American Chopper Idea

I don't want to be the first one to try splitting a nose cone. You go ahead and tell us how it works.

As for a large cone being split (using your reference "L to O", I'd say 6" to XX") it would probably require significant reinforcement (read as unneeded weight) to keep the cone structurally sound. Approaching and exceeding Mach flight would add some significant hurdles to this method.

Why do you think that a cone with it's own 'chute untethered from the rest of the rocket is bad? I have a video of one of my large rocket flights where the nose cone, it's 'chute and the main's deployment bag are slowly orbiting the shock lines roughly half way from the main to the airframe. They were not tangled or connected in any way.

I have launched many flights with deployment bags and have never had to walk far to recover the nose cone. If you size the nose cone 'chute properly for the cone's weight using the same descent rate as you use for the airframe, they should be fairly close.

David Holloway

Ah yes, another American Chopper fan. My wife (who doesn't even like motorcycles) and I love that show. Paul,Sr. and Paulie are a riot. I saw the show that you mentioned. The faux missles looked like 50cal bullets, not missiles. As for using a gull wing deployment on a rocket, I'd be concerned with the shock cord getting tangled in the hinged area. You also need to worry about the "doors" wanting to close if deployed while still coasting upwards or after apogee, coming down. Air resistance will try to force the dorrs closed.

Mark Simpson NAR 71503 Level II God Bless our peacekeepers

Comments In-line:

"David Holloway"

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Working on it.

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I thought about welding an aluminum frame inside the cone, and down into the air frame. Just like the motor mount, another tube inside the air frame would house the chutes. The cone would be open like a sliding door as oposed to a gull wing hindge type. The two halfs of the cone would have pannels to keep lines from getting tangled. All of this would be controlled by multi altimiters, and what not.

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------- Not a bad idea... it works! Just trying a diffrent way of looking at it.

Ever see how the shuttle SRB's deploy the chutes? Way cool.

HDS

"Mark Simpson"

'Ya got'a love it when Paul Sr. gets onto Jr. Despite all the yelling, it is obvious that they love each other. That is reallity TV, not those family citcoms.

My post to Mr. David Holloway's msg. explains a'little bit of what I was thinking.

HDS