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Originally Posted by A Fish Named Wallyum
I cloned a Lambda 8, Phobos, Theta 37 and Zeus recently. They're simple designs, but always get a "What?" when they're announced at the pads. Perfect B6-4 Field flights on an A8-3. Got any more MRI plans, Scott?  |
These "sleeve tube motor mount" rockets (like the MRI Icarus:
http://plans.rocketshoppe.com/mri/m...5/mri3-7205.htm ) not only look sharp, and are aesthetically different (and sometimes, "less is more"--give me a simple black-and-white checkerboard roll pattern like the Icarus's over today's kiddish-looking, 'toddler-art color blobs' any day!), but I'd wager that they perform well on low total impulse, too! The motor selections in MRI's 1969 catalog (see:
http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...9/69mricat.html ) suggest this:
They had only four motor types (all 18 mm--and their body tube sizes were metric [their nose cones and transitions also matched several of MPC's, AVI/AVI Astrport's, and--in balsa--Quest's]): the A3-2, B3-3, A3-0, and B3-0. Their most massive kit, the Zenith Two, was 1.5 oz., (and was [and still is] 18" long), and their largest rocket--the 21" long Theta 37--weighed 1.3 ounces. For these and MRI's other kits--most of which were in that same mass/length/drag "ballpark"--to perform well on A3 and B3 motors (and they were rated in newton-seconds rather than the pound-seconds of the earliest model rocket motors)--they had to have been aerodynamically efficient. Also:
MRI's kits--including the Icarus--would make great school and youth group kits, including for Industrial Arts/Technology classes, which involve workmanship. In addition to the rockets themselves, the students (or youth group members) could also build their own launch pads and launch controllers (instructions and a schematic for which are in the Icarus instructions [and a drawing is in the 1969 MRI catalog], in both of the links above).