Building A Model Rocket - part 1

We're going to start a series of posts where I'll build a basic model rocket kit online. The idea is to show the process step by step, including pictures and passing along tips and tricks that I've learned along the way, while you follow along and build your own rocket.

Please feel free to ask questions as we progress, and hopefully we'll see some pictures as folks build and launch their own rockets.

Introduction

The rocket we're going to build is the Estes Fat Boy (see below). You used to be able to get this rocket in the toy section of WalMart, look for model rocket kits near the car model kits. You can also find it in some craft stores and hobby shops, sometimes in other packaging like a bag or box instead of the plastic bubble-package pictured, but it will probably cost a little more. If you'd like to build along and can't find the Fat Boy, you can get something similar because the basic steps will be the same. The Baby Bertha or Alpha would also be good choices, although most any Estes rocket kit will do.



Materials

Now is also the time to gather building materials. If I mention a specific brand, it's because I've used it and know it works. There are all kinds of products out there that'll work just as well.

You're going to need an x-acto knife (or equivalent, you could get by with a single-edge razor blade). You'll also need some yellow or white glue. I recommend Elmer's carpenters glue, if you get the exterior stuff it's gelled and doesn't run and drip nearly as much (it's also brownish). You can also use Eileen's Tacky Glue, TiteBond, white school glue, or anything similar.

The only other must-have will be a pencil.

The following things aren't strictly necessary, but if you use any or all of them you'll have a nicer looking and better flying rocket. They're completely optional, and I'll note when to use them if you want to.

I highly recommend that you get a pack of sewing elastic. You want to get the flat 1/8" wide stuff, and it'll probably be 3 yards long. WalMart sells it for about a dollar, back in the sewing department.

Super-fine sandpaper, at least 220 grit (the higher the number, the finer the grit). You can find this in the hardware department in sheets, or small pads of it in the craft section. WalMart sells an assortment from 3M called 'wet or dry' sanding pack that contains two sheets of 220, two of 320 and a sheet of 400 grit.

Elmer's Fill'n'Finish. Also found in the hardware department, get the smallest tub of this. If they have more than one kind with similar names, hold a tub of each in either hand and pick the lightest weight one. We'll use this to fill the grain in the balsa wood fins and the spirals in the rocket body. You could use a lightweight spackle too.

Fishing swivel. This makes attaching the parachute easier. Don't buy a package of these, but use one if you can borrow it or already have one in your tackle box.

You can wait to get primer and paint, and I'll talk more about it later. Here's a little about it up front though.

Spray primer. I use Rustoleum sandable primer, it comes in white, gray, or even black. Get whatever they have.

Spray paint. Rustoleum or Krylon is what I use. Get whatever colors you want to use. The little cans of Testors paint near the models are cool colors, but very expensive for their size.

Masking tape. You'll need a roll of 1/2" tape if you want to paint your rocket with more than one color.

Next up, we'll take a look at the various parts of the kit and do some pre-assembly work.

The Space Race

Fifty years ago today, the Space Race was won, but the Soviet Union. The USSR launched Sputnik, a small, simple satellite whose continuous beeping announced to the world their victory.





Three and a half years later, on 12 April 1961, the USSR would take the next step into space, when Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin travelled into space aboard Vostok 1 (while in orbit, he was promoted to the rank of Major).




(Please ignore the obnoxious soundtrack in this video.)

The United States would put Alan Shepard into space less than a month later.

Just 25?

A while back, Victor posted this quote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.- Robert A. Heinlein

In that same vein, Popular Mechanics has listed 25 skills that every man (and in my opinion every woman) should be able to do. I can do all except CPR and clean a bolt-action rifle. The October issue tells you how to do each one - should you not know.

Personally, I think that Heinlein's list is more comprehensive (with some of JenLars's corrections.

Measurement Resources

Some printable paper rulers - Inches and centimeters, of various types, including some without markings to see if you really understand the measurements you're using.

Three printable protractors - Three kinds of markings, for three different types of measurement.

A decimeter box - "The idea: Having a 10 cm cube helps you get to know how big millimeters and centimeters are. Here are pages you can print out, cut out, fold and tape, to make your own 10 centimeter box."

More kinds of graph paper than you can shake a stick at - Wow. Seriously, wow.

Thanks to Friedbeef Tech for these.

How People Lived: The Dial Telephone

Several years ago, I used to babysit my old roommate's son, Matt. He and I always got along well and I was happy to do so. One day, I was babysitting him and he had to contact his mom, so I showed him my telephone.

It was an old, wall-mounted rotary dial telephone that had conveyed with my condo. As Matt was six or seven at the time, he had never seen a dial phone before and he looked at it as if it were ancient technology...which, of course, it was. Fortunately, my girlfriend was with us, and she let him borrow her cell phone, which he dialed as if he had been using one all his life.

Which, of course, he had.

It wasn't always like that. I'm sure you've seen the old movies/tv shows where someone holds an earpiece to their ear, turns a crank several times, and yells into the wall-mounted microphone, "Operator! Get me..." and they'd give a number...or probably a city, which would connect you to a party line and the fun would really start.

In the 1920's, the phone company started to do away with the crank phones and introduced dial phones...but like Matt, no one knew how to use one.

At midnight on Saturday, May 28, 1927, the city of Fresno was converting to dial telephones, so the phone company released this public service announcement to the local theaters, to teach people how to use that brand-new piece of equipment...the dial telephone.

Science at home: Build your own nanotechnology lab

Some of the problems with pursuing modern science at home - or in a school - (particularly electronics or the study of matter at the atomic scale) is that the equipment to be able to see the effects of that scale can cost so much!

Well, here are instructions on making two pieces of equipment used in modern science.
First, the oscilloscope (with a nice history of oscilloscopes to boot):

The oscilloscope is still one of the most important measurement tools of the electronic engineer. With the advent of the often very reasonably priced USB scopes, such an instrument is now within reach of every body.

Second, once you have the oscilloscope, you can build your own scanning tunneling microscope (a key tool in nanotechnology) that is able to resolve atoms:

The goal of this project is to build a simple STM that can resolve atoms, with a cost of materials less than $100.00 excluding oscilloscope. My real goal here is to provide a base of information so experimenters and students could build a simple STM. Typical piezo tubes used in tube scanners of commercial scanning probe microscopes cost in the range of $200 - $800 and operate with several hundred volts applied to the scanner. This design uses a unimorph disk scanner to reduce the cost and avoid using any high voltage. The Piezo element is commonly available and this particular one costs $1.80. The control voltages are so low that two 9-volt batteries can power the control electronics.

Bernard Smith: An Amazing Life

Bernard Smith was born in 1910 in New York City. By age 22, he had dropped out of high school, working odd jobs and spending most of his time at the libraries and museums of the city.

One night, he attended a meeting of the American Rocket Society and while looking over one of their failed rockets, made some suggestions on how to improve the device. The president of the Society, Edward Pendray, handed him the pieces of the rocket and invited him to create the next version.

According to Smith, his motivation was simple. America was in the midst of the Great Depression, and "It was a lousy planet. The rocket ship was the only way to get off it."

After making major modifications to the original rocket design, including several weight-saving changes, the new rocket was ready to fly in early 1933. It wasn't entirely successful, but proved that the basic concepts were sound.

Bernard Smith never did graduate from high school, but he did earn a degree in Physics. In fact, after World War II he started his career working for the US Navy, eventually heading up the Weapons Development Department at the Naval Ordinance Test Station. Among the projects that he worked on or managed are the ASROC, Sidewinder and Shrike. He also spearheaded Project Pilot, which placed at least one small satellite into orbit via air-launched rockets in 1958.

So that's the "rocket" side of Bernard Smith. But there's more, for there's the "sailboat" side of Bernard Smith.

Smith also spent over 40 years pursuing his dream of creating the perfect sailboat. He tried many unconventional designs and met some notable successes. In fact, one of his early efforts, the Aerohydrofoil, could make 20 knots in a 12 knot wind. He also designed craft he called Monomarans, Fliptackers, and experimented with a concept called the Sailloon, which was a gas-filled sail that would help provide lift, and thus speed, to a sailboat.

Follow that link above for a fascinating look at the creations of a mind who saw radically different, and sometimes better, ways to accomplish his goals, both through the air and on the water.

Drawing water up a hill

I like thinking about the world before electronics. Not that I'd like to return to those days, but the machines invented to perform tasks in the world of mechanics are sheer brilliance. Probably topping the list of really cool mechanical machines is the machine known as Archimedes Screw.

Archimedes Screw enables water to be drawn up hill (or to irrigate some Hanging Gardens that might be hanging around the city of Babylon). How does it work? Well, you turn the screw and the water flows up the screw. The simple machines that you learned about in elementary school? Well, here is where they matter. The screw is an inclined plane wrapped around a cylinder. As the screw turns, it scoops up water. This water is pushed up the incline (around the cylinder) until it finally pours out from the top, feeding an irrigation system.


Does such a mechanical system still have value in today's world? Of course! Not only is it fun to create your own irrigation system from the local creek (a fun weekend project), but such systems are of wide use in the world - from the developed world (where Archimedes Screws are used in sewage treatment plants - like the one in Memphis, TN, shown above) to the undeveloped world needing cheap, available irrigation (shown below)



For more on Archimedes Screw (and his other wonderful inventions), check this out.