When the idea of an engine hacks theme was being kicked around at Hack a Day, the subject of rocket engines was one of the first to come up. There was a problem though; solid rocket motors are far too common to be interesting, and even hybrid rocket engines are becoming passé. We’ve never seen a liquid-fuel rocket build before, so that’s what this roundup evolved into.

First up is [Robert Watzlavick], who has been has been building liquid fueled engines for the last decade. He started out with an uncooled kerosene/LOX whose death is seen in the title pic for this post. Lately he’s been working on a monster of an engine that is projected to deliver over 1,000 Newtons of thrust. As with many of the early rockets that launched man into space, [Robert] uses kerosene and liquid oxygen for fuel. This man knows his stuff.

Next up is a ‘kit’ liquid fuel rocket, the SS67B-3, that’s based on the German WWII Taifun missile. This engine is about as basic as you can get. There’s one fuel tank that holds both the Hydrogen Peroxide oxidizer and gasoline fuel. Both are blasted into the combustion chamber with pressurized gas. we found a write-up on this kit with some good pictures, but no video.

If high pressures, glowing metal, and huge flames pique your interest, there’s also a fabulous e-book (PDF warning) available that is a reprint of How to Design, Build and Test Small Liquid-Fuel Rocket Engines by [Leroy J. Krzyck]. This book was originally written in 1967, but lathes and mills haven’t changed that much over the past 44 years. Why not give it a go? There’s still plenty of time to complete the build before the 100th anniversary of Goddard’s first flight.

We have been getting tons of emails lately recommending we take a look at various Kickstarter projects. We used to ignore them since they all boil down to a request for project funding, but since there are so many cool projects out there, we figured we might as well share a couple. Some of these projects have already met their funding goals, but we thought they were worth a mention anyhow.

Solar Powered Coffee Roasting

We’re all about both coffee and alternative energy, so this one caught our eye right away. While this coffee roaster won’t exactly fit on your back porch, it would be perfect for a coffee shop located in a sunny locale. Based off “power tower” solar concentrator systems, this rooftop-mounted solar harvester has big potential. Pair this with sopme sustainably-grown coffee, and you’ve got quite the tasty combo.

HexBright – an open source flashlight

What do you get when you combine milled aluminum hex bar and a Cree XM-L LED? A lightweight, extremely bright flashlight that won’t roll away on you. The HexBright puts out 500 lumens and sports a built-in rechargeable battery that can be topped off via your computer’s USB port. Not only that, the high-end version can be programmed to support any pattern or brightness that you choose.  We’ll take two, thanks.

Arduino Project Board

[Randy Sarafan] of Clap-off bra fame is working on a slimmed-down Arduino board for use in the final stages of project development. He really doesn’t see the need to put an entire Arduino development board into his finished projects and often makes a quick perfboard circuit for his builds once he is finished prototyping. He’s grown tired of the process and developed a small circuit board that has all the connectivity he needs, without all the extra bits found on Arduino development boards.

The Large Hadron Collider was a success and it didn’t destroy the world. We have to admit, we were a little bit worried about the possibility of generating black holes but were soothed by scientists’ reassurances that we would still exist, and this self-explanatory website. We’re also kind of hoping to build our own. PHD Comics visits CERN to learn all about the experiment. Xkcd prepares for the end times with a new friend. The curious can explore some amazing imagery of the LHC, and read about the best-and-worst-case scenarios, and what scientists are hoping for, or monitor progress via webcam. The celebratory will listen to appropriate music, consume inspired science fiction, and drink to the Large Hadron Collider and its success.

Google Chrome made a huge splash in the past week, but will it really change the way you browse, and convince you to switch from your current browser? For those who want to play with it but don’t want Google to completely take over their lives, Chromium is the open source project behind Google Chrome. Linux and OS X users can also run Chrome using WINE, although success is not guaranteed. To make an educated choice, read Scott McCloud’s comic which explains the underpinnings. Make sure you’re aware of Chrome’s security vulnerabilities, and take advantage of Lifehacker’s guide to make your browsing experience as convenient and useful as possible. There are some great features, including the ability to log into multiple Google accounts using its much-lauded Incognito mode, which prevents Google Chrome from logging information on your browsing and downloading habits (websites you browse can still track your information). For convenience, you can also install Chrome on a USB drive, and take it anywhere with you. Explore the many Google Chrome blogs that have popped up to provide advice on hacking and tweaking the browser. Or you could just get all your information from 4chan.

FPGA’s have become especially useful to the hacker community of late. Once upon a time, these lovely pieces of dedicated hardware were fabled to only be within reach of deep pocketed graphics card producers working to up their shader and vertex counts. Today they’re often found in the bowels of high end network gear. As reprogrammable arrays of logic gates, FPGAs represent a happy middle ground between general purpose CPUs and dedicated silicon. After the break, we’ll recount some of the more interesting FPGA projects we’ve seen, like the open source graphics card we featured yesterday.

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