Splicing production line

We have spent the last few days cleaning, cutting, shrinking, curling, sanding and splicing quite a few 2 liter bottles. These will form the pressure chamber for the Polaron G2 rocket as well as the boosters. We are making a number of “spliced-quads” that are just a couple of spliced-pairs of bottles, spliced together. This gives us a longer section of rocket body that is more efficient since we get more volume per length of rocket while still retaining the modular aspect of the design.

When all the splicing is finished, we will reinforce all of the bottles with fiberglass.  Each spliced quad has a 5.3 L capacity. Phase 1 of the G2 will combine 3 of the spliced quads giving a total capacity of 15.9 L. Our current thinking for phase 2 is that we are likely to add a spliced pair to the bottom as the foam mixing chamber. This will increase the capacity of the main stage to 19 L.

Some 2L spliced-pairs, 1.25L spliced-pairs as well as a spliced-quad.

We are making a few spare spliced quads with the idea that some of them will likely fail pressure tests, others will be used for burst tests and some will get damaged on landing. We want to have at least two complete G2 rockets ready for a launch day in case something goes wrong or the other can be used for spare parts.