06-07-2019, 11:47 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Royatl
Um, They did that back in 1993 (there's a photo somewhere of Mary Roberts at a trade show standing next to it). I think they made two prototypes. They flew (and crashed) one at NARAM in 1994. The other one I saw in John Boren's lab at Estes (you can see part of it in the 2019 catalog scale centerfold).
I think had they continued with the Dark Star motors, we would have seen it in production in 1999 or so. The only way they would produce it now is if they had their own G motor. Since Ellis Langford has implied that Estes will stick to black powder, I don't think that will ever happen. But who knows?
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There is another possibility, which Quest pioneered. Their largest kits were (and are) designed to use large single-use and reloadable composite motors that they themselves do not produce (and this was ^before^--if memory serves--they merged with Aerotech as part of the overarching company whose three-letter initials [R-something] appear on Quest order invoices). Estes need not produce any motors--black powder, double-base, or composite propellant--that are more powerful than their E motors. An Estes Super Scale Saturn I, Saturn IB, or Saturn V kit could be designed to use other companies' higher-than-E total impulse motors (such kits could also, depending on their size and weight, use clustered E and/or D motors, just as the 1:100 scale Saturn V kit can use either one D12 or a cluster of three C6 motors). |