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WAEC Rockets Space Racer SAM-66 Sunbird II Pi Sprint Leviathan Space Racer II Arcturus Mk. 1 Roswell or Bust! Brinley Short March Discovery XW-1 Apollo-LES Sprint II Lone Star Mercury-Redstone Shenzhou Saturn 1B Saturn V Gemini-Titan II Juno I Chrysler Building More Information |
In late June of 2000, I had an irrepressible urge to start a new rocket
project. I really have no idea where this came from, but I
suppose
irrepressible urges are among the unexplained mysteries of the
universe. I wanted to make a stylish rocket, imitating the form of one of the older Estes or Centuri rockets. After looking through some of the old Estes and Centuri catalogs, I decided on the look of the Alien Scoutship from Centuri. I've thought that aliens are cool for a long time, even though I don't believe in them. At first, I viewed them as a way to make money, then as a way to scare people. I had no success in the first regard; moderate in the second. I started construction with a central motor mount tube that had three balsa structural pieces radiating from it (the structural pieces had nice curves in them, designed with the help of a French curve). I cut these out, and glued them to the central component. I did this one step over the course of many months. I was in no hurry to complete this model. I made several attempts to create the paper shroud that would create the sloped body of the alien craft, but for some reason, I always came out with something that wasn't near big enough. I finally discovered that my calculations for the shroud dimensions were always way off because I was figuring the radius of the craft to be the diameter. Oops. After realizing that, I plugged in the correct figures and Viola! I had a perfect shroud. The aliens would be proud. Over a period of quite a long time, I installed the shroud, the wire landing gear, a few other doodads, painted the thing (rather poorly, I admit), and I was ready to launch! Getting people together to launch was a major impediment to launching this craft, because I promised Heather (a friend of mine), that I would invite her to the maiden voyage of this craft, the Roswell or Bust! The name, of course, was a spoof on the alleged Roswell Incident, in which a UFO crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico, on either July 2 or 4, 1947 (reports vary, of course). Alledgedly, three aliens were killed in the crash, and both they and their spaceship, which of course was saucer-shaped, were taken to the top secret Area 51 in Nevada. The aliens were autopsied there, although one of them made brave efforts to escape during the operation. He failed. These days, the aliens' kinsfolk go to North Dakota each year for a powwow and hoe-down with the U.S. Government. Most recently, the aliens were known to be offering courtesy sight-seeing trips in their flying saucers to government employees (present and former) including Fox Mulder and Gordon Cooper.* I, being the skeptical type, think that the little-green-men explanation for the Roswell Incident is absoloutely ridicioulous. The notion that the government would retain knowledge of the discovery of extraterrestrial life for fifty-five years (and then pump millions of dollars into the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intellegence) strays beyond the realm of fantastical fiction and trespasses into that of utter lunacy. However, the most recent explanation offered by the military, that the crash was nothing more than some rubber dummies tied to balloons, is nearly as silly. I personally believe that the most likely explanation would be some sort of strange Foreign-Evaluation aircraft test conducted from Roswell Army Air Field (this was suggested in Popular Mechanics, July, 1997). I have been unable to substantiate this speculation with truth. At long last, on April 29, 2001 (year of the Space Odyssey, quite appropriately), I was able to get a few folks together to launch my very own UFO. When I pressed the launch button, the Unidentified Flying Object hung on the pad for a moment, then leaped off the pad. It didn't go far, though, because its 1/2A engine took it to and altitude of only about three meters. Then, it flipped over and plummeted towards Terra Firma, its delay charge still burning. When its wire landing gear made purchase of the over-watered grass, they acted like springs and flipped the rocket back over again. Right about then, the ejection charge fired, spouting forth an impressive pyrotechnics display. This first flight was not the most successful first flight I've ever had. My initial assumption for what had gone wrong was that the engine simply wasn't powerful enough. It didn't have enough impulse to accelerate Roswell or Bust! to a high enough alitude to come down with enough time for the ejection charge to fire. That was one of the few times in my rocket-firing career that my initial assumption was correct. I was able to test it when, on September 26, 2001, I fired it off in anticipation of a launch at my birthday party on the 30th. I wanted to make sure that it would work well. It certainly did. The little A10-3T engine fired, lifting the UFO to a height at least three times as high as the first time. When it flipped over and headed down for a landing, it had ample time to fire its ejection charge and waft earthward before landing. That flight would certainly qualify as successful. And so were the two flights at my birthday party. And plus, my party audience loved it because it was so unique. I would definately conclude that the flying saucer design offers some promise, if only in an artistic sense. Maybe someday I'll refine the design, then churn out a bunch of differently-decorated versions; a silver one for Gort and Klatuu to fly to Washington D.C., a green one for the Beetlegeusians to use, yellow ones for the Vogon deconstructor fleet, and so on. The possibilities are endless, and the sky's the limit. Wait, no it isn't. image: Official WAEC
plans.
image: The initial plans for Roswell or Bust! Although they aren't dated, I know that they were drafted on Sunday, June 25, 2000. More Roswell or Bust! Pictures and Graphics image: A paint scheme concept for Roswell or Bust!, which shows the first idea for this name. Circa July, 2000. Specifications: Length: 11 cm Body Tube: BT-5 (although actual diameter is 23 cm) Engine Mount: 13 mm Nose Shape: Not applicable Recovery: Drag Fin Shape: Not applicable Number of Flights: 5
*Okay, I confess, even the claims of dedicated ufoloigists aren't quite that ridiculous, but they're very close. |
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herein copyright 1998-2008
by Willy Logan willy@wilhelm-aerospace.org |
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