All card-carrying members of the NAR may want to look away now. The West Oakland Rocketry Club, based out of West Oakland CA, breaks pretty much every rule in the NAR Handbook. This is not rocketry for kids, or those who are particularly safety-concerned. Dubbing what they do “art rocketry,” the group (a lot of […]
Rocket “maverick,” Steve Jurvetson. got this pine box and an electric screwdriver to open it for Christmas. “Gee, honey, I can’t imagine what you got me!” I like the bow on the lid. It’s a Q-size Loki motor (ah… or “engine,” if you prefer). To give you an idea of size, that’s an Atlas ICBM […]
Oh my gawd, this is hysterical. These guys launched their Christmas tree on 32 rocket engines. The launch is glorious. Christmas Tree Rocketry: The Art and Science of Holiday Recycling
Sascha Grant posted images of his square rocket build (built around a BT-50 body tube) on the MAKE Flickr pool. Rocket Squared
James Yawn’s site Recrystallized Rocketry has lots of great information about DIY rocketry, including this great tutorial about mounting a video camera. This hot pink rocket is called the “sugar rush,” because it is powered by Yawn’s homemade potassium nitrate/sugar rocket fuel. [Thanks, Kenneth!]
The key to the process is that the metallic aluminum is present as a nano-scale powder, and its oxidation by water thus occurs over a huge surface area and therefore proceeds very quickly, releasing amazing amounts of energy. The video starts with the acoustic mixing of the nano-aluminum with water to make a gray paste which is frozen, in a mold, to make a tubular rocket motor. It then proceeds through various test-bench firings and culminates (at 4:00) in the launch of an actual rocket using the mixture.
From Gizmodo: Photographer Ben Cooper took this photo of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket launching at Cape Canaveral using a sound-activated camera. And when your camera is that close to a launch, your lens probably won’t survive. This Insane Photo Destroyed a Camera Lens
