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I had the silly idea of doing a 7x13 cluster in a small BT-60 rocket. As in it would be cool to launch a Baby Bertha with seven A10 motors. Should get off the rod in a hurry and be a relatively low-cost way to explore the technical challenge of clustering. The availability of the A10-PT means I could even tailor how many of them had ejection charges to get the right amount of punching out the laundry. Or might make it a booster with a bigger single motor in the sustainer lit by one -0T with a charge directing tube nested into the sustainer nozzle and surrounded by six -PTs . I spend enough time with OR that I don't have any worries about working out the stability well enough, and then actually swing testing before anything flies.
I just tried mocking up a few different configurations with tubes and motors, and the only thing that looks like it works is the motors in a BT-60 coupler with no individual MMTs. Would it be considered kosher to just glue seven cardboard BP motors together and then glue them into a chunk of BT-60 coupler to make a cluster "cartridge" that would be loaded into the BT-60 tube as if it was a regular motor? Understood there'd need to be some plugging of the gaps between them to contain the ejection charge/ensure clean separation of a booster stage, etc. Would use epoxy to avoid risk of the water from yellow glue affecting the burny parts.
I have found the docs regarding clustering over at Narham, but if this is addressed in there, I didn't see it in the quick scan I did. Plan to read and digest fully and more carefully later.
Would an RSO look at me like the idiot I probably am and kick me the heck off his range, or would he give it a thumbs-up if it looked well done and I could explain it well? Would this be considered a permanent, non-reversible "modification" of the motors requiring L2 cert?
I just tried mocking up a few different configurations with tubes and motors, and the only thing that looks like it works is the motors in a BT-60 coupler with no individual MMTs. Would it be considered kosher to just glue seven cardboard BP motors together and then glue them into a chunk of BT-60 coupler to make a cluster "cartridge" that would be loaded into the BT-60 tube as if it was a regular motor? Understood there'd need to be some plugging of the gaps between them to contain the ejection charge/ensure clean separation of a booster stage, etc. Would use epoxy to avoid risk of the water from yellow glue affecting the burny parts.
I have found the docs regarding clustering over at Narham, but if this is addressed in there, I didn't see it in the quick scan I did. Plan to read and digest fully and more carefully later.
Would an RSO look at me like the idiot I probably am and kick me the heck off his range, or would he give it a thumbs-up if it looked well done and I could explain it well? Would this be considered a permanent, non-reversible "modification" of the motors requiring L2 cert?