Rocket Breaking Sound Barrier

Post by **CaboWabo** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 2:59 pm

http://bitpimps.lixlink.com/pages/phpGa ... bakula.wmv

a wonderful bit of video from a camera in Peter Clay's two-staged Quantum Leap rocket. A few seconds into the flight, the fins appear to warp and distort. There's a raging debate over whether this was an optical illusion or an actual spasm in the fiberglass as the model plows through the "sound barrier."

wow

hogjowlz · Post by **hogjowlz** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:38 pm

i dono bout that being the sound barrier but that thing sure is cool.

Post by **CaboWabo** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 3:57 pm

yea I'm not certain if it was either, but I can tell you it is possible.
http://www.hartrockets.co.uk/MACH1.htm

Sdog · Post by **Sdog** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 6:30 pm

That was cool as shit!

SuperFly · Post by **SuperFly** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 7:01 pm

LOL, named after Scott Bakula, star of Quantum Leap. One of my favorite early 90's stoner shows.

Karl · Post by **Karl** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 6:18 pm

The fins didn't actually flutter that much. It has been disscussed here :

http://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread ... hlight=g10

Karl

stampede_dude · Post by **stampede_dude** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 8:35 pm

heh...lol i put a bottle rocket on my zipzap trying to reach speeds like that...:Pall it did was sping donuts...and broke a dual cell wire.

BilboBaggins · Post by **BilboBaggins** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 6:56 am

I used to launch rockets back when I was a kid, but now I don't have the time (or the locations) to do so.

I've seen cameras, eggs, insects, and other stuff go up and come back. Yes, we did have a few Major Tom's over the years.

Post by **CaboWabo** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:10 pm

Alright, this rocket isn't breaking the sound barrier - but it nearly takes the dude's head off.

http://www.big-boys.com/articles/rocketmiss.html

Which reminds me of when I built my 2nd model rocket. It was a jet rocket - instead of a parachute opening, this had wings that popped out.
It's wings were in a tucked position until it reached the height the motor would push it to, then the wings popped out and it would "fly" down.
Or that's how it's supposed to work.
One of my ailerons must have been tweeked because just after it launched, at about 15 feet, it went directly to a horizontal position.
Lowered a bit and cruised along at about 6 feet from the ground - right back at us.
We scrambled, of course this was a "fighter jet" style rocket - so it followed the target, me.
I ended up facing the demon, diving on the ground avoiding a jet rocket lodged in my skull and just behind it me, it rammed itself into the hard packed clay ground - about 6 inches deep - that's some pretty serious force for a C or D class (can't remember which) engine.

BilboBaggins · Post by **BilboBaggins** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:12 am

A friend of my father's owned a hobby shop. Every couple of weeks a crew from the shop would launch rockets, either Estes or scratch built using estes engines.

Well the owner built a rocket that was supposed to come down as a glider (the wings were fixed in the extended position for this flight). He carefully put it on the pad, we were all about 15-20 feet from the pad when the button was pushed.

It made a magnificent 10 feet up before it started change direction by doing a loop. Not all of the engines lit. Under power it's flight bent until it was coming down and it hit the ground under power at a angle because it was trying to continue the loop. Total Flight time about 8 seconds, the engine I believe it had 13 seconds of power in the engines. Luckily it didn't start a fire, we had a fire extinguisher just in case.

It was because of the surprisingly soft ground it didn't suffer major damage and nearly everybody I knew who scratch-built a rocket like this made it so it would survive rough landings.

I personally had on of mine have too long of a delay between power out and popping the chute. It went up and arched over and started to come down. It finally popped the chute as it was hitting the ground nose first. Pushed the nosecone into the main body about 3/4 of an inch. One of my friends gave me a engine that had a 7 second delay for chute instead of a 3 second delay. Had to shorten the body an inch and re-balance it but it flew again.

Post by **CaboWabo** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:45 pm

How 'bout a rocket to the nuts?

http://www.break.com/index/bad_rocket_launch.html

steelwoolghandi · Post by **steelwoolghandi** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:18 pm

CaboWabo wrote:How 'bout a rocket to the nuts?

http://www.break.com/index/bad_rocket_launch.html

that looks like it hurt like hell so why is it so dang funny?

Murdoch · Post by **Murdoch** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:01 am

I remember flying a model rocket in the middle of a school yard. Freshly built and it was about to go on it's maiden voyage. What ended up happening is the launch lug got caught on the launch bar (guess there was some kinda dirt or some shit on it), stopped the rocket while it was still on the pad, and the engine ended up burning right through the metal that was the deflector.

It finally lifted off and went up about seven feet, then lawndarted. About a couple seconds later, the ejection charge popped and basically blew the top end of the rocket apart.

To top it off, it was the biggest and most expensive model I had.

crazydave · Post by **crazydave** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:25 am

I missed the original post, I don't know if it broke the sound barrier, but that din't look like no mpeg encoding artifact to me.

You want to talk dangerous rockets, one time when my buddy's rocket broke on the first launch, we found ourselves with a pile of engines (Is that what you'd call those?), and nothing to do. So we lauched few by themselves with no rocket. Talking about random, you had no idea what direction they'd go, and no time to react. After the third one blew past our heads, we decided that wasn't fun anymore. So we went home and glued a straw and some fins directly to the remaining engines. Those actually made great little rockets. They'd go straight up until they were gone and we never saw them again.