Homemade Orbital Rocket?

Intro: Homemade Orbital Rocket?

I recently seen on tv, The U.S. government has stated that anyone who could prove they could reach and maintain orbit would be allowed, ofcorse that comes with many stipulations.
Here is my ideas and attempts at building one.
Admittedly this is a work in progress but progressing.

Here I will open my project to you the public to help me to perfect it,watch as I build and hopefully you will get to view the test trials and also the maiden voiage.

In the first few steps I will show my plans,materials and reveal my intenssions for this project.
I will leave this iable open ended untill the project is compleate the downside is you wont get to build just yet but after compleation of this project you should be able to atleast duplicate my work if not improve upon it.
So come on all you Rocket scientist and millionaire's I need your help.

STEP 1: Step1

I was browseing the web for some cool thing to call my next project I swooped by Mike Davis's web page where there is alot of cool stuff and was checking out his homebuilt jet engine and it reminded me of a drawing I had in my fileing cabinet from years ago when I was still in grade school. I dug a little and whiped it out and asked my girl friend if she want to see something cool, she replied yeah so I showed my drawing,she said what is that a new toilet invention.
I kinda giggled and said yeah. So after some hard thought planning I thought, "why not" and started to redraw my picture on windows paint, so I got my initial layout ready to post on i'ables, first here is picture of a model rocket I found online perhaps an ideal candidate for my fusilage design. ofcorse mine will have to be different,unique,personalized.

STEP 2: Step2

ok so now we see the initial design, a liquid fueled ramjet rocket engine with o2 assist for upper atmosphere assistance. the fules I have chosen is "either" or starting fluid and "keyboarb cleaner"compressed air o2 for the accelorant and upper level assist.

now I was afraid at first to post this because of terrorist useing dirty weapons but because of its scale and the velocity of the fuel exiting the aerosol cans I dont think it is possible for it to actualy carry a dangerous payload.

here you will see all the devices I have planned for my orbital rocket

1st I describe the micro controler, a parallax BS2 homework board available in an education kit at Radio Shack for under -$100.

2nd I describe the calculator A TI86 z80 based programable graphing engineering calculator.avalible -wallmart$120 or a pawn shop under -$50.

3rd I describe the cellphone,maybe not everyone has one -under$100.

4th I describe the ignition system basicly a old flash cammera I modified into a "shocker" found here on i'ables and a automotive sparkplug

5th I describe the altimeter, accelorometer and FM Transmitter these are daughter boards available through parallax.com for accessories to the microcontroller sometimes used in hobby r/c planes roughly $50each.

6th the parachute trigger will have to be homemade or found for sale.

7th the engine and gas valvebody ,maybe a commercialy avaliable gasvalve from marine R/V propane heat under$200 if not it will need be machined 2-$600 estimated.

8th fuelbase manifolds homemade or machined under $200 estimated.

9th fuel & air must be calculated around $6 per can.

engine actualy came from a memory drawing of an engine I seen in an 1950's encyclopedia
the rest is prety much parts from a bobot kit from parallax,cell phone and a calculator I hobby with writeing programs for.

the can manifold bases and decision on fuels was all my idea.

STEP 3: Step3

My intenssions with this project,mostly to try to meet the challange. If I can pull it off I would like to possibly reach orbit and if it is still capable of further voiage perhaps aim it into the nearest whormwhole or mars either way I want to put a cell phone in space pass data back an forth and perhaps sample the sounds of the universe,take and transmit pictures,run manuveurs useing compressed air, call home and continuly replay the "can you hear me now" game that might spark some sponsership?.
I would love to put a bible onboard and take it to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Now that is spreading the gospel.

Comments

[25533]

as someone who is working on a simuler project from simpler means aim for something lower first outherwise you would only get to orbit on your 10th or so flight and you can sill lern alot from a suborbital rocket now I have not done something like that yet but you need to make a simpler thing so then you can learn the things needed for the real thing without wasting as much money

[#EpicB]

i am eleven years old in new orleans and i would love to pull this off with my dad i liked the weather balloon idea. what if 4 weather balloons where seperated by four long rods with a launch cylinder in the middle

[Matthew Yang]

Weather balloons don't reach orbit.

[EliezerC]

glad you're young and interested. the wheather balloons wouldn't keep the same altitude each, since they don't have engines or a CPU that can manipulate their floating.

[TonyK33]

Use gravity :) Suspend 4 wires below the balloons to a central hanging weight. Might keep a center section stable enough. It would act like a pendulum in the air, and regardless you are correct it would still be quite unstable. Not nearly stable enough to calculate a trajectory for which to exit the atmosphere.

[EliezerC]

It might work but at the same time you got to understand that the weight you're talking about will become a huge bullet when it falls back to earth.

[#EpicB]

Thanks I never really thought about that.the only way it could work is if you had one balloon that launched the rocket for balance

[Matthew Yang]

I'm going to make a full-size orbital rocket of my own. I'll launch my SJRS 1 with it. And by "launch my SJRS 1 with it", I mean actually reaching a long-lasting orbit.

[DavidR545]

Not sure why you need the phone. Why not radio? You might need to unroll a long antenna wire, like with a fishing reel or something. Use a hash tables of Morse to translate sensor readings then burst the signal. While near the sun, solar cells should help, but you'll soon need an RTG (radio isotope thermoelectric generator) or you could try my design , which uses tritium light tubes held close to solar cells. You can salvage emergency exit signs for the tritium. You could possibly build an rtg using a beta emitter, not as powerful but youd probably save a bundle and your family jewels developing the unit in your garage! While the rocket part is cool, recharging the batteries far from the sun would be a problem. Even an rtg is good for like 10 yrs, getting weaker each year. You'll have a dead brick flying through space, bug it'll b your brick!!!

[TonyK33]

Not only could he simply not use a phone at all... since cellular is limited to roughly 10 miles above the surface of earth. Radio would be HIS only option realistically. But then, this project is far from realistic in just about every way from the VERY LITTLE I know about space. Solar cells are more than reasonable if you plan to head to mars or just about anywhere near the sun. Hell even a few trips in the opposite direction would be fine if you could have a large enough solar array and somehow maintain an orbit somewhere to capture that light.

As for David's response to the RTG. I'm not sure he would be able to acquire a beta emitter, aside from the dangers of handling it. I know very little of beta emitters but i can say that the RTG's in the voyager missions work for a hell of a lot longer than 10 years. Granted they run plutonium 238, they were still able to acquire around 450 watts of power at time of launch. It's half life is like 80 years. To put it in perspective we launched those missions in the late 70's and they don't expect total equipment failure until 2025 at the earliest. 50 years and that's NASA's safety number.

If you want to orbit earth for a few minutes and drop. Build a rocket ship. If you want deep space travel... then you need to design around deep space conditions. Which means nuclear powered, and ION thrusters.

Also wanted to add. The speed at which everyone is mentioning as a needed speed for orbit is not entirely correct. It's the speed required for your average LEO craft. Speed and altitude for orbit are a product of mass. Light objects, which are affected less by gravity would need less inertia (speed) to stay in orbit. Likewise, a larger distance from the earth would have a similar effect, less inertia required.

PS If you had this capability. NASA would hire you. And i'm not knocking you i'm just being real. Unfortunately the average citizen just doesn't have the resources for something like this.

[TonyK33]

Also wanted to say, though iv'e never worked on an RTG i have used Thermocouples in both TEG and TEC form. Very cool stuff, simple and easy to use.

[Aerospace enginireing is my thing]

Hopes*

[Aerospace enginireing is my thing]

Ps i dout ull make it to a wome hole or mars !dont get ur hoped to high!

[Aerospace enginireing is my thing]

Why dont you use some thing more serious for fule like liquid oxygen or liquid nitrogen those are cheap and easy to get and/or u cud use solid fuel. If u get potasiun nitrate and kitty litter u kud make a pretty bad ass rocket.

[milliondollarbrain]

I'm actually working on a project like this myself, I'm making aircraft for a powered ascent to 40,000 meters to clear the rocket itself of lot's of drag.

[Aerospace enginireing is my thing]

I would love to see that will it be a model of a aircraft or will it be made randomly?

[milliondollarbrain]

If you would to make it homemade, you would most likely need a three stage unless you can pull a rabbit out of you hat a make it two stage to acheive 17,000 mph to achieve LEO. Also I like the idea a trans-martian injection

[FredW28]

I think your problem here is summed up in the last two sentences of step 3.

[DAraelwun]

although i like the idea, it is near impossible, and certainly impossible at a low budget (by that i mean lower then any other organization) but there is still a chance for this to happen- study to be a rocket scientist and then join an organization as a 'rocket scientist'

[DAraelwun]

this whole thing would be really expensive, and there is always the chance that you might:

hit an airplane

have it explode/overheat

not even make it to space (you would really need a parachute) + if it comes back down, it could land any where (almost) and if it lands somewhere in water, say bye-bye money, unless you have some 'maneuvers' up your sleeve, and you would also need a global positioning service (GPS)

anything that ever happened to nasa or other space exploration organizations

etc.