Nike Smoke movie

Stumbled into a NASA film on the Nike Smoke--a nice explanation of the program, and color footage of an intersting paint scheme:

https://youtu.be/_UwDvZ0QZs0

There are a good number of other sounding rocket movies to pick out between of dozens of wind tunnel films here:

https://www.youtube.com/user/NasaCRgis?feature=watch

Peter Alway

That was great, Thank for posting.

Thanks for posting the links.
And all this time I thought the smoke came out of the lower panels like on my Enerjet Nike Smoke!

Very cool Video Peter!
Great color scheme. white/back/copperish (Titanium alloy maybe?). Now that is very interesting. Sure would like to snag a color still from that video.

Very Interesting!! Thank you for posting!!

Very nice. Thank you!
It looks like the TiCl4 storage vessel was a beer keg.:wink:

John

Fantastic, Peter. Thanks!!!

Very cool.

As long as David's reading this thread, I'm curious why in all this sounding rocket footage the motor plume forms so far behind the vehicle (almost a vehicle length -- see around 4:09). It's like White Lightning on steroids.

this was great! thanks for posting! I love watching the footage where they are using the old computers (room sized) and the instruments to look at the film...and the machine looks like it is made out of cast iron!

Micromeister said:

Very cool Video Peter!
Great color scheme. white/back/copperish (Titanium alloy maybe?). Now that is very interesting. Sure would like to snag a color still from that video.

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I would say that the body is olive drab. As used on the Nike Herc.

Very interesting. That's quite a bit of flame for such a small rocket!
Thanks for sharing!

Alex

I'm rebuilding my 5.5" Nike... the olive drab/copper scheme is kinda neat

mikec said:

I'm curious why in all this sounding rocket footage the motor plume forms so far behind the vehicle (almost a vehicle length -- see around 4:09). It's like White Lightning on steroids.

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I think it's a result of the high motor operating pressure pushing the afterburning in the plume away from the nozzle plane. 50s era rocket propellants tended to be pretty sooty, and you can really see the effect in low metals propellants... e.g., the Kosdon L1860, which runs at a pretty nutso pressure. Frank's Fast propellant has a 78.3% solids loading (IIRC), making it sooty as well.

daveyfire said:

the olive drab/copper scheme is kinda neat ...

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I wonder if the copper color is the result of heavy chemfilm/chromate conversion treatment of the aluminum fin can. The same effect makes the upper part of the Atlas V first stage have an unusual copper/gold color.

Wow, great video, Peter. Thanks for sharing. The narrator sounds familiar...

Peter,
awesome video! This looks like the paint job you described to me when I was looking for paint ideas for my 1/3rd scale smoke.




Braden

Micromeister said:

Very cool Video Peter!
Great color scheme. white/back/copperish (Titanium alloy maybe?). Now that is very interesting. Sure would like to snag a color still from that video.

Click to expand...

Does anyone know where the white body with 3 red fins and 1 yellow fin comes from? I've seen the color scheme on a few rockets that use Nike boosters, but never a standalone Nike smoke

Thanks for sharing the video Peter - it was very interesting and informative.

COrocket said:

Does anyone know where the white body with 3 red fins and 1 yellow fin comes from? I've seen the color scheme on a few rockets that use Nike boosters, but never a standalone Nike smoke

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This is a question I'd love answered as well. I really love the yellow-red-white combo but don't see anything in the public domain that indicates this was a standard color set for this rocket.

3 red and 1 yellow is a standard paint scheme for the first stage of NASA sounding rockets. Or it used to be. The sequence is easily seen on the Trailblazer and Journeyman series of combos.
I forgot where I read this from.
Ask Peter.

I believe the red/yellow fin combination was only used at one of the ranges and was for spin calculation. Other ranges used four red, four black, white, etc.

Alright... That was just dang cool!

Thanks for posting that. Amazing what i learned in such a short film.

It was kind of cool to see all those old tape-reader computers. I imagine ow the data could be reduced on a cell phone.

This document from NASA also has some good info.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19720021986.pdf

Thanks for sharing!
I also watched other videos on the YF-12 (SR-71) and XB-70.
I see an XB-70 cluster being built this winter.

The paint job on the round in the video is the one I'm using for my small Estes Smoke. I'm trying to decide what to do about painting the fin can and fins. I'm planning on using one of the many metalizer type finishes, but I'm looking at which one will be the most durable.

here are a few pics:



Okay, more than a few...

Mike