Scott_Rocket
New Member
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2019
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TL;DR:
1) i'm building a steam rocket to launch myself to skydive altitude
2) this thread (A) is for why you might think it's a cool or stupid idea or how you think it might fail
3) another thread (B) is for help with the physics and design of the vehicle; please Keep A thoughts out of B
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Ok, I know there was a lot in the news about "Mad Mike Hughes" and his um...interesting choice to launch himself in his home-made steam-powered rocket...(arguably a bad idea seeing as he almost broke his back, and the whole thing looked terribly un-thought-out).
Anyways, I'm no Mad Mike; I'm actually a scientist, a physician, and a skydiver; and I've been trying to design a rocket for a similar (but I'd like to think, more calculated) project for over 10 years. Lots of barriers, particularly with chemical-based rockets and all their associated safety issues and prohibitive costs etc.
Long story short, I think steam power (via ground-based pre-heating in a pressure vessel vs possibly peroxide mono-propellant) is actually feasible to reach an acceptable altitude (high enough for both my main parachute, and time for my reserve if the main fails). No offense to Mad Mike, but I do actually value my life enough not to try to land in the rocket. I'm only using it to get to altitude.
I'm creating 2 threads, this one is for general feedback. You guys can be like 'that can't produce enough thrust to take off' (spoiler-alert, it does), or 'You're gonna boil yourself alive!' (no, I'm not...although that is one of the catastrophic scenarios I want to document and engineer solutions to.
I'm creating a separate thread for the engineering types, because I have reached a threshold of materials and knowledge about how these rockets work and available mass-produced parts to begin planning/building. If possible, please try to keep that thread more analytical. Namely I'm trying to get total impulse calculations and optimal nozzle dimensions based on my vessel....
hmm..first post..kind of long. Sorry bout that. i'll put a TL'DR at the top.
Thanks for reading.
1) i'm building a steam rocket to launch myself to skydive altitude
2) this thread (A) is for why you might think it's a cool or stupid idea or how you think it might fail
3) another thread (B) is for help with the physics and design of the vehicle; please Keep A thoughts out of B
-----
Ok, I know there was a lot in the news about "Mad Mike Hughes" and his um...interesting choice to launch himself in his home-made steam-powered rocket...(arguably a bad idea seeing as he almost broke his back, and the whole thing looked terribly un-thought-out).
Anyways, I'm no Mad Mike; I'm actually a scientist, a physician, and a skydiver; and I've been trying to design a rocket for a similar (but I'd like to think, more calculated) project for over 10 years. Lots of barriers, particularly with chemical-based rockets and all their associated safety issues and prohibitive costs etc.
Long story short, I think steam power (via ground-based pre-heating in a pressure vessel vs possibly peroxide mono-propellant) is actually feasible to reach an acceptable altitude (high enough for both my main parachute, and time for my reserve if the main fails). No offense to Mad Mike, but I do actually value my life enough not to try to land in the rocket. I'm only using it to get to altitude.
I'm creating 2 threads, this one is for general feedback. You guys can be like 'that can't produce enough thrust to take off' (spoiler-alert, it does), or 'You're gonna boil yourself alive!' (no, I'm not...although that is one of the catastrophic scenarios I want to document and engineer solutions to.
I'm creating a separate thread for the engineering types, because I have reached a threshold of materials and knowledge about how these rockets work and available mass-produced parts to begin planning/building. If possible, please try to keep that thread more analytical. Namely I'm trying to get total impulse calculations and optimal nozzle dimensions based on my vessel....
hmm..first post..kind of long. Sorry bout that. i'll put a TL'DR at the top
.Thanks for reading.
