LUNAR’clips
2004
Volume 11, Number 5
LUNAR’clips
2004
Volume 11, Number 5
Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry September/October 2004
Copyright © 2004 by LUNAR, All rights reserved.
"Totenkopf's Ark" is from a movie called "Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow". It was a very good movie. When we got home from the movie we decided to make a rocket like Totenkopf's rocket that he was going to use to blow up the whole world … !! I don't want to explain too much about the movie because this is an article about the rocket we built.
I was in school and it was quiet writing time. So I decided to write a report on this, Totenkopf's Ark. Here is the design I made. I actually did not write the center of gravity where I multiplied it to be, I just guessed it and it turned out I was very very close. I decided to make the size of MMT as BT50, so it would fit 24mm motors which are D through F. I thought the main body tube BT80 would go well with BT50 for the pods. I didn't want our very cool model to go too high. But it did go pretty high. I decided I wanted BT50 nose cones on BT50 tube. I didn't know if we could get a sharp BT80 Estes nose cone so I decided to use a high power one that I found in my dad's high power box of tubes and nose cones.
On my report I drew the fin shape kind of wrong. After I came home we looked at some pictures of the rocket and we noticed there was a sharp tip on the top of the nose cone which we didn't make because it would just break on the first flight. And we noticed the fins were very skinny and very far out. And that is why we didn't put motors in the pods. If they were a lot closer then we would put motors in the pods just like in the movie.
My dad had made a Rocksim plan at the same time I made my report. He told me that it was quiet reading time and he was tired of doing work stuff so he decided to make the plan.
We printed the Rocksim plan and we decided to make it late that night. The first thing we did is we glued two MMT rings from a Designer's Special kit to the 24mm MMT tubing. We let it dry while I glued the nose cones on to the pods while my dad was cutting out the fin slots in the BT80 main body tube. Then we glued the motor mount tube in. Then my dad cut out the fins and we glued them in. When I was in bed my dad glued the pods on to the fins and primer-ed it and painted it silver.
The next afternoon we packed up to go to Black Rock desert for XPRS. We arrived at 2:30 in the morning, the next morning we got up and prepped Totenkopf's Ark. It was our first rocket to fly there. We flew it on E9-4. The ejection was a little bit early so the parachute tangled with the pods. It came down kind of hard on the playa but only two of the pods broke (which was expected because my dad forgot to cut slots in the pod tubes for the fins just like the main body). So we glued the two pods back on and we flew it on an F21-6. It flew perfectly that time but it didn't break two pods, it broke one.
Then we were getting ready for the night launch so I put red glow sticks in the pods to look like fire. I put one green one on the side just in case a red one fell off. This time it flew on another E9-4 and because of the weight of the glow sticks it was OK. The parachute was awesome. You could only see the flame, you could not see the rocket at all. Then we got it back and we were going to launch something called Nike Double Crayon which is not related to this rocket so I am not going to talk about it too much.
Assembled with yellow glue everywhere except plastic glue for joining pod nose cones to pod BT. Fill and sand balsa fins and airframe tubes as desired. Finished with OSH white primer, Rustoleum silver paint.
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