Estes Outlander

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I know a number of rocketeers about my age who spent their childhood years paging through the Estes Model Rocket catalog until its pages were dog-eared and ragged. In those days a kit consisted of little more than a few slabs of balsa, a body tube, and a set of intricate templates and instructions. Call it nostalgia, but those kits were something to behold. I remember saving my snow-shoveling and lawn-mowing money for months to get my hands on a Mars Snooper, the Orbital Transport, or the ruler of them all, the venerable Mars Lander.

The Estes company has taken some sharp strategic marketing turns since Vern Estes sold his little proprietorship back in 1969. To say that I was unhappy with the new direction of their product line would be something of an understatement. I remember standing motionless in shocked disbelief when I saw my first ready-to-fly rocket on the toy shelf at Wal-Mart. It was as if something sacred had just been defiled. Even worse, the kits I admired most disappeared from their catalog.

After this blunt criticism, it's only fair that Estes Industries gets the recognition that it deserves when it does something right. Enter the Estes Outlander.

This rocket may never fly high or fast, but about half-way through its construction I realized that this was one of the most challenging projects I had undertaken in quite some time, including most of the rocket you see on this web site. Build one for yourself and you'll know why I thought enough of this rocket to write an article about it. I had originally purchased the kit as a project I could build with my nine-year-old son. He did his best to hang with me as we worked on it together, but the intricate details of the design were more that his overtaxed attention span could handle. We split up the work into the steps recommended in the instructions, and it turned out to be about all I could handle, too.

The Outlander is a modern version of the Mars Lander. Some of my favorite features are still there from the original lander; spring-loaded landing gear and engine nozzle included. This lander features a realistic visible skeleton that one might expect to find on a non-atmospheric vehicle, with an array of fuel tanks and exposed structural components. The overall result is what you could expect for the next generation manned-mission design coming out of NASA: and given their recent new focus on human exploration, the introduction of this model is very timely.

The kit goes together like the projects I recall from my youth; each leg is constructed from fifteen different pieces of balsa, cardboard, vinyl tubing, and wooden dowels some pieces come pre-cut, but many do not. The tanks are each assembled from a small cardboard tube and die-cut cardboard bulkheads. The command section and nozzle are molded plastic, but modeling purists will be happy to learn that both require careful cutting, sanding, and shaping. As you would expect, the instructions and templates are exquisitely detailed. They even include critical suggestions on when to apply paint to various subassemblies in order to match the recommended decoration scheme. The aesthetics are completed with the application of the clear-vinyl decals, which provide not only a logo and emblems but even some nice 3D effects as well.

With all those extra design details, the Outlander is neither streamlined nor lightweight. When the time came to fly it, my son and I loaded it with the recommended C6-3 motor. Liftoff was more than just slow. It looked like a tug-of-war between the powers of thrust and gravity. Even with the short delay there was an anxious moment when it looked like the rocket would pile in after its majestic climb to 200 feet. But the ejection came at its reliable interval and the Outlander floated gently onto its feet under the 24-inch canopy.

Like any other high-power thrust junkie, I couldnt leave well enough alone. I wanted to see it fly on something with more guts. I fished around in my range box and found my 18mm RMS casing and a D13 reload. Well, it went faster and higher, but to my surprise I liked the C6 flight more. Something about the agonizing but deliberate ascent looked more realistic. Like the craft was weighted down with astronauts and Tang and the heavy burden of scientific discovery. And that was good.

I had the illusion that I would set the Outlander on my credenza in my office. Most of my projects are too large to bring in to work, and I was proud enough of the craftsmanship to share it with my colleagues. I was corrected when my son found a place of honor for it on a shelf in his bedroom. And when he marched a half-dozen of his buddies into his room to show it off it doesnt get any better than that.