[Gabe] sent in this project summary from his rocketry club’s yearly project(pdf). The goal was to build a rocket that would go up to about 800 meters and eject a robot that would pilot itself to a destination on the ground for re use. There’s tons of great information from what hardware is in the robot to hardware design for the ejection mechanism. There are great pictures of the final build, not so many of the construction itself. The project seemed to go well until EMI problems caused everything to fail during flight. If you’re interested in seeing more from the club, check out their site (translated).
Awesome !
think of what this could do for fed ex and ups! although the oh s*** factor of when one of the things screws up might give the FAA pause…
Flickr set of the launch (last picture is a semi-video of the launch):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tehf0x/sets/72157606878401434/
Some building pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tehf0x/sets/72157602905961460/
Don’t know if this came through in the translation, but their primary rocket for this was a water rocket(compressed air & water)and went 2044ft(623m).
the page for the “Hippie Water Rocket” is here, but only the navigation elements are translated when you click the English button.
http://clesfacil.insa-lyon.fr/public/index.php?page=2007-20-fusee-a-eau-hippie&hl=en_US
scratch that last comment, it wasn’t the Hippie but the Leia that launched this payload. That site’s navbars are all borked.
very illegal, no doubt.
but very cool.
@n256: What’s illegal about it? Do the french not allow amateur rocketry? Honestly curious.
@Jack: In most parts of Europe, anything above 300 meters or with more than one engine requires a permit to own, a permit to fly, and a permit for each launch. Plus the permit for the engines themselves, which isn’t easy to get.
It’s fun.
Thanks for the info. I’ve never looked much into rockets myself. They look like fun, though, other than all those permits.
Totally legal, we launch with a subsidiary of the CNES (French NASA).
I would love to see more details on what kind of parachute/foil you were using and how you actually ran the lines to control it.
Also interested in details of the overall power system you implemented and the cutdown systems employed.
Got any info on those you can share?
Yeah, we have no problem giving you info, if you want feel free to send me an e-mail (gabe A squirrelsoup !dot! net). The parachute/foil is a stunt kite that we bought off the shelf, and 2 servos were used to run the lines.
The power system is running of li-ion camera batteries with regulators, the lion camera bats have a hella lot of charge. We’ll be using li-poly for this year’s project though.
…what’s a cutdown system?
email on the way, let me know if you don’t get it.
Did you ever get my email? I haven’t gotten a response…