Someone was asking on ARocket about where to start with building a differentially throttled hovering vehicle. Lots of advice were given by various people. I’ll show some stuff I quickly sketched back in 2007 with Simulink. It’s such an easy to use and awesome software (especially compared to a recent short battling with LabView), that [...]
Archive for the ‘Homebuilt’ Category
Hovering Vehicle Tilt Control, Part Zero
Posted in Homebuilt, Models, Motivation, RLV:s, Spacecraft, Suborbital, tagged VTVL, Hovering, Tilt, Feedback, PD, PID, Valve, Digital Valve on Wednesday 2009.11.25 | Leave a Comment »
Xombie NOW
Posted in Homebuilt, Lunar, Motivation, NASA, RLV:s, tagged LLC, Masten, RLV, VTVL on Wednesday 2009.10.07 | Leave a Comment »
Live stream just went up at http://qik.com/video/312581
they should be flying at 45 past whatever hour it is now in your time zone. Now on the pad loading propellants and helium.
EDIT:
And they did it! Congratulations! Also great accuracy.
The live cellphone video of the second flight was shot from quite close: http://qik.com/video/3126566
Lunar Lander Challenge 2009
Posted in Architecture, Homebuilt, Lunar, Motivation, RLV:s, Suborbital, industry, tagged Armadillo, lunar lander challenge, Masten, rocket, Unreasonable on Wednesday 2009.09.16 | Leave a Comment »
Armadillo finally won L2 already.
Masten and Unreasonable are still flying for second place I think (I’m not 100% clear on the rules) today!
Spacetransportnews is the place to watch all this. (Or it has the links collected.)
It’s historical in a sense. These rockets will serve as the basis for reusable sounding rockets, possibly high altitude tourist [...]
For All You Hypersonic Glider Builders
Posted in Homebuilt, airplane, tagged Boost Glide, hypersonic, NASA on Friday 2009.09.11 | Leave a Comment »
If you use a fifties shape, active roll damping is a really good idea at subsonic speeds at least. Old NASA video of some wind tunnel flying models. (via Secret Projects forum)
Self Sufficiency
Posted in Homebuilt, Motivation, Science, tagged FM radio, Meteor on Monday 2009.08.24 | Leave a Comment »
Armed with logic and general knowledge, Rick Boozer built an FM radio meteor detector. It’s a cool story. I feel ashamed to be so lazy as to never do anything cool in my spare time. I guess the internet uses up so much of it. Maybe in general people create far less physical things nowadays.
Airline vs Spaceline Safety
Posted in Architecture, Homebuilt, RLV:s, Suborbital, Transportation, engines, industry, tagged Airline, Ethanol, Lynx, Methane, Safety, Suborbital, XCOR on Wednesday 2009.08.19 | 1 Comment »
62 mile club has a writeup of a beta “customer qualification program” for XCOR’s Lynx suborbital craft. This highlights the differences and current state of play. Rocketships will not be as safe as airliners in the near future, and they don’t need to be. There are millions of things that are less safe than airliners [...]
Something Cool Underwater – and in the Air Too
Posted in Homebuilt, Motivation, tagged bogus batoid, human powered, submarine on Friday 2009.01.09 | Leave a Comment »
Human powered submarines:
Rather conventional seeming solutions, but nice anyway.
This is a more out there attempt. A flapping submarine, like a ray. It doesn’t seem to go very much anywhere when one compares to the propeller ones:
Festo has built an Air Ray, a remote controlled helium balloon with [...]
Aircraft Structure Woes
Posted in Homebuilt, Motivation, airplane, tagged aircraft structure, airplane, composite, de havilland, foam core, Homebuilt, ibis, junqua, ken rand, kit plane, kr-1, long-ez, mosquito, plywood, vampire, wood, zenith on Friday 2008.10.31 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been reading quite a lot about aircraft design and structures. Interesting contrast with rocketry. I’ve also been toying around with a few possible home designs and builds. I might write a more proper history / introduction of that someday.
The following is a very much simplified history of aircraft structures. By no means 100% correct, [...]
