When you think of a high performance liquid rocket, what do you think of? Beer kegs? No? Well, when [Ryan] from the YouTube channel “Project KegRocket” saw a beer keg, the first thing he and his friends saw was a pressurized rocket body.
You wouldn’t be crazy if the first thing you thought of was something designed by a massive company or university. Liquid rockets are far from simple to develop, with Keg Rocket being no exception. Liquid oxygen and alcohol is the oxidizer/fuel mixture of choice. Liquid oxygen in particular is a problem with its cryogenic temperatures and tendency to do what rocket fuel does best, burn. This problem causes a large amount of work to simply connect the pipes. Traditional O-rings have no chance at surviving, along with most other non-metallic solutions.
Even with all these problems, the group creating the piece of art is more than capable, having experience creating similar rockets in the past. As of currently, the pumping has been pressure and leak checked. We will be watching this project closely for updates and an eventual launch.
For more rocketry science, be sure to check out aerospike engines for the most efficient engines around. If you want efficiency in your pizzas and beer kegs, check out this keg pizza oven instead!
This reminds me of Poul Anderson’s hilarious (to me) SF novel “The Makeshift Rocket” which centres on a rocket POWERED by beer. Note that this only works in the asteroid belt: he’s aware that it wouldn’t develop enough thrust to leave a planet.
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve read that story. Now I’ll have to re-read it. Luckily it’s in my library.
Isaac Asimov – “Marooned Off Vesta”
That’s silly.
If beer worked as reaction mass, so would urine.
Just wondering: Is there any kind of calculation how much the excessive weight of the beer kegs hampers the rockets performance? But also from other aspects of the two pictures here, it looks like not much thought is given to weight reduction at all. And if all you want to do is to test the motors and control system that’s all right. I’ll assume that this thing will be fired up in some desert of over sea, so that even a malfunctioning rocket will not crash into some small village.
“Hey! Guy in the comments said it’s all right!”
It’s important to recognize that the primary goal of this rocket is to utilize beer kegs.
No one can argue this isn’t a proper hack