Well yeah but a balloon or something like that is a way to make it more likely that the parachute will deploy from the nose cone. Without one of these extra methods such as a ballon to help the problem is to build a rocket that doesn't go through apogee too quickly otherwise the nose cone will stay on and the rocket will plummet back to earth or go "lawn dart." The way I would fix this is to build your rocket so that the nose cone is just tight enough to stay on while on the launchpad and it will stay on during the flight up. But, during apogee as the rocket has run out of fuel and lost it's battle with gravity, if the rocket is balanced well enough (I use a wad of clay on the inside tip of the nose cone, this also helps the parachute deploy during apogee like described in the wiki Egg-O-Naut Wiki) the nose cone will pop off deploying the parachute.
Alright I'm done preeching
Last edited by starpug on Sat Oct 11, 2008 3:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain
what starpug said is pretty much what is the easiest to do, especially the clay, but look at the wiki or google search water rocket designs and they will give you more information, or you can get the equations and calculate exactly what you need to do, but that usually doesn't work very well
I am a practitioner of the art of magic known as science.
Your post didn't make much sense. Equations - and I'm not sure what equations you're referring to - will not tell you how to actually make the contraption that allows the nose to separate. It will, however, allow you to profile the flight, and predict when the nose will separate assuming that it is able to separate. There's no equation that's going to tell you how to fit a nose onto a bottle, but, it is important to know when that nose is going to separate and at what height. That is going to depend on the mass of the rocket and the mass of the cone...as well as the thrust at launch, although if we assume one constant there, we do not know the actual values but the values in terms of the thrust, which is sufficient provided the thrust is constant (ideally you'll maximize the thrust anyway).
andrewwski wrote:Your post didn't make much sense. Equations - and I'm not sure what equations you're referring to - will not tell you how to actually make the contraption that allows the nose to separate. It will, however, allow you to profile the flight, and predict when the nose will separate assuming that it is able to separate. There's no equation that's going to tell you how to fit a nose onto a bottle, but, it is important to know when that nose is going to separate and at what height. That is going to depend on the mass of the rocket and the mass of the cone...as well as the thrust at launch, although if we assume one constant there, we do not know the actual values but the values in terms of the thrust, which is sufficient provided the thrust is constant (ideally you'll maximize the thrust anyway).
What doesn't make sense? Also I believe you have a valid point equations are helpful, but you can't build your rocket on equations so some testing must be done to figure various things out. It's the same with all building events, all of them have atleast some math behind them, but you need to actually need to test inorder to build a good device: see Trajectory forum. Just saying that the math ain't everything andrewwski.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - Mark Twain
The whole "you can look for designs on the internet or use equations" thing.
The designs you look for (related to nose separation) don't have anything to do with any math equations on the high school level. Knowing the time and height of the rocket that it will separate does though. That's simple math/physics.
You can't calculate how to attach the nose cone or get it to deploy. That's well outside the realm of what anyone here is capable of doing. Nor is it practical. But calculating simple figures such as the height or the time are vital to getting the best results.
Both the math and the testing are important to being successful. But you can't disregard the math totally either. It's like shooting at the moon with no idea how high it is or how fast it's moving.
I think it's two separate issues...but they seem to be getting confused.
sorry if i wasn't clear, you can base some of the stuff you need to build on equations, not much, but the mass of the rocket, and certain other things, and all of the equations are physics, so you could calculate how aerodynamic you need your rocket (calculating velocity going up to figure out how you can get the maximum possible velocity) which would not be above some people, it wouldn't be perfect, but it could make the building stage a little less guess and check
on nasa there are a couple water rocket simulators that can be used to help design the rocket, i wasn't thinking about actual designs off the internet, they might help, but usually not much
I am a practitioner of the art of magic known as science.
