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scale model of manned Chinese space rocket |
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On November 19, 1999, a Chinese CZ-2F rocket (commonly known as a Long March) headed aloft, bearing into the skies the first "Divine Arrow," the Shenzhou. This Shenzhou was a new breed of spacecraft, developed in China, to carry not instruments or samples aloft, but living human beings. The Long March is a long, white rocket with four boosters at the rear, and a spindly escape tower protruding from the front of the Shenzhou on top. Its body is adorned with Chinese characters and a painted Chinese flag. It's a striking design, and I daresay it's slightly artistic. It's quite unlike the plain rockets launched in America, or the utilitarian Russian boosters. But, this was not merely an artistic statement: it was a rocket that would ultimately carry a man into space for the third country to orbit a person in its own space program. In October of 2001, I was looking for some sort of interesting project with which to occupy myself during the approaching months of winter gloom. Since I had been following closely the progress of the Chinese-man-in-space efforts, the Shenzhou immediately came to mind as a good candidate for the interesting project I sought. I based my model off of the data given on Encyclopedia Astronautica, in the article on the CZ-2F. Much of the data was fairly generic, but that was all I could use, since the Chinese were fairly tight-lipped about their progress. I used the dimensions given on Encyclopedia Astronautica, a few grainy stills of the rocket, and a drawing from the site, which was about as good as anything I could have extrapolated, given enough time. I drew up plans for the rocket, scaling it at about 1/190 scale. Since the real thing doesn't have any fins, I decided to try to make mine finless as well, for authenticity's sake. For the only time in my rocketry career, I tried to perform the Barrowman equations to determine if my model rocket would be stable if I flew it on a 1/2A3-2T engine. It was terribly tedious, but I decided in the end that I had a reasonably stable rocket. So, I proceeded forth and built the rocket. I had a few problems getting all of the parts I needed, and those problems caused the construction of the rocket to take about 1 1/2 years. Had I all of the parts at the beginning, it would have taken me only a few months. But alas. The most problematic parts were the booster nose cones. These were the last parts I got, and I ended up special-ordering them from Apogee Components. I also bought pointy conical nose cones, which look a little like the noses of Scud rockets. I thought it would be cool to build miniature Scud rockets, to complement the miniature Patriot I already had. But then Gulf War II began, and I decided against making any Scud models, because I didn't really want to excercise my ability to have bad taste. What transformed my undetailed model into one of my personal masterpieces was the paint job I gave it. I gave it a white base coat with spray paint, but everything on top of that was applied by hand. I painted the rear black (including the four dummy nozzles sticking out of the ends of the boosters). The stabilizers on the spacecraft on top were gray. I added a red Chinese flag on either side, with tiny yellow spots for stars in one corner. Basing the markings off of photographs of the unmanned rockets, I carefully painted Roman and Chinese character onto my model. The Roman characters read "CZI2F," the name of the booster. There are four Chinese characters, which may or may not be correct, since I based them off of fuzzy photographs I found online. The first two I can easily identify, since they say "China" in Chinese. But I'm clueless about the last two. I showed them to a Chinese friend, and she recognized the sounds they were supposed to make, but she could not imagine what they were supposed to say. I waited for a while before launching Shenzhou, although I'm not really sure why. I didn't launch it until June 25, 2003. I flew it on a 1/2A3-4T engine, although I performed the Barrowman calculations for a 1/2A3-2T. The former is simply what I had on hand. Evidently, the rocket wasn't as stable as my calculations said it would be. It went up a ways, flipped around, and then crashed into the ground. It wasn't damaged very much, but I was disappointed that it didn't fly well. I haven't even been able to get the spent engine casing out of the rear of the rocket. So, what went wrong? I didn't give the matter much (if any) thought for the next year and a half. By Christmas break of my first year of college, I had made a tiny step toward gaining an engineering degree by thus far conquering the first quarter of Calculus. Since I now was intimately acquainted with the Intermediate Value Theorem and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, what was a string of relatively simple arithmetic equations such as the Barrowman Equations to daunt me? So, while I was supposed to be resting my mind and gathering intellectual strength for the quarter ahead, I revisted the design calculations for Shenzhou. Fortunately, I had kept my notes. When I performed the calculations once again, I found that my design, as I planned and built it, was not stable by any stretch of the imagination. An acceptable "margin of stability" places the center of gravity one body tube width (or caliber) in front of the center of pressure. In my original design, the center of gravity was one caliber behind, not in front, of the center of pressure. How did I make such a gaping error? I found the mistake in one of my calculations from three years prior, in which I multiplied two numbers together when I should have added them. What a dumb mistake. I can't believe it took me three years to catch it. I expect to get better at this sort of mathematical work by the time I gain my engineering degree. While I was at it, I worked out some relatively uncomplicated algebra to find out what it would take to make the rocket stable. I wanted to know if I could get away with just adding nose weight, or if I would have to add fins if I wanted to fly the rocket again. Fortunately, I found I would only need to add nine grams of nose weight to make the rocket stable. Unfortunately, by the time I discovered this, I had disbanded the WAEC, and didn't know if I would ever launch a model rocket again. But, there is a happy conclusion, although not exclusively for me. On October 15, 2003, the Chinese launched into the clear blue skies Shenzhou 5, carrying the first Chinese astronaut aboard a rocket native to China. His name was Yang Liwei, and with his successful flight, China entered the elect group of nations capable of sending people into space, previously occupied only by Russia and the United States. Shenzhou
Specifications
Subject: CZ-2F Long
March/Shenzhou, first unmanned test flight, November 19, 1999Scale: 1/189 Length: 35 cm Core Diameter: 1.8 mm (BT-20) Engine Mount: 13 mm Nose: conical with scale launch escape system Recovery: streamer Number of Flights: 1 Shenzhou
Photographs
image:
A flat angle shot. I took these photographs in the spring of 2003. I
don't know why there is a rose sitting on the table with my rocket, but
I think it certainly looks cool.
image: An up-angle shot. image: A dramatic down-angle. Shenzhou Flight Log
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by Willy Logan willy@wilhelm-aerospace.org |
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