[roc-chat] Re: Falcon 9 kit
- From: David Erbas-White <derbas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: roc-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 18:42:19 -0700
On 10/14/2012 12:36 PM, James Dougherty wrote:
The kit is definitively not an Estes kit. It is apparently done by/for
SpaceX, but the box, parts, instructions, etc., are not 'Estes' type.
The parachutes are not pre-cut, nor are the shroud lines attached. The
kit also has a (relatively pointless) baffle piece that is not found on
Estes kits. The engine tube has 'laser' markings on it for the upper
centering ring, and the clear acrylic fins also appear to be laser-cut.
The body tube is thicker than an equivalent Estes tube, and has the
markings pre-printed on the tube. It appears to be 'unique', but I'm
not particularly surprised since SpaceX has a reputation for doing a lot
of their stuff 'in house'.
BTW, the reason I say 'relatively pointless' baffle is that it is a
single piece of cardboard with some holes in it. There are other
baffles on the market that have two somewhat similar types of cardboard
glued on to opposing ends of a coupler, but for all of those baffles the
holes are offset so that there is no straight-through path for hot
particles, just gases. In this case it just seems rather pointless --
the open holes still allow hot particles to go through, and do nothing
whatsoever in terms of gas cooling - in fact, they probably just reduce
the amount of gas that is immediately available for blowing out the
parachute, and overpressurizing the area between the engine mount and
the baffle..
David Erbas-White
I saw one at Hobby Lobby and it has an Estes label on it ... Maybe
it's cross-branded (Space-X has a different box) ...
It was intriguing though since I did a double take -- i thought it
might be a high power kit :-)
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