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Not really interested in throwing eggs around. Bought a couple Estes Olympus kits when I saw them at HL, was thinking I'd bash them into an upscaled Goblin or two. But I got them home and measured stuff, decided the nose cone isn't really very Gobliny. So I have a set of BT-65 parts to do something with. Nose cone is basically Alpha-like. I already have plans for an M-104 Patriot and have the BT-60 kit incoming. So that would be silly.
Competing ideas are:
1. A biggish Alpha (because that's always on the table). Sure, there are BT-60 Alphas out there, but how many people have built a BT-65 Alpha?
2. A smaller than PSII, sorta-scale Doorknob. Because I have two sets of parts, I was thinking about doing a two-stage Doorknob. Because it's 1.8 inches and not 3 inches, you could actually get decent off-the-rod and first-stage performance with reasonable motors. The Doorknob booster is essentially full length, making it bigger than I want falling without a streamer or chute. One could always do composite motors with electronic ejection of the booster recovery gear and airstart the sustainer motor, but I kinda like the idea of just running a BT-50 stuffer connecting two 24mm BP motors and doing ignition the old-fashioned way. That leads to the technical problem of ejecting the laundry in the booster. Seems like it would be easy enough to use an Apogee or Quark to do an apogee deployment, but the chute or streamer would have to be packed annularly and you'd have an annular (donut) ejection charge volume. Anyone doing that? What problems does one run into? BT-50 OD is 0.976, BT-65 ID is 1.754, leaving 0.389/side radially to package the recovery systems. Interesting problem, but seems doable...
I'm trying to think of something fun, technically interesting and worthwhile to do with the two kits, as an alternative to just returning them. Something I'm not already planning to do with something else. Totally open to whatever brainstorms the collective comes up with.
Competing ideas are:
1. A biggish Alpha (because that's always on the table). Sure, there are BT-60 Alphas out there, but how many people have built a BT-65 Alpha?
2. A smaller than PSII, sorta-scale Doorknob. Because I have two sets of parts, I was thinking about doing a two-stage Doorknob. Because it's 1.8 inches and not 3 inches, you could actually get decent off-the-rod and first-stage performance with reasonable motors. The Doorknob booster is essentially full length, making it bigger than I want falling without a streamer or chute. One could always do composite motors with electronic ejection of the booster recovery gear and airstart the sustainer motor, but I kinda like the idea of just running a BT-50 stuffer connecting two 24mm BP motors and doing ignition the old-fashioned way. That leads to the technical problem of ejecting the laundry in the booster. Seems like it would be easy enough to use an Apogee or Quark to do an apogee deployment, but the chute or streamer would have to be packed annularly and you'd have an annular (donut) ejection charge volume. Anyone doing that? What problems does one run into? BT-50 OD is 0.976, BT-65 ID is 1.754, leaving 0.389/side radially to package the recovery systems. Interesting problem, but seems doable...
I'm trying to think of something fun, technically interesting and worthwhile to do with the two kits, as an alternative to just returning them. Something I'm not already planning to do with something else. Totally open to whatever brainstorms the collective comes up with.
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