by hermitcrab
2 subcomments
- It is great that people are going out doing stuff, having fun and learning. But this project seems like a disaster in the making.
-Making your own fuel.
-Using inappropriate materials (e.g. PVC)
-Poor storage of motors.
-People are standing quite close to the rocket when it launches.
-There seem to be buildings quite close to the launch in one of the videos.
-Night launches. How are you going to get out of the way, if you can't see the rocket?
2 stage rockets are particularly dangerous, because as the second stage can launch horizontally or downward if the first stage tilts (as shown in one of the videos).
I think they are being irresponsible with the safety of themselves and anyone nearby. I would strongly recommend they learn a bit of safe practices and make a single stage rocket that works reliably, before even attempting 2 stage.
by magicalhippo
0 subcomment
- If you want to build a two-stage water rocket, Air Command Rockets has detailed build series over on YouTube[1], from simple soda bottle setups to a custom rocket that they got[2] to over 1600m (5000 ft).
That's air and water propelling a rocket a mile up!
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@AirCommandRockets
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCaiK3Zqs4M
by hermitcrab
1 subcomments
- > Turns out, PVC was never the move. It’s lightweight, yes, but also has the structural integrity of a soggy biscuit under pressure.
I believe that PVC is not considered safe for model rockets, as it turns into shrapnel if it ruptures. Happy to be corrected, if that isn't right.
by michaelcampbell
1 subcomments
- When I was a kid I was into Estes model rockets and it always amazed me the preferred/documented way of glomming the multiple stages of engines together was a single strip of scotch tape.
by sumanthvepa
0 subcomment
- From the blog post: "Pro tip: just take your time and design the O-ring system properly. Trust us — you don’t want to gamble with hot gases and bad seals."
I think NASA may have learnt that lesson in '86.
- I had a lot of fun building rockets in a similar way as a kid. We also tried PVC but discovered that it fails in a dangerous way, after which we used only copper. I had fun programming a PIC16 in assembler to read from the accelerometer and fire the home made igniters of black powder, nitrocellulose laquer, and nichrome wire.
by hermitcrab
1 subcomments
- Note that making your own fuel is:
a) Very dangerous, if you don't know what you are doing.
b) Illegal without a licence in some countries (such as the UK).
by ryzvonusef
2 subcomments
- reminds me of the BPS Space youtube channel, he makes rockets too:
https://www.youtube.com/@BPSspace
https://bps.space/pages/about
by sandworm101
1 subcomments
- I would be warry about doing this, no matter what country you are in. Using commercial motors is one thing, baking your own very much another. There is a very fine line between cooking up some rocket propellant and operating a bomb factory. Imagine getting discovered with a few pounds of homemade explosives and box of electronics. I wouldn't want to have that conversation with the police.
- I didn't know about OpenRocket! Great that there are open source solutions for this stuff
by polishdude20
0 subcomment
- A few years back I built a dual stage model rocket using regular rocket motors:
https://youtu.be/zPtFv-cwcfQ?si=mjy6hg9YPARpTkRV
by karmicthreat
0 subcomment
- https://www.youtube.com/bpsspace
Does some pretty informative work with amateur rockets.
- I hoped for some kind of postmortem to understand what went wrong and what was learned from the failure.
by mykowebhn
2 subcomments
- I don't get why it was bad to name the rocket Vanessa.
by throw84848484
1 subcomments
- [flagged]
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