School Project

[Warthaug]

We have been doing some thinking and thought it might be interesting to find an old/untried/theoretical rocket design and see how it would perform. We will make calculations/simulations and compare these to the actual flight data (we will cram the rocket with instruments such as an altimeter, accelerometer, ASI etc). We will have to use a motor with equivalent thrust/Isp (scaled down of course) to the fuel the rocket would have used. We have looked on the internet but despite how easy I thought it might be we can't find any old designs. Any ideas?

Thanks (again),
Will

An orion, although I'd avoid the nukes...

Bryan

 

[Ghostrider]

Well, it could work. Orion was demonstrated with small conventional charges. If you can put your hands on some charges (serious firecrackers could do) all you need is a way to ignite and drop them from the vessel.

 

[Warthaug]

I'm thinking that its probably a no-go for a school project - I'm surprised that making a motor is allowed (the OP checked, I hope). I've built rocket motors in the past, and have thought a few times about an orion-esk project, but the mechanics are far beyond my abilities. A 1-off blast is doable; a chain becomes quite the engineering feat.

It would be very cool is someone did pull it off...

Bryan

 

[Will]

Since this is my first ever crack at anything like this I have decided to do something a bit simpler and 'only' try for a 3 stage Saturn V for the project and perhaps move onto more challenging stuff later.
How many motors should I have in each stage? Should I go for the true to life 5-5-1 or something more practical?
With the above question in mind, what type of motor for each stage should I use? It will probably wind up about 1:72 scale (about 5 feet) tall and the ceiling on the launch site is 10,000ft.
What should the main body be made of? The going materials seem to be balsa or paper. I have access to some tools so it is not completely impractical to build it all myself.
I wold quite like to have a LET jettison, perhaps taking the CSM with it but can't think of a way to do this without setting the CSM on fire.
Is staging done in a similar manner to the chute deployment on single stage rockets? i.e. the motor pushes backwards briefly and pushes the chute (or in this case upper stage) away.

I will be crediting this site in the bibliography!

Thanks,
Will

 

[Urwumpe]

That is too complex for your resources... remember, that you are diving deep into the realm of engineering or missing hands there. By what you post here, I am pretty sure, you are not really adapt in engineering and have a engineering student team ready.

Everything past 2 stages is far out of you, including booster stages.

The old R-7 rocket that launched sputnik could for example work as model, adding another stage would make you quickly hate it.