Some notes from the Rocketbelt Convention
Bill Higgins
weekend.
I've posted some notes and pictures on my Livejournal,
<http://beamjockey.livejournal.com>, in particular the following entries:
<http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/45184.html>
<http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/45602.html>
<http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/45428.html>
<http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/46380.html>
<http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/46823.html>
<http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/44512.html>
Take a look, if you're interested.
(Bell Aerospace always made "Rocket Belt" two words, but the conference
organizers glued them together. Possibly that's because rocketbelt.nl is a
nexus for enthusiasts: <http://www.rocketbelt.nl/>)
Wendell Moore worked on the X-1 and subsequent Bell rocket planes from the
1940s onward. After the X-1A lost control around 75,000 feet, and Chuck
Yeager recovered down at 25,000, it was realized that aerodynamic
controls couldn't grip up there. Moore devised a set of reaction-control
jets to be installed in the X-1B-- the ancestor of all reaction-control
systems-- which ran hydrogen peroxide over catalyst to produce oxygen and
steam. Bell manufactured similar systems for other X-planes and for
the Mercury capsule.
So Moore was familiar with small H2O2 rockets. Legend has it that his first
rocket belt design was drawn with a stick in the sand of Muroc Dry Lake,
under the wing of the X-2.
Back in Niagara Falls, his team rigged up a tethered simulator using
nitrogen hoses to test flight stability and control. Having determined
that the basic idea would work, they got a U.S. Army contract to build the
Bell Rocket Belt, flew it on a tether in a hangar for a while, then Harold
Graham flew it untethered for the first time on 20 April 1961.
The rest is history, a lot of which I was soaking up at the conference.
I met a bunch of Bell engineers and their families, and I heard stories
about X-planes, rocket belts, Rogallo wings, and lunar flying vehicles.
I toured the Bell plant. I toured the very fine Niagara Aerospace Museum.
I met several people who had constructed their own working rocket belts. I
witnessed two demonstration flights by Eric Scott and the Go Fast/Jet P.I.
team, right over the street in front of the museum.
It was *so* cool.
--
She was only a | Bill Higgins
rocket scientist's daughter, | Fermilab
but she left the boys | Internet:
exhausted behind her. | hig...@fnal.gov
Pat Flannery
Bill Higgins wrote:
>
>
> (Bell Aerospace always made "Rocket Belt" two words, but the
> conference organizers glued them together. Possibly that's because
> rocketbelt.nl is a nexus for enthusiasts: <http://www.rocketbelt.nl/>)
Okay, it finally dawned on me that the "markings" on the sides of the
top component of the left-hand model two component spaceplane model:
http://static.flickr.com/117/252085327_320ac6602f_o.jpg are windows,
and this is the Bell (?) Hypersonic Transport designed by Krafte Ehricke
and Walter Dornberger in 1957: http://www.buran.ru/images/gif/dorn.gif
The right-hand one is still problematical- what makes it odd is that the
top component seems to date from a later design period than the fairly
crude lower component.
Pat
OM
wrote:
>I met a bunch of Bell engineers and their families, and I heard stories
>about X-planes, rocket belts, Rogallo wings, and lunar flying vehicles.
...Hmm, that's an idea. Combining a rocket belt and a rogallo into an
emergency escape system. The belt gets you up off the ground and out
of the shit, and the rogallo lets you glide down to a safer location.
OM
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allan....@ips.invensys.com
(the USAF were playing with the concept during the Vietnam war with the
addition of a small motor + fan to get you home).
The difference is that the ejection seat uses a solid rocket motor to
get to altitude and the ram air parachute packs smaller than the
rogallo flex wing and glides at a lower speed.
Gene DiGennaro
allan....@ips.invensys.com wrote:
> That sounds like a zero zero ejection seat with a ram air parachute
> (the USAF were playing with the concept during the Vietnam war with the
> addition of a small motor + fan to get you home).
> The difference is that the ejection seat uses a solid rocket motor to
> get to altitude and the ram air parachute packs smaller than the
> rogallo flex wing and glides at a lower speed.
The USAF was also investigating using a deriviative of the Benson
autogyro to achieve the same efffect IIRC.
Gene
Pat Flannery
Gene DiGennaro wrote:
>The USAF was also investigating using a deriviative of the Benson
>autogyro to achieve the same efffect IIRC.
>
>
>
And a parachute that released a small hot air balloon to allow you to
float till a pick-up aircraft or helicopter could snatch you Corona
capsule style.
Or until the North Vietnamese SA-2 missile of spite arrived.
Pat