Wednesday 28 October 2009

2 stage water rocket explosion

Today we launched the new 2 stage rocket, but things didn't turn out to well. The new 2 stage rocket has a 2L second stage instead of the 0.5L old rocket.We changed this because the small rocket wasn't secure when attached to the booster, it kept bending when it was full of water because it was too heavy. The new 2L sustainer has a ring fin that just slipped over the top of the booster. The staging mechanism is exactly the same as before.

When we launched it there was no wind and perfect flying weather, but it was only launched at 80psi because the staging mechanism was leaking. This may be the problem why it flew in a big arch. Its strange why the staging mechanism failed because it had worked in all our previous tests. The explosion was really loud and it echoed for while, we are so glad that it didn't land too close to us!
This rocket idea is going to be scrapped because we have had to many problems with 2 stage rockets, we will stick with using single stage rockets because they are much simpler and more reliable. The next project will probably be a new 8L rocket with reinforced bottles and we will attempt to beat our old record of 408ft