Rocketbelt Convention (photos)

I’ve posted some notes and pictures on my Livejournal, , in particular the following entries:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Take a look, if you’re interested.

(Bell Aerospace always made “Rocket Belt” two words, but the conference organizers glued them together. Possibly that’s because rocketbelt.nl is a nexus for enthusiasts:)

Wendell Moore worked on the X-1 and subsequent Bell rocket planes from the 1940s onward. After the X-1A lost control around 75,000 feet, and Chuck Yeager recovered down at 25,000, it was realized that aerodynamic controls couldn’t grip up there. Moore devised a set of reaction-control jets to be installed in the X-1B– the ancestor of all reaction-control systems– which ran hydrogen peroxide over catalyst to produce oxygen and steam. Bell manufactured similar systems for other X-planes and for the Mercury capsule.

So Moore was familiar with small H2O2 rockets. Legend has it that his first rocket belt design was drawn with a stick in the sand of Muroc Dry Lake, under the wing of the X-2.

Back in Niagara Falls, his team rigged up a tethered simulator using nitrogen hoses to test flight stability and control. Having determined that the basic idea would work, they got a U.S. Army contract to build the Bell Rocket Belt, flew it on a tether in a hangar for a while, then Harold Graham flew it untethered for the first time on 20 April 1961.

The rest is history, a lot of which I was soaking up at the conference.

I met a bunch of Bell engineers and their families, and I heard stories about X-planes, rocket belts, Rogallo wings, and lunar flying vehicles.

I toured the Bell plant. I toured the very fine Niagara Aerospace Museum. I met several people who had constructed their own working rocket belts. I witnessed two demonstration flights by Eric Scott and the Go Fast/Jet P.I. team, right over the street in front of the museum.