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The
Hindrocket
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 Why??? |
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I am a fond admirer of pundit
John Hinderaker, somewhat because his rapier-like wit and
scathing political analysis, but mostly perhaps because
of the cool little rocket he uses for a personal icon on
his web log Powerline. Hinderakers’ blog
handle is Hindrocket, a moniker for which I am
particularly jealous, as a nickname made from Vatsaas
usually doesn’t come out sounding particularly
aerodynamic. (Although we
have to admit, we have seem to have gotten a number of
erroneous Hindrocket hits to our missile-aneous
page)
To bypass a long and pointless story, I decided
that it would be cool to build a rocket based on the
icon, and I wrote John telling him of my intentions, and
hoping he could get me a better picture of the rocket for
scaling purposes. |
Our Inspiration,
John Hinderaker
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| Although in the past, the Hindrocket has
graciously replied to my inane and ill-informed political
commentary, Mr. Hinderaker has so far declined to reply
to our notification about the Flying Hindrocket.
It might be because the he is getting too much email due
to their recent notoriety, or perhaps he has heard about
what we do to lawyers who object to our appropriating
their rocket motifs. |
| Update: After weeks of
unanswered emails and pleas through intermediaries, I
finally got this nice posting on Powerline:
"We've always said that our readers are smart,
and it turns out that some of them are actually rocket
scientists. One such is Rick Vatsaas, whose hobby is
building rockets--not the little ones you get at the
hobby store, but big ones that fly, in some cases, a mile
or more high."
It's rare that anyone calls me "smart" with
out finishing the phrase with "aleck". Thanks,
John.
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| Design The essential design task was to blow up the
Hindrocket Icon gif, and try to approximate it with
Rocsim™
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From This
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To This
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| Concept Development Building
dimensionally accurate rocket airframes based only on
grainy pictures found on the internet are specialties of
Rocket Team Vatsaas (see here, and here). Even so, broad conjecture and
idle speculation were required by the bolt to bring this
tiny 50 by 47 pixel image to life.
To make the rocket sufficiently impressive, I chose to
design the rocket around the standard 7.5 ID cement form
tube found at Home Depot. From there, the nosecone
becomes 13 inches long and 10 inches in diameter and the
four fins are 12 inches long with a 5 inch span.
To give this rocket sufficient ummph to get off the pad,
a level two motor is required, so I selected the J350 as
standard motor for its relative economy. The Hindrocket
should achieve about a half mile of altitude on this
motor.
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You can download the Hindrocket
Simulation here
(requires Rocksim 7.0)
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| Design
Update!! Burl Finkelstein has come through with
Scale data on the Hindrocket. The Hindrocket Icon is most
surely based on a vintage die cast metal Rocket Bank,
made in the USA by Astro Mfg during the fifties and
sixties, and given out by banks as premium for opening an
account. Thanks to Burl, I now have to cram in several
modifications to Hindrocket in the two weeks before GHS
2004!
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Click on the rocket to
look at more pictures of the Prototype
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| Removable Fins! Because GHS takes place
2000 miles from my home, I am always thinking about
shipping, which isn't so bad since my next door neighbor
works for FedEx. Still, to get a rocket into a box can be
spendy. I have been noodling for while on how to make
fins that are removeable and decided that this would be
the project implement it.
One of the advantages of removable fins is that they
can also be expendable fins. Fin shapes like this are
notorious for breaking upon landing, and no parachute can
prevent snapping off a fin tip. Instead of investing in
robust composite fins, I will use lower cost tempered
hardboard fins, and simply replace them whenever one
breaks.
Coming up with a design to work required sharpening
the pencils and getting out the textbooks. The fins have
to be designed to break first, without damaging the air
frame in the process.
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Now
Online! - Details of this innovative removable fin design
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| Nose Cone Construction The
Hindrocket sports a Skyrocket Style Nose Cone.
Click on the Nose
Cone at left for details on how to make a large nose
cone of this shape
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| Fin Construction Click the fin to
see how removable fins were made for this project
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Now
Online!
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| Air Frame Construction Click Here
for details on the Airframe construction
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This veteran Texas ANG pilot poses with a semi-complete
Hindrocket to demostrate the massiveness of the air
frame. Incidently, this
officer claims to have seen Jerry Killian in 1972 at
Office Depot purchasing white-out' a typewriter ribbon,
and a first edition copy of Word for Dummys. I tend
to discount this claim since he can't tell me how that
grape juice stain got on the carpet, so he's not a
credible source.
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