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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 |
After a little more research I found that fins in the shape of a parallelogram are great for low-drag applications, so I replaced the clipped-delta fins on the design. A little while later I sat down at the breakfast table and drew up a detailed sketch of the rocket. A month later I started work on the rocket. It was quite simple to make, and in no time at all it was complete, save a streamer and a paint job. I finally got around to painting it two months after that, and summer was almost over. But, it had been an entire year since I flew the original Space Racer, and I thought it would be really neat to fly Space Racer II on its predecessor's first anniversary. On August 22, 2000 I trudged to the WAEC Space Harbor through howling winds convinced that I would launch that day no matter what! I didn't, and the real reason that I couldn't launch there was that people were playing soccer in the park which I planned to use as my launch site. I returned undaunted the next morning before my dad and Ted left for work. My dad was the cinematographer, while Ted was the tracker. I fired Space Racer II off on an A8-3 engine. The rocket climbed straight up during boost and arced over a little during the delay. The ejection charge fired and Space Racer II started heading back down. Unfortunately, it had merely ejected its engine and was screaming toward terra firma with its nose firmly in place. With a THUD, it lodged itself into the soft ground, which was over-watered. The dirt was only a little firmer than mud. I realized that I had made a minor design error with the Space Racer II: the tube coupler that is placed at the midpoint was firmly attached to the fore, not the aft, section. To keep the weight forward, I stuffed the streamer in the front section, and it apparently got so jammed in there that the engine found it would be easier to bail. That wasn't a hard problem to fix. Unfortunately, a harder problem to fix was my lack of A8-3 engines, and finances with which to procure them. Finally, I was able to find a few more sponsors for the WAEC, and I bought the requisite engines. I fired off Space Racer II for a second time, on February 4, 2001. This flight was completely successful, and I tracked Space Racer II to an altitude of nearly 90 meters, much higher than the first flight. The third flight was on the top of the Alpha FS-Space Racer II stack, on September 22, 2002. Unfortunately, I didn't track this flight or even attempt to explore the full capabilities of the staging system. The fourth and last flight was on July 1, 2004, to try complex, two-station tracking for the WAEC's Nine Objectives. I conscripted two trackers, my friend Ben Smith and my brother Ted, to observe and track the rocket from two different stations. I brought along a map of the launch site, scaled from satellite photographs. The rocket took off from the pad and headed due north, landing in an apple tree. After crashing through the tree to retrieve the rocket, I calculated the peak altitude as 260 meters. It probably wasn't the highest altitude achieved by one of my rockets, but it is the highest altitude I've confirmed. image: The very first inkling of Space Racer II, which I drew during English class in May of 2000. image: Another drawing, this one more refined and closer to the final product. I built the real thing from these plans. Space Racer II
Specifications:
Length: 44 cm Core Diameter: 1.8 cm (BT-20) Engine Mount: 18 mm Nose: Ogive with bubble canopy Recovery: Streamer Fin Shape: Swept parallelogram Number of Flights: 4 Space
Racer II Flight Log
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herein copyright 1998-2008
by Willy Logan willy@wilhelm-aerospace.org |
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