]
You might as well fire it off in LA then since you won't be able to measure the change there either.
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What if it lands in Compton?
So putting it into perspective ... (Score:2, Insightful)
... in 30 seconds this tiny little rocket manages to output almost the same amount of pollutants as a 40 ton truck produces in an hour? And you think thats clean??
I've nothing against this guy and his hobby, it looks fun, but please, lets not pretend that rockets are the slightest bit enviromentally friendly!
Re:So putting it into perspective ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... in 30 seconds this tiny little rocket manages to output almost the same amount of pollutants as a 40 ton truck produces in an hour? And you think thats clean??
I've nothing against this guy and his hobby, it looks fun, but please, lets not pretend that rockets are the slightest bit enviromentally friendly!
It's worth noting here that pretending the rockets are environmentally friendly, is less of a fraud than pretending they are environmentally dangerous.
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The rocket simply doesn't even register.
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Sure, but when it is running its approximately 3600/30 = 120 times more polluting than a vehicle that weighs something like 200 times its weight. Those are not good figures for any form of propulsion.
Re:So putting it into perspective ... (Score:5, Insightful)
2.) You're comparing pollution per time, not pollution per mile. If you want a fair comparison, you want the total amount of pollution to accomplish the task. If I could (theoretically) come up with a rocket system that can move cargo along a 60-mile track in less than 30 seconds, compared to a truck that'd take an hour to do it, I still come out ahead even though the rocket pollutes more per second than the truck.
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"Come up with a less polluting way to get into space, we'll certainly listen to you."
It didn't go into space. Helium balloons can go just as high using zero fuel.
"come up with a rocket system that can move cargo along a 60-mile track in less than 30 seconds, compared to a truck that'd take an hour to do it, I still come out ahead even though the rocket pollutes more per second than the truck"
Unlikely. Say the truck does 2 mpg - that'll be 30 gallons of fuel. There is no way that a rocket would get even clos
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And this tiny little rocket is only going to be burning for 30 seconds at most once every few months, whereas that 40 ton truck is going to be running for hours and hours on end, every day, with 10s of millions of peers. The rocket simply doesn't even register.
Yes, but the truck is actually doing useful work. It's not just sitting there polluting for the sake of it.
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... in 30 seconds this tiny little rocket manages to output almost the same amount of pollutants as a 40 ton truck produces in an hour? And you think thats clean??
I don't think he called it clean, (what is clean?) he said it didn't matter. The guy's not firing a rocket every thirty seconds. I suspect there is significant time, days or months, between firings. Contrast this with a fleet of buses idling overnight in the winter because they didn't want the diesel to congeal from the cold. There are a lot of things that are trivially more pollutant by orders of magnitude.
No HCl or Al2O3 involved here.... (Score:3)
His motor was a hybrid, using liquid nitrous oxide as an oxidizer and cast phenolic as a fuel grain.
The HCl and Al2O3 would be found in the exhaust of a more conventional ammonium perchlorate composite motor, not a hybrid.
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Watch the video. He clearly refers to a hybrid motor.
He shows a cross-sectioned motor after it was burned, talking about the installation of the nitrous injector at the forward end, and showing the eroded remains of the phenolic inside the chamber.
He was using a somewhat unusual design, with the forward bulkhead/closure, fuel grain, and exhaust nozzle all being parts of one large assembly.
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No idea what you people are saying, but it's cool as shit either way.
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I'm not interested in knowing a guy that pollutes air and makes a lot of noise for his pointless and childish hobby. Real nerds feel free to mod me down.
Everybody knows Rocket smoke isn't pollution and road-trip food like Chilli-Cheese Fries don't make you fat!
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But because it's "rocket science" everyone is drooling.
Is there anything he does that actually helps us learn how to make better rockets? If not, it is indeed just a noisy hobby.
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Sorry, unless you're within Apple's reality distortion field, Flash is the web standard for video players.
Would you rather they used Microsoft Silverlight?
HTML5 (Score:1)
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...Flash is the web standard for video players.
Oh, thank heaven -- at least there's a good reason!
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answers Re:Two questions about rocket design (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Yes, this is basically a purely ballistic device with passive stability. Start putting any sort of guidance or active control on it and you're changing a "high power amateur rocket" into a "guided missile" which will attract a LOT of attention from the authorities.
2) Fin design is fairly well understood in a textbook and practical sense. People have been building things with fins for millenia, and the science of aerodynamic stability is well known. It *is* tricky in some ways because the CG of the rock
Re:Two questions about rocket design (Score:5, Informative)
High power rockets like this are fin stabilized. The initial guidance is provided by the launch rod or rail, which keeps the rocket going straight up until it gains enough velocity that the fins provide sufficient aerodynamic correcting force. Exactly the same as the little Estes model rockets, just bigger.
The lack of spin is an indication that he got all the fins well aligned with the thrust axis of the rocket. Not surprising since he laid out the attachments using proper tools in a well-equipped machine shop.
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It's designed so that the center of aerodynamic forces is aft of the center of mass, which keep the rocket motor end of the rocket behind the nose end. the Greater the distance aft the center of aerodynamics is to the center of mass, the more inherent stability the vehicle will have. You'll notice that the launcher has rails to keep the rocket straight until it has enough velocity for the aerodynamics forces to stabilize the vehicle. The missile I worked on had a zero-length launcher, that bird left fast!
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what would happen if he airlifted a platform by weather balloon several miles, and then launched?
Well, he'd get more height especially with a vacuum-optimized rocket nozzle.
can a "hobbyist" achieve orbit?
No, the sixteenth law of motion passed in 1963 says that you have go pro once your rocket gets too impressive. Before that change in the laws of physics, you could though.
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"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
Apologies to Tom Lehrer.
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Flights like this are only allowed in areas where you have many miles of clear space for recovery.
How far the rocket drifts depends primarily on winds, which vary in speed/direction at different altitudes. There are various simulation packages (like RockSim or OpenRocket) that allow you to run flight simulations and generate landing predictions based on prevailing wind conditions, parachute size, etc.
The most important technique for reducing the recovery distance is multi-stage recovery, where the large mai
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Plus, if any super villain tried to steal your rocket in space a la Moonraker, you could give them a nasty surprise.
Check Derek's website if you want specifics... (Score:2)
http://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html [ddeville.com]
He appears to be using a pneumatic cylinder which is actuated by a small charge of black powder, rather than compressed air.
Black powder is very commonly used in high power rocketry for the deployment of recovery systems. The black powder is set off by means of an electric match or similar electric igniter, fired by the altimeter or flight computer.
The typical HPR hobby rocket would contain 2 independent charges, one which is fired at apogee, and another to deploy the main
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