Clustered n Staged

[Buckaroo]

This is a rocket that I came up with for the EMRR "Elevate 11" contest. One of Nick's earlier suggestions was to build a rocket with 11 stages (yeah right) but it got me thinking about building a staged rocket that could maybe use 11 motors. Maybe even a booster with 10 motors, lifting a sustainer with the 11th motor...

I messed around for a while in Rocksim and came up with the design below.

The central motors are 24mm, and the "strap-on" boosters, which are permanently attached to the booster section are arranged in 3 sets of 3 13mm motors. 6 of the 9 "stap-ons" will use A10-P motors and 3 will use standard A10s or A3s and will eject small streamers after the rocket has staged.

Sims to about 2400' with a full load in the booster and a D12-7 sustainer.

 

[Buckaroo]

First thing I did was gather up the necessary parts.

The sustainer fins were left over from an early attempt to clone a Thrustline Mighty Mick from a Rocksim file attached to an EMRR review. I printed out the template and cut out the fins, but they just looked wrong. Luckily John Rowan-Stern re-appeared on the scene and got me going in the right direction, and now I had a use for my orphaned fins

 

[Buckaroo]

First bit of construction was to build the central 24mm motor mounts. I cut 2 motor tubes from some spare BT-50 and glued everything together. The mounts are identical except for the Kevlar shock cord tied around the sustainer mount, and routed through a shallow notch in the forward centering ring.

I installed thrust rings in both mounts but decided to leave out the hooks and go with friction fitting for the motors.

 

[Buckaroo]

Next up was some tube cutting. The booster body is 3.25" of BT-55 which yields a 0.50" gap between the booster and sustainer motors.

The "Strap-On" boosters are all cut from BT-5 and are either 5" or 3" long.

Once the booster section was cut the central motor mounts were installed in both the booster and sustainer.

 

[Buckaroo]

At this point I had two parallel paths going. On one hand I was attaching the fins to the sustainer, and on the othe I was creating the booster "pods" by combining 3 sections of BT-5 side by side.

The main reason for grouping the "strap-on" boosters this way was to make sure there was enough room for the sustainer fins to slide freely between the booster pods, and also to leave enough room for a launch rod. Of course in the end I will tell folks I did it that way because it looks cool...

I used a section of BT-55 as a form to glue the boost pods together. I taped a 5" section of BT-5 along a reference line, and then glued a 3" section to each side. Finally I added a fillet of glue on the inside of each seam.

 

[Buckaroo]

At this point the sustainer is basically finished, a pretty slick rocket on its own. The nose cone is a BNC55-ACP from Semroc

 

[Pantherjon]

Very cool!