bandman444
Well-Known Member
I am very excited to announce an exceptionally cool project that @jpoehlman and I are working on together.
Some may know that I happen to have an affinity for short and fat rockets. A couple years ago I started progress toward a 1/6th scale Falcon 9. Turns out, that is very hard. At over 38ft tall, the structural design to keep it from folding on itself was an intense challenge. A scale model showing internal structure and materials was made 7.5" in diameter, but never flown. I always loved the idea of having a scale capsule with crew seats, cockpit screens, and a couple scale astronauts. With a 360 camera on board it would have been so cool to make happen. But alas, I've got a million other projects in work and so scope was decreased to work on more projects.
That is when the idea of just flying the crew capsule came from. I remember a few years back watching the Pad Abort test and thinking about whether or not a model that shape could be stable. Attached to the trunk it had decently large fins that perhaps could make it stable enough to work.
Another fact that it had going for it was that the motors were all located on the forward end of the rocket, this would push the center of gravity forward again helping with stability.
With the motors up front, it leaves the back end completely empty and easy enough to make very lightweight.
Due to my previous work toward a large Falcon 9 model, I found a pretty sweet CAD model of the Dragon and Trunk and it became the basis for the outer design of the rocket.
I really wanted this to maintain a relatively scale appearance in flight, so an 8 motor cluster was a must have. As you can see, the Super Draco engines are packed 2 wide in 4 separate nacelles. At the moment we are not planning to drill out the locations for the RCS packs, but we will probably paint them in.
The next major question was how I was going to build it. My mind immediately jumped to 3D printing as a way to get the complex outer shape. Then I would fiberglass it for strength and handling protection.
That left the major design work to be the motor mounts and Recovery sections. Another particularly challenging element to this project would be the rail guide attachment. Because the rocket is so big in diameter I was worried that we would have a big challenge keeping the rail buttons attached especially if a single motor or two did not light perfectly. That was when I came up with the idea to run a rail through the middle of the rocket you will notice that it is not included in the renderings above as the details are still being worked on.
Unfortunately I do not have a 3D printer big enough to print a 24 inch diameter rocket in. So I needed to break the model up into smaller pieces this includes three layers with four pieces per layer, and a single nose cap piece. I brought a couple pieces that I had printed to a local club meeting, and that was when @jpoehlman stepped up and volunteered to help. Little did he know that he was volunteering to join the project and has been instrumental in keeping me focused and a great resource for construction ideas and manufacturing plans.
After roughly a month of printing time and god knows how many spools of filament, we had completed all of the 3D printed pieces necessary for a majority of the capsule.
Some may know that I happen to have an affinity for short and fat rockets. A couple years ago I started progress toward a 1/6th scale Falcon 9. Turns out, that is very hard. At over 38ft tall, the structural design to keep it from folding on itself was an intense challenge. A scale model showing internal structure and materials was made 7.5" in diameter, but never flown. I always loved the idea of having a scale capsule with crew seats, cockpit screens, and a couple scale astronauts. With a 360 camera on board it would have been so cool to make happen. But alas, I've got a million other projects in work and so scope was decreased to work on more projects.
That is when the idea of just flying the crew capsule came from. I remember a few years back watching the Pad Abort test and thinking about whether or not a model that shape could be stable. Attached to the trunk it had decently large fins that perhaps could make it stable enough to work.
Another fact that it had going for it was that the motors were all located on the forward end of the rocket, this would push the center of gravity forward again helping with stability.
With the motors up front, it leaves the back end completely empty and easy enough to make very lightweight.
Due to my previous work toward a large Falcon 9 model, I found a pretty sweet CAD model of the Dragon and Trunk and it became the basis for the outer design of the rocket.
I really wanted this to maintain a relatively scale appearance in flight, so an 8 motor cluster was a must have. As you can see, the Super Draco engines are packed 2 wide in 4 separate nacelles. At the moment we are not planning to drill out the locations for the RCS packs, but we will probably paint them in.
The next major question was how I was going to build it. My mind immediately jumped to 3D printing as a way to get the complex outer shape. Then I would fiberglass it for strength and handling protection.
That left the major design work to be the motor mounts and Recovery sections. Another particularly challenging element to this project would be the rail guide attachment. Because the rocket is so big in diameter I was worried that we would have a big challenge keeping the rail buttons attached especially if a single motor or two did not light perfectly. That was when I came up with the idea to run a rail through the middle of the rocket you will notice that it is not included in the renderings above as the details are still being worked on.
Unfortunately I do not have a 3D printer big enough to print a 24 inch diameter rocket in. So I needed to break the model up into smaller pieces this includes three layers with four pieces per layer, and a single nose cap piece. I brought a couple pieces that I had printed to a local club meeting, and that was when @jpoehlman stepped up and volunteered to help. Little did he know that he was volunteering to join the project and has been instrumental in keeping me focused and a great resource for construction ideas and manufacturing plans.
After roughly a month of printing time and god knows how many spools of filament, we had completed all of the 3D printed pieces necessary for a majority of the capsule.