Collaborate Disseminate
Since the very beginning, solid-propellants have been the cornerstone of amateur rocketry. From the little Estes rocket picked up from the toy store, to vehicles like the University of Southern …read more Continue reading Open Source Liquid Rocket Reaches for the Sky
Hackaday has been around long enough to see incredible changes in what’s possible at the hobbyist level. The tools, techniques, and materials available today border on science-fiction compared to what …read more Continue reading The Amateur Rocketry Hack Chat Reaches For the Stars
A group of students at Boston University recently made a successful test of a powerful rocket engine intended for 100km suborbital flights. Known as the Iron Lotus (although made out of mild steel rather than iron), this test allowed them to perfect the timing and perfect their engine design (also …read more
Joe Barnard has spent the last three years pioneering DIY landing technologies for amateur rockets and now the aerospace industry is paying attention. Continue reading Meet the Amateur Rocketeer Building Self-Landing Replicas of SpaceX Rockets
When you say that something’s not rocket science you mean that it’s not as hard to understand or do as it may seem. The implication is that rocket science is something which is hard and best left to the likes of SpaceX or NASA. But that’s not the hacker spirit.
[Joe Barnard] recently had an unsuccessful flight of his Falcon Heavy’s second stage and gives a very clear explanation of what went wrong using those two simple concepts along with the thrust, which in this case is just the force applied to the moment arm.
And no, you didn’t miss …read more
Watch “Mad” Mike Hughes beat his own previous record by launching himself to just under 1,900 feet in a homebrew rocket. Continue reading Flat Earther Survives Rocket Launch, Earth Still Round
No one can deny what SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing is a feat of technological wizardry. Building a rocket that takes off vertically, goes into space, and lands back on the pad is an astonishing technical achievement that is literally rocket science. However, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have a few things going for them. They have money, first of all. They’re building big rockets, so there’s a nice mass to thrust cube law efficiency bump. They’re using liquid fueled engines that can be throttled.
[Joe Barnard] isn’t working with the same constraints SpaceX and Blue Origin have. He’s …read more
Hackaday.io user [J. M. Hopkins] had a problem with his rocketry. Telemetry from the rockets came down to Earth via a 433MHz serial link, but picking just the bits he needed from a sea of data for later analysis on a laptop screen on bright sunny days was getting a little difficult.
His solution was to bring the serial data from his transceiver module to an ESP8266, and from that both share it over WiFi and display pertinent information via I2C to an LCD for easy reference. And he’s put the whole lot with a power supply in a rather …read more
