Rube Goldberg Lander

[JAL3]

Did this ever fly???? Inquiring minds want to know.....

It depends on what you mean by "fly".

To a very small degree, I kept working on it and it went with me to Aransas Pass when I was transferred there in 2015. I had dreams of finishing it some day. Then in 2017, hurricane Harvey made landfall. Part of the eyewall came in over Rockport, they got all of the press coverage, and the other side of the eyewall made landfall on us. The storage shed that the lander parts were kept in was never seen by me again. When it flew off, my assumption is that the various parts of the lander flew off with it but I was not a witness.

 

[neil_w]

To a very small degree, I kept working on it and it went with me to Aransas Pass when I was transferred there in 2015. I had dreams of finishing it some day. Then in 2017, hurricane Harvey made landfall. Part of the eyewall came in over Rockport, they got all of the press coverage, and the other side of the eyewall made landfall on us. The storage shed that the lander parts were kept in was never seen by me again. When it flew off, my assumption is that the various parts of the lander flew off with it but I was not a witness.

What a crazy conclusion to the saga. I'm sorry we never got to see what that thing was going to look like when it was finished.

 

[SDramstad]

It depends on what you mean by "fly".

To a very small degree, I kept working on it and it went with me to Aransas Pass when I was transferred there in 2015. I had dreams of finishing it some day. Then in 2017, hurricane Harvey made landfall. Part of the eyewall came in over Rockport, they got all of the press coverage, and the other side of the eyewall made landfall on us. The storage shed that the lander parts were kept in was never seen by me again. When it flew off, my assumption is that the various parts of the lander flew off with it but I was not a witness.

Ooooo man that sucks....... Sorry to hear that. Theres only one thing to do. New build thread!!!!

 

[krusty]

Oh no I did always wonder how this went, too.

 

[fyrwrxz]

Sacrifice to the rocket gods. We should be good for years now!
(This just in: Scientists may have discovered the remains of a small alien UFO in buried in debris. Ancient Alien theorists hyphothesize the craft was caught in a hurricane and crashed. Film at 11...)

 

[BABAR]

Well, certainly sorry about the loss. if you aren’t planning on restarting it, and chance you’d post a pic or sketch of the mindsim plan?

 

[JAL3]

I don't have any sketches. I have trouble drawing a crooked line.

As for a description, I'll try.

The central was a BT with a motor mount that would eventually terminate in a nosecone pointing up.

Arranged around the central tube were four "pods" spaced equally apart. Each pod terminated in, IIRC, a short BT60. Each had a nose cone and contained a parachute. the BT60 pods were supported by ducts made of BT20(?) that projected from the central tube. These tubes were carefully mitered together and penetrated a balsa reducer made by BMS. These tubes actually provided ducting to carry the ejection gasses from the central tube to the four pods. The pods each contained a Semroc baffle. A parachute was supposed to deploy from each of the 4 pods. I didn't want the 4 chutes to get tangled so they actually projected to the side quite a bit. I don't remember the dimension. Part of the concept was that it was to land upright and suspended from the 4 chutes. The ducts were enhanced with ping pong balls. these pods were quite delicate so I also fabricated horizontal struts to entend from the central BT to the pods and keep everything aligned and pointed the right way. These too got the ping pong ball treatment.

This monstrosity still needed stability and legs to land on. The pods pointed up so they were of no use. I could have just had 4 big fins projecting backwards at an angle and spaced equally between the pods but that would have made for an even wider footprint and been very succepitble to damage when trying to transport or store. I problably would have had to build the thing its own room or hangar. Worse, that was not a particularly complicated idea and failed to do justice to the idea of "Rube Goldberg"

I decided that I could not afford to purchase entire balsa trees and then have the lumber milled to my specs. I had my doubts but my wife insisted that it was so. Instead I bought some of the thinnest sheets I could find and glued them together to make very wide sheets. These sheets were flimsy so they were sheathed with 8.5x11 label stock. A thin balsa framework made of balsa spars was glued together to form the framework of the root section of the fins. These had a large surface area. The sheathing was applied to one side of the framework and on the interior, I designed the hinge and entension system for the legs. The landing legs were to point forward towards the front of the ship and tuck into little nooks on the central BT. WHen the ejection charge fired, it would be ducted to deploy the chutes from the pods but the upper part of the central BT was also a short stroke piston. The gas would move the piston forward and unlock the landing legs. When released, the legs would pivot around the hinges in the cores of the root section and deploy in a wide footprint behind the vehicle. The effect I was going for was that the fins seemed to point forward in flight and rotate to form the legs for landing. THe "machinery" was contained within the balsa strut framework and sheathed on both sides by the laminated balsa/paper skins I had fabricated. These were still flimsy so I added some triangular cross section balsa stiffeners as "cooling vanes" to stiffen them. The actual landing "feet" were to be articulated and rotate into position as well but I don't recall many of the details.

In re-reading the thread, the first stage of recovery involved deployment of a drogue chute from the central BT to stabilize things as the other parts did their thing. I frankly did not remember this and even with the jogged memory, do not recall how it was supposed to work.

The main body and pods were mostly done. I was mostly working on the fins/legs getting the springs tensioned right and trying to make them dependable. One fin was working well and I had started to follow suit with the other 3 when life got complicated, I got transferred and the hurricane did its thing.