Ask Hackaday: How about some model rocket hacks?

There’s nothing like the smell of black powder in the morning, along with the excitement and burnt propellant in the air that comes after launching a model rocket. All those 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s kids out there may remember the classes of model rocket engines – generally A, B, C, and D sized engines used to push your cardboard … Read the rest

Meet the TM65 liquid propellant rocket engine

While we’re reluctant to say it for fear of being misinterpreted, the new liquid fuel rocket engine being built by Copenhagen Suborbitals is one of the most impressive, daring, and nearly the sexiest machine we’ve ever seen. Although the engine hasn’t been fired yet, [Peter Madsen], Chief launch vehicle designer at Copenhagen Suborbitals, gives an amazing 18-minute-long rundown of the … Read the rest

22 miles straight up in 90 seconds

Those little Estes rockets you built as a kid just got blown out of the water.

In response to the Carmack Prize to launch an amateur rocket above 100,000 feet, [Derek Deville] and the rest of the Qu8k team launched a 320 pound, 14-foot-long rocket through 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Unlike our little toy rockets from years ago, … Read the rest

Launching model rockets wirelessly

We love ballistic trajectories and the smell of black powder in the morning, so we’re really interested in the wireless rocket launch pad sent in by [Brent Strysko].

[Brent] used an ATmega with an enc28j60 ethernet shield and wireless router to launch the rocket without a physical connection with ‘the button.’ Everything on the launchpad is powered by a 12 … Read the rest

Oxyhydrogen water rocket

[cmwslw] built a soda-bottle water rocket that uses the ignition of oxyhydrogen gas to quickly expel the water, as opposed to the usual compressed air and water mixture. His project contains excellent documentation with photos and it builds on other articles he’s written about generating the flammable HHO gas used to launch his craft into the skies. Every aspect of … Read the rest

Arduino Space Program

With the recently proposed cuts to NASA, our friends across the pond (in Northampton UK) decided to take action with a space program of their own… at least at a miniature scale. NortHACKton, a hackerspace in Northampton decided to host a rocketry day consisting of rockets powered by chemical reactions, pressurized water bottles, and even one that employed an … Read the rest