Having a morning unexpectedly free, I kicked around some ideas for a project I’ve had in mind forever: a booster for my Estes Star Orbiter.
To that end, I spent this morning fiddling with some of the components to figure out how it would be spaced out and put together, and got some pictures as little notes for myself.
The gap between the retainer threads and the inner wall of the tube is too narrow to fit a staging coupler. Here’s my anticipated solution.
The motor will be friction-fit, and the rear end of the motor casing will function as the coupler, fit into the booster’s motor mount tube. The tape to hold the motors together will also function as a thrust ring.
Of course, I can’t just fly it with no external body tube, so I’ll have to space the MMT and centering rings correctly in the body to acheive this fit.
The MMT extends out the back here, so I’ll have to cut it down at some point.
Here’s how the fins align with the slots in the body tube I bought from Apogee. In short, they don’t. The slots will have to be extended forward.
The camera perspective is tricky here, as the fins are actually shorter than the tube by a hair.
I don’t have a clear plan for order of operations yet. One thing is obvious though, as I’ll allow Matt Damon to explain:
To that end, I spent this morning fiddling with some of the components to figure out how it would be spaced out and put together, and got some pictures as little notes for myself.
The gap between the retainer threads and the inner wall of the tube is too narrow to fit a staging coupler. Here’s my anticipated solution.
The motor will be friction-fit, and the rear end of the motor casing will function as the coupler, fit into the booster’s motor mount tube. The tape to hold the motors together will also function as a thrust ring.
Of course, I can’t just fly it with no external body tube, so I’ll have to space the MMT and centering rings correctly in the body to acheive this fit.
The MMT extends out the back here, so I’ll have to cut it down at some point.
Here’s how the fins align with the slots in the body tube I bought from Apogee. In short, they don’t. The slots will have to be extended forward.
The camera perspective is tricky here, as the fins are actually shorter than the tube by a hair.
I don’t have a clear plan for order of operations yet. One thing is obvious though, as I’ll allow Matt Damon to explain:
