This blog covers the day to day progress of water rocket development by the Air Command Water Rockets team. It is also a facility for people to provide feedback and ask questions.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Acceleron V construction

Most of this week has been spent making the base plate for Acceleron V. Here it is partially assembled:
The sustainer air supply and retention mechanism still needs to be machined, which will be done soon.

The bottle splicing is also complete, although the bottles still need reinforcing around their necks. They also all need to be pressure tested. We made a number of spare spliced bottle pairs should any of these leak. We will give all the splices at least 1 week to fully cure.


We used PL for the splicing and Sikaflex for sealing the joints as we had leak issues when making spliced pairs for the Polaron rocket a couple of months back.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why don`t you glue the boosters on your release mechanism -->more stability.So it is unnecessary to connect the booster in the upper area and the fins of the second stage are not able to hit the connections structure,so it could be more aerodynamic.

George Katz said...

We generally try to not permanently attach the different components, so that they can be replaced if they become damaged. However I understand what you mean. The boosters will not only be held together by the base plate but also near the top of the staging mechanism as you suggest, but the top bracket is needed to make sure that the booster supports the sustainer well during the boost phase. Without the top bracket the sustainer could easily wedge itself in the large gaps between the booster segments as they are quite flexible. A couple of cm deflection would be enough. The second reason for the bracket is to provide attachment points for the parachutes to bring the rocket down sideways.

Daniel Veira said...

Hi George! I am Daniel

Today I have test my new launcher, I have worked a lot of hours on this new launcher.

When I launch my rocket Z-1 on it, it was awesome. The rocket went up and up and then it down slowly.

I launch it 4 times more, in the last test it was awesome because the rocket fly and fly, it across all the field- that is very large-then it fly up again,it fly over a large tree for then fly over the roof of mi house and hit the cup of the three that its behind my house.

Today I will repair it and I will give it more weigth because this rocket is too ligthly.

Nice to see you again

Daniel

Daniel Veira said...

Hi George, I forget say you a thing.

Finally I have bought my telescope, the quality is amazing I can see the beutiful rings of saturn and the concentric craters of te Moon.

All this with standard oculars, I will try with a more powerful ocular.

The telescope got 318mm of opening, it is a profesional telescope.

I am very happy I have been saving money for a year.

It cost me 1150€ but now I didn have money ;).

You can see it on my blog.

Nice to see you again!

Anonymous said...

I understand what you mean.The reason for the attachment points for the parachutes is a good idea.I thought that the gaps between the boosters are smaller than the diameter of the sustainer because than it could work without the top bracket.

George Katz said...

Hi Daniel,

Glad to hear you had good flights with your Z-1 rocket. I'm also happy to hear that you finally bought your telescope, and at 318mm that's huge!
What is the brand? Will you be doing photography through it?