So, the Liberator has only been built for over a year. Today, it finally flew! CTI K445 -- the rocket weighs 17pounds, fully loaded, so it needs something with enough oomph to get it up to speed, but not so much as to abuse it.
Things started out
really nice.
....then about halfway through the burn, they went bad...
This is what I came to. I circled with red the spot where the upper tube got cut -- the harness was such that the upper landed first. This was intentional, as there's more weight there, and I didn't want it hitting the lower section, on the way down. Instead, the broken off fins on the lower section cut the upper.
Of course, with that mess, does it really matter?
We eventually found the third fin, which means I have all three pods, intact -- $60 worth of nosecones there, alone.
The upper tube is repairable -- I'd have to splice in a new section of tube, to replace the damaged section, which isn't a big deal. The lower, however, would have to be totally rebuilt.
I thought about fiberglassing it at the time I built it, and intentionally did not, as I didn't plan to get much velocity on it. Even the K445 didn't have it moving all that fast. But obviously, it was fast enough for the fins to fail. Big forward swept fins are tough!
-Kevin
