luke strawwalker
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2009
- Messages
- 9,147
- Reaction score
- 40
Hello all... Wanted to share the beta build of the latest release from Dr. Zooch Rockets, the SLS-- Space Launch System. This is the rocket enacted by Congress last year for NASA to pursue as a shuttle replacement after President Obama cancelled the Constellation program to return to the moon and the Ares I and Ares V rockets along with it (and for a time, the Orion crew capsule along with it). While NASA is being VERY secretive about the SLS, there are ONLY SO MANY WAYS you can build a "shuttle derived" rocket using "shuttle parts" (well, all except the orbiters anyway which are now retired) and basically every possibly "shuttle derived" rocket remotely possible has been examined at some point in time or other, so one doesn't have to have the keys to the Administrator's bathroom at NASA HQ to figure out what SLS is probably going to look like. SOME information has already leaked out, and Dr. Zooch has incorporated the latest information in this new kit, including the interim "kick stage" borrowed from Delta IV...
And, unlike NASA which is releasing data saying you'll have to wait 20 years before SLS does anything interesting, you can build and fly YOURS, TODAY, and beat NASA to the punch!
SO, lets get to it...
The kit comes in the ubiquitous 4x4x12 parts mailer box that doubles as a storage box for the completed rocket when you're done (that's a nice plus for Dr. Zooch kits). The parts consist of a bunch of tubes, including a BT-60 for the main shuttle ET derived core stage, a BT-50 for the upper "kick" stage,
(2) BT-20 SRB tubes, an 18mm motor mount tube, and 3 BT-5's for various parts. Three centering rings, two of which are BT-20/60 and one about a 20/50-ish for the boattail that houses the SSME's on the core vehicle surrounding the central 18mm model rocket motor. Three nosecones, 1 ogive BT-50 for the new improved (over early Ares I) boost protective cover over the Orion spacecraft, and 2 BT-20 SRB conical nosecones, all balsa. One transition, BT-50/60, to adapt the smaller second "kick" stage fairing to the top of the BT-60 core vehicle. Two sticks for various sundry lines and bits-n-pieces, and several smaller bags of parts including centering rings for the flame fins, LES rocket motor nozzles, sheet balsa, recovery parts including trash bag parachute, shroud line material, shock cord material, swivels, and various and sundry paper wraps, engine nozzles, and paper detail parts, and of course the trademark smart-aleck humorous Dr. Zooch instruction sheets.
The build starts off with you cutting out the paper boat-tail for the thrust structure that will be added to the bottom of the shuttle External Tank-derived core vehicle to house four SSME's from the shuttles. Cut out the paper from the wrap sheet carefully, curl it carefully and loosely over a Sharpie marker to put a little curvature into the paper, and use a little white glue and a hemostat or other handy clamp to glue it up.
Next we build the motor mount. Pretty much standard fare, but if it's your first Dr. Zooch, this is probably a little more involved than you might be used to with other kits... This is a STRONG motor mount, not some fly-by-night junk! You slit the tube with the hobby knife at the proper place, put a drop of CA glue in the slot to "toughen" the paper tubing slot, cut a reinforcement band out of the wrap sheet and smear white glue on the back, and wrap it around the motor tube to beef it up under the slit (to prevent ejection damage from loosening up the motor hook in the slit over time). Install the hook loosely, cut a small bit out of the inside edge of the centering rings with your hobby knife to clear the hook, carefully measure and glue the bottom notched centering ring in place, and the much smaller bottom-of-the-boattail ring to the bottom of the motor tube, carefully measured and placed. The last big centering ring (2 are for 18mm motor tube to BT-60, the other at the aft end is smaller) goes on the very front of the motor tube and is not notched. Tape the motor hook down with a few wraps of electrical tape or masking tape. Install the thrust block in the front of the motor tube down to the motor hook, and your motor mount is now complete.
The instructions have you add the paper boattail cone at this time, but BE CAREFUL-- The motor mount motor hook is aligned with the LOX pipe on the ET/core, so if you want your paper boattail seam to line up with the SRB and be mostly hidden, you'll have to mock the thing up and align the motor hook to the LOX line and then align the paper boattail seam with the reference line so everything will line up when you put the motor mount in the core vehicle later on... it's not hard to do, but it's worth the effort to 'dry fit' everything. Make a little mark on the bottom motor tube centering ring to align the paper boattail seam with when the motor clip is aligned with the LOX line per the instructions... Then you can glue up the paper boattail to the bottom two motor mount rings-- remember, HALF the thickness of the lower BT-60 centering ring should remain exposed to glue the motor mount into the core vehicle later on-- and the paper boattail should be flush with the bottom of the smaller aft centering ring.
Next up, we start with the core vehicle tank. This is a BT-60 and construction is almost identical to the Dr. Zooch shuttle ET, just easier without all the fiddly bits of wood to mount and support the shuttle glider. Just like the real thing, which is basically a shuttle External Tank without the fiddly metallic bits to support and mount the real shuttle orbiter... Using your handy doorjamb (or a handy aluminum or brass angle as I use) draw your reference line down the length of the tube. All the wrap seams and detailing aligns off this reference line, so that the seams are hidden when the kit is complete. Neat huh??! Go ahead and grab your two BT-20 SRB tubes and put a reference line down the length of them too. Next get the corrugated paper wrap strips out of the kit box (probably tucked under the balsa sheets). Wrap them around the tube and mark them at the overlap, and using a steel straightedge and the hobby knife, cut to the exact length to wrap the tube. There are two corrugated wraps-- one is the wide "intertank" which separates the LOX tank and LH2 tank on the ET/core with a corrugated section, and the other is cut to represent the upper and lower corrugated connection rings which will have to be added to the ET to turn it into a core vehicle for SLS (much like the old S-IC stage, which had a "Y" ring to connect the upper tank upper dome to the corrugated support ring on top, and another "Y"ring to connect the lower fuel tank bottom dome to the thrust structure beneath). Carefully measure and cut with your steel straightedge and hobby knife, and using white glue, carefully apply the wraps in the correct locations.
Next, a small wood dowel is sanded down to "half round" each end. This will simulate the LOX line, which will come out of the bottom of the intertank area and go down the outside of the LH2 tank, turning back inside the lower corrugated adapter ring beneath the LH2 lower "Y" ring. Just sand the end of the stick over with a bit of 220 sandpaper so it looks like a 90 degree plumbing "L" on both ends where it meets the tube, and then after cutting the small alignment tool from the wrap sheet with the hobby knife, draw a line on the tube where the LOX line will go and carefully align the LOX pipe. It will overlap the corrugated wraps a bit, so you might want to trace around the tips a bit with a pencil and then trim a small notch out of the corrugated wrap with a hobby knife, so the LOX pipe will lay down tight against the side of the ET/core. This makes for a neater build, and only takes a couple minutes and some careful work with the hobby knife. Once this is done, the ET is turned over and the launch lugs are installed. One piece of lug material comes in the kit, which is cut in half to make two small lugs. I went a bit beyond the instructions and cut my lugs at an angle, as they look MUCH cooler! Once cut, carefully align them and glue them on the tank centered on the 'rear' of the core per the instructions.
More to come! OL JR
And, unlike NASA which is releasing data saying you'll have to wait 20 years before SLS does anything interesting, you can build and fly YOURS, TODAY, and beat NASA to the punch!
SO, lets get to it...
The kit comes in the ubiquitous 4x4x12 parts mailer box that doubles as a storage box for the completed rocket when you're done (that's a nice plus for Dr. Zooch kits). The parts consist of a bunch of tubes, including a BT-60 for the main shuttle ET derived core stage, a BT-50 for the upper "kick" stage,
(2) BT-20 SRB tubes, an 18mm motor mount tube, and 3 BT-5's for various parts. Three centering rings, two of which are BT-20/60 and one about a 20/50-ish for the boattail that houses the SSME's on the core vehicle surrounding the central 18mm model rocket motor. Three nosecones, 1 ogive BT-50 for the new improved (over early Ares I) boost protective cover over the Orion spacecraft, and 2 BT-20 SRB conical nosecones, all balsa. One transition, BT-50/60, to adapt the smaller second "kick" stage fairing to the top of the BT-60 core vehicle. Two sticks for various sundry lines and bits-n-pieces, and several smaller bags of parts including centering rings for the flame fins, LES rocket motor nozzles, sheet balsa, recovery parts including trash bag parachute, shroud line material, shock cord material, swivels, and various and sundry paper wraps, engine nozzles, and paper detail parts, and of course the trademark smart-aleck humorous Dr. Zooch instruction sheets.
The build starts off with you cutting out the paper boat-tail for the thrust structure that will be added to the bottom of the shuttle External Tank-derived core vehicle to house four SSME's from the shuttles. Cut out the paper from the wrap sheet carefully, curl it carefully and loosely over a Sharpie marker to put a little curvature into the paper, and use a little white glue and a hemostat or other handy clamp to glue it up.
Next we build the motor mount. Pretty much standard fare, but if it's your first Dr. Zooch, this is probably a little more involved than you might be used to with other kits... This is a STRONG motor mount, not some fly-by-night junk! You slit the tube with the hobby knife at the proper place, put a drop of CA glue in the slot to "toughen" the paper tubing slot, cut a reinforcement band out of the wrap sheet and smear white glue on the back, and wrap it around the motor tube to beef it up under the slit (to prevent ejection damage from loosening up the motor hook in the slit over time). Install the hook loosely, cut a small bit out of the inside edge of the centering rings with your hobby knife to clear the hook, carefully measure and glue the bottom notched centering ring in place, and the much smaller bottom-of-the-boattail ring to the bottom of the motor tube, carefully measured and placed. The last big centering ring (2 are for 18mm motor tube to BT-60, the other at the aft end is smaller) goes on the very front of the motor tube and is not notched. Tape the motor hook down with a few wraps of electrical tape or masking tape. Install the thrust block in the front of the motor tube down to the motor hook, and your motor mount is now complete.
The instructions have you add the paper boattail cone at this time, but BE CAREFUL-- The motor mount motor hook is aligned with the LOX pipe on the ET/core, so if you want your paper boattail seam to line up with the SRB and be mostly hidden, you'll have to mock the thing up and align the motor hook to the LOX line and then align the paper boattail seam with the reference line so everything will line up when you put the motor mount in the core vehicle later on... it's not hard to do, but it's worth the effort to 'dry fit' everything. Make a little mark on the bottom motor tube centering ring to align the paper boattail seam with when the motor clip is aligned with the LOX line per the instructions... Then you can glue up the paper boattail to the bottom two motor mount rings-- remember, HALF the thickness of the lower BT-60 centering ring should remain exposed to glue the motor mount into the core vehicle later on-- and the paper boattail should be flush with the bottom of the smaller aft centering ring.
Next up, we start with the core vehicle tank. This is a BT-60 and construction is almost identical to the Dr. Zooch shuttle ET, just easier without all the fiddly bits of wood to mount and support the shuttle glider. Just like the real thing, which is basically a shuttle External Tank without the fiddly metallic bits to support and mount the real shuttle orbiter... Using your handy doorjamb (or a handy aluminum or brass angle as I use) draw your reference line down the length of the tube. All the wrap seams and detailing aligns off this reference line, so that the seams are hidden when the kit is complete. Neat huh??! Go ahead and grab your two BT-20 SRB tubes and put a reference line down the length of them too. Next get the corrugated paper wrap strips out of the kit box (probably tucked under the balsa sheets). Wrap them around the tube and mark them at the overlap, and using a steel straightedge and the hobby knife, cut to the exact length to wrap the tube. There are two corrugated wraps-- one is the wide "intertank" which separates the LOX tank and LH2 tank on the ET/core with a corrugated section, and the other is cut to represent the upper and lower corrugated connection rings which will have to be added to the ET to turn it into a core vehicle for SLS (much like the old S-IC stage, which had a "Y" ring to connect the upper tank upper dome to the corrugated support ring on top, and another "Y"ring to connect the lower fuel tank bottom dome to the thrust structure beneath). Carefully measure and cut with your steel straightedge and hobby knife, and using white glue, carefully apply the wraps in the correct locations.
Next, a small wood dowel is sanded down to "half round" each end. This will simulate the LOX line, which will come out of the bottom of the intertank area and go down the outside of the LH2 tank, turning back inside the lower corrugated adapter ring beneath the LH2 lower "Y" ring. Just sand the end of the stick over with a bit of 220 sandpaper so it looks like a 90 degree plumbing "L" on both ends where it meets the tube, and then after cutting the small alignment tool from the wrap sheet with the hobby knife, draw a line on the tube where the LOX line will go and carefully align the LOX pipe. It will overlap the corrugated wraps a bit, so you might want to trace around the tips a bit with a pencil and then trim a small notch out of the corrugated wrap with a hobby knife, so the LOX pipe will lay down tight against the side of the ET/core. This makes for a neater build, and only takes a couple minutes and some careful work with the hobby knife. Once this is done, the ET is turned over and the launch lugs are installed. One piece of lug material comes in the kit, which is cut in half to make two small lugs. I went a bit beyond the instructions and cut my lugs at an angle, as they look MUCH cooler! Once cut, carefully align them and glue them on the tank centered on the 'rear' of the core per the instructions.
More to come! OL JR
Last edited: