Model Rocket Nails Vertical Landing After Three-Year Effort
hackaday.com
hackaday.com
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/11/24195913/rockets-hobbies-...
Normally, you'd expect someone to land a small or medium sized prototype rocket before the big real thing. Instead, SpaceX solved the vertical rocket landing problem for a full-size rocket at incredible cost and difficulty, and now a hobbyist copies the idea and scales it down.
I might be missing something here. Maybe someone solved the problem of vertical landing for less-than-full-size rockets before SpaceX? Maybe there's no value in solving that problem, so SpaceX jumped to full size right away?
> and now a hobbyist copies the idea and scales it down.
The rocket is still working with solid rocket motors. This isn't scaled down - it is an entirely different technology based on precalculated motor performance and altitude sensors.
If you could get the space shuttle solid rocket boosters to land, that would be comparable.
i would imagine that for the (profitable) problem space the value is in heavier payloads, so that's what makes sense to target first. and FWIW the SpaceX rockets have gotten bigger over time: https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/F9-FH-B...
What SpaceX solved was the requirements to do it economically while keeping the booster cheap enough to both initially build and then later refurbish for reflight. Even when not reused, a Falcon 9 is cheaper than the rockets of its generation. SpaceX also did self-landing tests with a grasshopper vehicle prior to working on F9 landings.
On top of that, this kind of hobby rocketry is very divorced from 'real' rocketry in most ways. The closest analogue to this kind of propulsive landing approach would probably be how Soyuz uses some small rockets that fire right before the capsule touches down to soften the impact, or similarly with New Shepard but instead using cold gas thrusters.
Doing it at this scale is really not that applicable to doing it well in terms of reusing a rocket stage at an orbital rocketry scale. Most of the challenges of landing that are in all the things a model rocket typically does not have. Not to discount the work though, the problem solving experience is certainly transferable.
A missile doesn't have to specifically be a rocket. Cruise missiles often/usually have jet engine.
The only "rules" preventing that is the Model Rocketry Association's Safety Codes, which is the same thing as the Comics Code Authority making sure there's no boobs in a comic book.
There are several hundred examples of people building rockets made out of metal on YouTube.
Even NFPA 1127 is just a guideline.
Motors and batteries are available from a very large number of suppliers and used for many other applications - no such single chokepoint exists to control drone users/manufacturers.
If you want to fly in their realm you either keep your craft light enough and soft enough that should you end up occupying the same bit of air as an airplane that you're not going to bring it down or you have to work with them. Since you can't be trusted not to run into things the only way to do it safely is to fire into an exclusion zone. The high power rocketry guys operate facilities out in the middle of nowhere and with scheduled launch days and a NOTAM will be issued keeping airplanes out of the space (middle of nowhere so the closed airspace is as minimally disruptive as possible.) The rocket guys are responsible for ensuring no rocket-on-rocket hits. Obviously, the FAA isn't going to be interested in handing out more of those exclusion zones than are actually needed, you want to send up amateur stuff, you work with the system.
Apparently it’s okay as long as it’s vertical and not intended to aim at a target or deliberately leave the flying area?
Note what he said about the ascent engine failing to eject. That means he's using standard professionally manufactured hobby rocket motors. (Which, realistically, is all that most people legally can do. The bigger stuff is subject to a lot of hazardous materials regulations that range from burdensome to completely impossible depending on how much space you have.)
https://estesrockets.com/collections/engines
I believe there are now other players in this market.
Looking at his website I see the gimbal being described as supporting up to 24mm engines. That corresponds to a standard D size engine and by my long-ago memory that burn looked reasonable for a D motor except the rocket was way too heavy for a safe launch (normal rockets rely on fins, they must get going fast enough while still riding the launch rail that they'll stay straight)--I'm sure he was staying well back!
The landing burn seemed weaker--I wouldn't be surprised if that was a C, or perhaps even a high thrust B.