boatgeek
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2014
- Messages
- 7,387
- Reaction score
- 7,907
This is the build thread for my Falcon Heavy downscale. In the spirit of Randall Munroe (https://xkcd.com/1133/) I'm naming it Big Bird for now. Technically, heavy is in the 1000 most commonly used words, but Heavy Bird just doesn't have the same ring. Color scheme is likely bright yellow, possibly with googly eyes on the fairing.
Major features are:
54mm body tubes
38mm motor mount in the center core
29mm motor mounts in the side boosters
Boosters eject while the core is under thrust
BP-powered booster ejection charges
Eggtimer Quantum to control booster ejection and parachute deployment with JLCR to limit drift
3-D printed nose cones for the side boosters and the main fairing
First flight at Fire in the Sky Memorial Day weekend (in less than 6 months!)
First flight on 2xF59 WT (1s burn time) and 1xH110WH (2s burn time)
This is a "mostly scale" project. The center core would scale out to about 32.5", but I wasn't about to cut an inch and a half off of the 34" LOC tube purely for scale realism. I also originally intended for the center core to break at the scale staging break, but that got harder than expected due to the booster ejection design. Shapes of the fairings and nose cones are all taken from dimensioned diagrams imported into CAD and then turned into 3-D shapes in Rhino. The trailing edge of the fins match the bottom edge of the landing legs pretty well. I'm also stealing ideas from Cabernut and SpaceEggs. The ejection system is based on an idea from TRF as well, but I don't know who to credit for that.
The plan for construction is to do all of the hard stuff first. For me, that means the booster securing and ejection systems. I know I can do the fins, bulkheads, and electronics work, so that will wait until later.
Photos to follow...
Major features are:
54mm body tubes
38mm motor mount in the center core
29mm motor mounts in the side boosters
Boosters eject while the core is under thrust
BP-powered booster ejection charges
Eggtimer Quantum to control booster ejection and parachute deployment with JLCR to limit drift
3-D printed nose cones for the side boosters and the main fairing
First flight at Fire in the Sky Memorial Day weekend (in less than 6 months!)
First flight on 2xF59 WT (1s burn time) and 1xH110WH (2s burn time)
This is a "mostly scale" project. The center core would scale out to about 32.5", but I wasn't about to cut an inch and a half off of the 34" LOC tube purely for scale realism. I also originally intended for the center core to break at the scale staging break, but that got harder than expected due to the booster ejection design. Shapes of the fairings and nose cones are all taken from dimensioned diagrams imported into CAD and then turned into 3-D shapes in Rhino. The trailing edge of the fins match the bottom edge of the landing legs pretty well. I'm also stealing ideas from Cabernut and SpaceEggs. The ejection system is based on an idea from TRF as well, but I don't know who to credit for that.
The plan for construction is to do all of the hard stuff first. For me, that means the booster securing and ejection systems. I know I can do the fins, bulkheads, and electronics work, so that will wait until later.
Photos to follow...