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 Kidd Plasma's Flaming
Atomic Meteor of Justice
This saga begins with a Father's day gift
from my family of an Estes Silver Comet
kit. I thought the Comet was pretty cool,
but I was starting to lose interest in
building rockets from kits, and wanted to
move into building from scratch. So I
decided to extensively modify the kit,
basing the design on my conceptions of
what a 50's TV-serial rocket should
look like. Not that I had any knowledge
of what that should look like, mind you.
I grew up in the Seventies when spaces
ships stopped looking like rockets ships,
and instead more resembled chandeliers
and Christmas ornaments.
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The Meteor flies off to take
Captain Plasma on a New Adventure
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The design
cues I used for my kit-bash came more
from the old superhero comic books we
had, more than anything else. As such, I
needed a comic book character to serve as
a muse. I didn't want to use an existing
character like Buck Rogers, since someone
would eventually point out that my design
was all wrong, so I invented my own, Capt.
Kidd Plasma, who I visualize as a
terribly precocious interplanetary do-gooder
of some valiant space-crime fighting
organization. I had seen several
modifications of the Silver Comet with
fin designs that others felt were more
authentic, and they are probably right.
However, I wanted something wing like,
and so I ended up borrowing extensively
from the Chesley Bonestell's Lunar
Express of Destination Moon, which
was the inspiration for PML's
Lunar Express . I also wanted to have
fin pods, and raised details to match the
molded-in canopy detail that is part of
the Silver Comet Nose Cone. Eventually
the design evolved into that pictured
below.
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Originally I planned to use plywood for
the fins, but my experience on some other
projects showed I couldn't depend on
getting stock that was not warped. So
this ended up being my first true
fiberglassing project.
The performance of a stock Silver
Comet is pretty marginal on black powder
D motors. It would be even worse with the
larger fins and added weight. So I
upgraded the power plant to a 29 mm motor
mount. I could have stuck with a 24 mm
mount and used composite motors E-G
motors, but these are spendy compared to
the Econojets, also the large opening in
the boat tail makes it inviting
Construction
notes:
Most of the construction of the
Meteor is straightforward and not
worth mentioning. But there are a
few construction hints I would
like to pass along
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The Meteor Conceptual model
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| Fin Construction
Tools/supplies needed:
- Two flat boards large enough to
cover the fins (3/4"
particle board works great)
- Wax paper
- Glass (Sig 2 oz) cut rectangular
to cover fins
- Epoxy resin (Z-poxy brand)
- Foam brushes
- Denatured alcohol
- Paper plate and Popsicle sticks
for mixing epoxy
- Weights, such as textbooks or
encyclopedias.
- Dremel tool with cut-off wheel
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The fins are
2-oz. fiberglass with a 1/8" balsa
core.
- Take one of the particle
boards, and lay a sheet of wax
paper over it. Then lay the fin
core on top of it. Apply epoxy
resin to one side, and then lay
the glass over the fin pressing
the resin through the glass with
a foam brush
- I recommend not cutting the
fiberglass to shape. Instead cut
it as a rectangle big enough to
cover the entire fin. This makes
the glass much easier to handle
and smooth once it's wetted, even
though some glass gets wasted.
- Make sure the glass is filled
with resin and any excess is
removed. Once one side is done,
flip the fin over and lay down on
wax paper. Repeat on the other
side. Then cover with a second
layer of wax paper
- I did all four fins and arranged
them on the particle boards (with
wax paper covering the fins), and
set it on a flat concrete floor.
- I then took the second
particleboard, and set it over
the fins, and carefully set old
textbooks on top of the board to
weight it down. This is to press
out any extra resin and make sure
the fins don't warp while the
resin cures. It's a kind of
a poor man's vacuum bagger
After the resin is cured, the excess
fiberglass is easily trimmed off with a
Dremel tool cut off-wheel, and shaped
with sandpaper.
For fin tenons’ I only used the
slots provided in the Estes silver comet
tail cone. Because of the long strakes,
there is a lot of surface area to hold
fins on. Generous fillets along the
length of the fin strakes make for a firm
joint.
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Fin Pods.
The fin pods are contructed from Estes BT5
Nose cones and body tube and are merely
butt-joined onto the ends of the fins.
They would have been far easier to
assemble had I added a tenon to go into
the pod tube. That would have been
stronger, too.
While the fin pods look cool, they are
extremely fragile. I have managed to
break them even when landing on the very
soft spongy ground of a sod farm. The
only time they haven't broken is when it
landed on a tomato plant. Putting a
very large parachute on it hasn't helped,
either. Fortunately, they have
proven easy to fix and probably absorb
shocks that would have caused a fin to
break off (for which the repair would be
much more intensive. For that reason, I
am keeping the paint detail very simple
near the fin pods, and have resigned
myself to repairing them after every
launch. The hassle is worth it, since I
get many positive remarks about the
styling of this rocket. Had I to do it
over again I would have considered some
kind of bridle so that the model would
descend in a horizontal position.
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3D
Details
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One thing
that was very cool about the Estes Silver
Comet (Now out of production, sadly) is
the raised canopy detail on the nose cone.
Estes complements this great piece
of hardware with chintzy self adhesive
decals for viewports and hatches.
I decided that instead of using the
decals I would make raised features.
I was going to try a number of
different materials, but found out
early that regular poster board was about
as thick as the as the molded details on
the nose cone..
Making these details takes practice to
not bend or deform the poster board, (fortunately,
its cheap, so you can try over and over
again before gluing them on). To
facilitate things I drew up the portholes
and hatches on my Mac, and printed it
right onto the posterboard. (standard
poster board goes through most ink jet
printers just fine).
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Cutting the outsides of
the card details is easily mastered.
Cutting inside details, like
the interior of the port holes takes care.
Use an Exacto knife with a
new blade, and work slowly. White
glue worked best for applying the Card
details to the body tube.
I was so pleased with how these turned
out I had to restrain myself from adding
hatches and vents all over the rocket.
I managed to stop with eight port
holes and an oval door (not pictured) The
rocket is painted with Duplicolor silver
metallic paint, the portholes are
covered with Monokote sky-blue self
adhesive mylar.
Close up of the 3D Card
Portholes before
the mylar windows are applied
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The raised portholes really
stand out in he sun
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Kidd
Plasma's Flaming Atomic Meteor
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Date
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Event/Location
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Motors
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Comments
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| July 28 01 |
MASA Launch, Blaine, MN |
G64-7 |
Excellent unpainted flight.
ejection right at apogee. Drifted about 1
mile, no damage |
| August 20 01 |
MASA Launch, Blaine, MN |
G35-7 |
Great ascent but seven seconds is to
long a delay results in a 1.5"
zipper |
| 10-13-01 |
SSS, GHS2001, Rainbow Valley, AZ |
G35-4 |
Great ascent but delay is short by
one second, another Zipper |
| 10-13-01 |
SSS, GHS2001, Rainbow Valley, AZ |
G35-4 |
Perfect, still landed hard enough to
break a fin pod.
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Sci-Fi Rocket Links:
If your interested in designing your own Vintage
Sci-Fi Rocket Ship, Here are some useful links
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- Silver
Rockets
The Tellurian is busy designing
some extremely cool rockets based on 1950's
Space serials
- Solar
Guard
The
place to go to get info on Rocky Jones,
Capt. Video, Tom Corbett, Etc.
- Vintage
Rockets
This guy did some great work on some
model rockets based on 50's sci fi
rockets
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