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Build Your Own Saturn V
Illbay writes "Space.com has a great story about a company in Colorado that has introduced an incredibly detailed scale model of the Saturn V rocket booster that flies a lot like the real thing! Apogee Components has "taken the time to research the actual vehicles and then used that information correctly in creating the kits," with a scientist from the team that designed the Delta 2 rocket on staff. I remember the old Estes model rocket version of the Saturn V back in the 60s, but they were not very detailed and very difficult to get to fly properly. Looks like Apogee might have a winner."
Standing more than 62 inches (1.6 meters) tall and weighing about three pounds (1.4 kilograms) at launch, the most detailed reproduction of a Saturn 5 readily available today is 1/70th the size and 1/2,166,666th the weight of the original.
;-)
"It's just a matter of scale as far as the rockets are concerned. The laws of physics don't change,"
Try telling that to a 2-atom-wide model rocket.
The laws of physics are a tad different on the quantum scale.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
This paid my last vacation, it mi
Standing more than 62 inches (1.6 meters) tall and weighing about three pounds (1.4 kilograms) at launch, the most detailed reproduction of a Saturn 5 readily available today is 1/70th the size and 1/2,166,666th the weight of the original.
"It's small step for man, a giant step for Mini Me" -- Dr. Evil
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And I was getting all hot under the collar thinking about maybe pulling up in my model Vue tomorrow with 24's spinning, music flaring, DVD's behind the sear in a pimperrific three piece fohsachee suit, and you're talking about a rocket.
I thought you meant the car damnit
MoFscker
URGENT NEWS ABOUT MODEL ROCKETRY!
The new Homeland Security Act has many provisions that threaten rocketry in the United States. Both small rockets and high power models are affected. We need your help to make rocketry legal again. Please write your State's Senator now. Click Here for more information.
If the video on that page becomes slashdotted, go heretilTrue.info contechtext.info prettypowerful.info twitter.com/frets fb.com/prosody
They're affordably priced little cars. I'm sure buying the parts just costs more, and people haven't been building cars themselves for nearly a century.
Here's a mirror for you
Not more than you need, just more than you want
The office of home land paranoia is really doing it's best toshut down this kind of hobby. See here for more details.
I wonder how many of us geeks will click add-to-cart tonight?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
1) Solid rocket engines. They have made Peroxide+Gasoline rocket engines in small scale. Use one of them. At the very least a pressure fed John Carmack special style engine.
2) One stage. The Saturn V has 3 stages. This one, and all of the injection-molded toys before it, were only 1 stage. Where's the fun in that?
3) Injection molding. Where's the work in that?
Gentoo Sucks
I remember the good ol' days of rocket launching, always a blast; Estes was awesome back in the day. Have any of you seen the movie October Sky, that was an excellent film. Anyways, they had all kinds of scale rockets, and planes, nowhere near this detail though, but fun none the less.
---
Mike
I'm going to kick the next person that I see with their karma rating in their sig.
I remember getting the Estes Saturn V kit around 1971. Not detailed ? How about cutting long balsa rods exactly to spec then gluing them together to form that steel lattice work at the top of the rocket. That's detail. I never managed to complete it cause it had about 841,231 pieces. It also took about $5 in engines which in 1971 was a lot of money for a kid. LouSir
http://shop.lego.com/product.asp?p=7468 :)
http://www.saverocketrynow.org/
Anyway, it's worth the trip to follow the links to the website of the people who make this thing. There are some fantastic MPEG clips of flights of this model that (were, maybe not are) available for download.
Why is it so cool to watch a model fly? Check it out and see. The thing is so big nad heavy it "lifts off" just like a "real" rocket. None of this 3-2-1 disappear in a puff of smoke. You actually get several frames of liftoff before it really picks up speed... very cool.
Is it only 5 years old? IIRC, it has to be one of the original 1970s kits to be worth anything. If it's 5 years old, it's probably still in production and thus less valuable. But put it up on eBay and see what you get. Or better yet, finish it, but not with the multiple Estes D motors, which were almost impossible to light simultaneously, rip that crap out and put in a mount for a single G engine.
Anyway, the coolest rocket I ever built was also the last kit I ever built, a very simple design of a 2-stage rocket with a G motor and a second stage D motor. Construction was critical, it had laminated pine fins. The manufacturer said it would hit the sound barrier, and either smash to bits, or emit an audible sonic boom. But you had to stand in exactly the right spot to hear the faint boom, IIRC it was 180 feet from the launch pad. Yep, I heard the boom, it went up and up, and vanished forever. Must've gone at least 3000ft.
So, this is what Apogee have been up to... now we know why Duke Nukem Forever is taking so long.
Now ain't that an unfortunate choice of words!
even their servers were built to a minature scale, not the big real machines needed for a good ol' slashdotting...
mirrors please?
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
I wish things were the 60's again:
;)
1. We shot rockets to the moon (whose side effects could apparently kill you)
2. We had really powerful pesticides like DDT (although it could kil you too.)
3. We had extra heavy and powerful cars like the dart that really did intimidate (although getting into a simple crash could kill you).
Apparently everything tended to build character in those days. It's a testament I suppose to the advancements in technology that we don't 'build character' as much anymore
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Standing ~40 inches (1.0 meters) tall and weighing about 10 kilograms (quite chubby) at launch...
If the scale doesnt matter in laws of physics one can expect a useful payload to be ~ 100t/60^3 ~ 460grams ~ 1 pound to be launched to low orbits, and about 100 grams to the geostationary orbit, and about 150 grams to be sent on the lunar mission trajectory.In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
We brought it down to the field at the end of the street. When it launched, it quickly shot up to about twelve(yes 12) feet and begun spinning in circles wildly in place at first then right towards us. Just missed my brother as he dove behind the dirt mound that it slammed into and shattered all my hard work.
Probably my poor construction that caused the misfire. And what a range of emotions in those few quick moments:
Surprise -> Scared Shitless -> Elation -> Sadness
Speaking of the Sadness after the crash, I just thought I'd mention this as I just remembered and it made me laugh again. A few years later my brother got into model airplane building. These things were a Ton of work. He brought his plane down to the elementary school as they had a nice wide open space. About 15 seconds into flight it banks left and smashes into a tree completely wasting it. He builds a second plane, back to school, 15 seconds, smashes into side of school.
NASA needs something to launch big heavy payloads into space. The shuttles are ok, but a unmanned vehicle would be extremely useful for shipping new sections to the ISS or a hubble replacement.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
This was like 10 years ago, the engines were a tad bit under powered and expensive. I think that plane took about 5 months and $6000 with engines and all to put together. It flew fine, but couldn't do any fancy manouvers.
Any serious R/C plane gear will cost you about $150 for a starter kit. Anything less than that is more of a toy than a hobby kit. I just got into R/C planes again and it cost me about $300 for a gas powered trainer with remote.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Here is another scale replica of the Saturn V for anyone who doesnt know what it looks like.
For the first milli-second I thought "Wow, a life size Saturn V Rocket!", the second thought I had was "I need more money and a bigger back yard". After half a second I caught on.
a real jet takes air and compresses it and explodes it with a fuel mixture.
that said, there *are* RC jets. They're hideously expensive and tempermental and so fast as to be very difficult to fly. Only extremely experienced fanatics can build and fly them.
This company builds actual micro jet engines.
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Modern hobby rockets (like I and many others fly) do one thing well (and not even that) - they go up. We have wonderfull guidance devices called 'fins' they make things go straight provided they are fast enough and there's still air around - even then you're at the mercy of the wind, the jet stream as you pass thru it (yes we do) etc etc.
In other words hobby rockets don't have the sort of guidance system you would use when you want to hit a target - if the Congress was actually thinking rather than just reacting "people with rockets must be dangerous and could be terrorists we must do something to show that we are doling something" and they wanted to stop actual attacks on real targets they would: shut down the public GPS, ban RC model planes (or ratehr radio gear) and would never have given those 1000s of stingers to binLaden in the first place.
I've been into model rocketry for about two years now with my 12 year old son. It is great fun for both of us. Like most other hobbies, it can be approached from many levels with equal enjoyment. We got the rocket simulation software (Rock Sim) from Apogee last year. It allows you to build model rockets on the software (3D) (using standard parts from hobby stores) and test their flight and return to earth (just as important in models as in real rockets). You can then save and print out the details. There is a demo available on Apogees' site.
Our problem has been in finding good places to launch. We get rained out alot from local rocket club launches and its hard to find places to shoot on our own. We sometimes sneak over to nearby schools with their large playgrounds early on Sunday mornings to launch. Risky in post 9/11 USA.
Going to local rocket club launches is also fun. Not only can you shoot your own rockets off but you can watch the big and experimental rockets launching.
A good source of beginner rockets and hybrid motors for the big boys is Pratt Hobbies. www.pratthobbies.com.
according to this page
Tell us about the ragtime, Daddy-O ;-)