| Author | Message | ||
| Jack (Gilles27)
Member Username: Gilles27 Post Number: 986 Registered: 3-2002 |
Boy, and I thought we were being clever when we made the cannons out of tennis ball cans! | ||
| Eric Eiland (Eric308gtsiqv)
Member Username: Eric308gtsiqv Post Number: 859 Registered: 11-2001 |
Same here...back in my highschool days, I enjoyed designing and building model rockets as a hobby -- and later progressed into "high-power" rocketry. There were many sources / clubs / events that supported and supplied high-powered engines and all the necessary materials to build large scale rockets -- way beyond the scale / thrust of the Estes kits. It was a rather expensive hobby, but very rewarding. I knew of guys / gals building rockets around 12" in diameter and 10 feet long, with all types of interesting payloads (like cameras)! Speaking of Estes, they had a monthly contest where you could design a rocket using their parts, draw a set of plans, build the rocket, test it, and then submit the plans / pictures / data -- if you won the contest, they would mail you a gift certificate for $75.00 towards anything in their catalog. I won several of these contests, and the money sure helped to supply more parts / engines. It was a lot of fun! Now, a cruise-missile -- that's another story  . | ||
| Terry Springer (Tspringer)
Member Username: Tspringer Post Number: 582 Registered: 4-2002 |
Way back in my highschool days a nutcase friend and I built a rocket launcher and rockets. We used model rocket kits and engines, a 5' long piece of 6" PVC pipe and lots of other hardware store stuff. We had the fins on the rocket hinged to pop out when it left the tube, we ran 5 "D" spec engines in a singe rocket and instead of the parachute deploying when the engines were done burning, it setoff a black powder charge. It took us about 10 attempts before we got the whole thing working right, but when done it actually was pretty effective. Only thing was the "warhead" was actually so small it couldnt really do much damage to anything. The best one we ever did was using a used up CO2 canister from a BB gun filled with powder and setoff by the black powder primer charge. Had a heck of a noise and lots of smoke. It didnt take long however for us to lose interest. Each rocket was costing us $50 to make... and girls began to take a much higher priority! The point however is that making some "military" style stuff is really not rocket science, pardon the pun. If you really want to, building a guided missile is clearly possible. Heres an interesting point. If Joe Blow can build an effective cruise missile for $5,000.00, exactly why is the US Govt. paying close to $2,000,000 each for ours? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm perhaps there is a business idea here? | ||
| Ron Thomas (Ronsupercar)
Member Username: Ronsupercar Post Number: 864 Registered: 5-2002 |
In the famous words of Mike Tyson.. "Thats Ludicrist" | ||
| Chris F. (Dallasguy)
Junior Member Username: Dallasguy Post Number: 148 Registered: 10-2002 |
Thats almost too scary. | ||
| Randall (Randall)
Member Username: Randall Post Number: 517 Registered: 1-2003 |
http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/ |