How to Build A Rocket - Space Pod 6/23/16

A lot of us have often thought about building our own rockets. And many of us think that that may be outside of our reach, but actually, I want to let you know, you can build your own rockets. And this is your Space Pod for June 23, 2016. It seems like a very complicated process. After all, it's taken billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos a lot of money and a lot of time in order to make their own rockets. Now, if you want to make rockets like them, the easy way to do it is f***. But for those of us who don't actually have any of that stuff, even though it's very easy to get, I know a guy who can help you out, there is a way. There is a way for you to actually make your own rockets. And I'm going to show you how to build a rocket. So we've got everything here that we need to build a high power rocket. But the first thing that we need to do, obviously, is get the rocket out of the box. So our rocket here is going to be pretty sweet, and I really enjoy building this one for you guys. Of course, cut away from yourself, as I'm so proficient with this. Alright. That was not my rocket. That's not it. Alright. So now what you've got to do, you've got to get your rocket out of the box here. I think I'm going to have to clean all that up, but in here, there is our rocket. The kit is here. Now this is the actual kit for the rocket itself. Everything I need in terms of parts to build this rocket is in here. I've got the main body tube, which as you can see, is slotted to allow me to put the fins in very easily. Also, speaking of those fins, here they are. I've got four of them in a bundle. Also, I've got some centering rings here that I'm actually going to put my motor mount in. So this is where the motor of the rocket will go, in the bottom down here. I've also got what looks to be a little payload bay here, just in case I may want to fly something on my rocket. Then of course, I've got the nose cone, which goes on top of the rocket, pointy end going that way, hopefully. I've got this ballistic cord right here, which this will actually attach to one of the centering rings, and then it will attach to the nose cone, and I'll have my parachute on here somewhere between those two ends. That is what will bring my rocket back to the ground safely once it's ejected. In addition to what's in the kit here, there's also some things you have to buy separately, like the motor retainer. This is what allows me to hold that motor inside of the rocket, no matter what forces the motor may apply to the rocket. Basically, it goes on the end of the motor mount, and then you attach it, you put your motor in, put this little screw on, and voila, there you go, your motor will not fall out. In addition to everything you see here with the kit, you can also often purchase other things along with the kit that you're going to need as well, like this. This mild-mannered handkerchief is actually a chute protector. This is made out of Nomex, and this is designed to withstand the ejection charge's heat and pressure, so that way it doesn't melt your parachute. Speaking of your parachute, often you can buy the kits bundled, like I said, with the chute protector and this parachute that we have right here. That may seem like with everything on this table that we are ready to go with our rocket, but there is something that you need to take into consideration, and that is the motors that your rocket are going to be flying on. If we are making specifically a high-power rocket like this, we have to realize that the motors are a very important part of what makes a rocket a rocket. We have to keep that in mind while we're building this as well. For instance, just to give you an example here, I just want to show you this. This is a C motor. This is what most of us who do sport rocketry fly on. Those of you who fly little Estes or Quest rockets, this is typically what you will fly on. This is an H motor. This is how big the difference between low power and high power actually is. I can see that there are still leftovers from the flight of this rocket. It is a used motor. This was a motor that came pre-packaged. You can fly your motor pre-packaged if you actually want to. Or if you'd like to go the cheaper route, you can actually buy kits that will allow you to assemble your motors. To give you an idea of what that looks like, all you need to do is look at this. Here you go. This is everything you need in order to make your own kit. You're also going to need one of these, which is your little motor casing. These can get a little bit expensive, but in general, motors that you have to assemble yourself are usually about $10 cheaper than motors that come pre-assembled. It actually ends up paying off with itself very, very quickly. It also teaches you a little bit more about the science behind rocketry, which is very, very important if you're going to be going out and flying these consistently and you kind of don't want them to explode all the time. Traditionally, the first thing I like to do is sign my motor mount. It's just sort of the superstitious thing I have where if I sign it and I say when it was built and when its first flight was, then it'll fly A-OK. Now I'm figuring out where I'm going to put the centering rings on the motor mount. We want to make sure that they're not too far away from each other, because these are what are going to take some of the force from the motor and transfer that to the rocket. So if they're too far away, that's bad. Now I've got to take the centering ring and I've got to sand it down. I usually use a 60 grit sandpaper in order to get this going, and sanding is one of my least favorite things to do about building a rocket, so let's just go ahead and speed this up a little bit while we're at it. So now that I've sanded my motor mount and I've sanded the inside of my centering rings, I'm going to go ahead and get these ready to go. Now the epoxy I'm using is W60 from 3M. You can use regular 5 minute or even 15 minute epoxy if you want to, but I want to make sure that this holds really well, and 460 does a supremely good job of that. So now I'm scooping up the epoxy, and I'm going to drop some on the centering ring and the motor mount where they both meet at. As I'm doing that, I'm making sure to rotate them around, and trying to get that epoxy on there as evenly as possible. Now I like to wear this specific type of glove. These gloves are known as 9 mil gloves, and that means that they're thick, so that means I can actually use my fingers in those gloves as sort of a guide for where I want to put the epoxy, and I don't have to worry about the epoxy eating through the glove. So that's why I prefer 9 mil, because not only does that allow you to add on the epoxy the way you want it to, 9 mil allows you to reuse the gloves. So if you're a little worried about costs and things with gloves, you can reuse them. So now that I've checked that that centering ring is on there nicely, I'm going to do the exact same thing I did to the first one to the second one. I'm going to make sure to not get any epoxy on that hole there, and then I'm going to get it just good in there, and then I'm going to double check, make sure everything's good, and we'll take it out. Now what I mean by take it out, is I take it out to my driveway where the concrete is, and I put it down in the sun. Putting it in the sun gives it heat. Heat cures epoxy, and that concrete absorbs heat and radiates it as well. And while that's occurring, I'm going to take the bulkhead from my payload bay, I'm going to insert this bolt into there. I'm going to get that set full of epoxy, and I'm going to put the nut on there in the epoxy, and then dab some epoxy onto there to make sure that those aren't going anywhere. Now while those are outside, I'm going to go ahead and take that payload bay, and I'm going to use my glove to put some epoxy on it, and then I'm going to set this, which is the actual payload bay itself. And I'm going to slather on some epoxy on it, and I'm going to attach it to that body tube where the epoxy is that I put on the body tube. And you'll notice that as I'm putting it in there, I'm physically rotating it. So I'm not just rotating it like I was right there, I'm actually rotating it as it goes in. And that makes sure that there's a nice even spread of epoxy, and then of course, let's clean it up a little bit. These parts need to be able to slide into each other easily, so let's just get it ahead. Now I've got the motor mount, now it's done curing with the epoxy, and I'm adding in epoxy to the edges as I put the motor mount inside of the body tube, and I'm working on the bottom of the rocket here. And I'm using my hands again to create that, moving it a little bit just to make sure that the bonds are set, and now that the entire bottom is set with epoxy, I'm going to get to the hard part. This is one of the harder parts of building a rocket, where you have to epoxy the top of your motor mount. That means, in this case of a rocket like this, I've got to drop it down about 36 inches and make sure that it hits the right area, and you've got to be very, very careful because you don't want that epoxy to get in places that you don't need it at. And now, I'm going to do the very hard bit, which is sticking your arm down inside of the rocket, and using my hand to move around a bit to make sure that that epoxy gets evenly distributed. That way, when the forces are applied on the motor mount, that force is also applied equally into the epoxy. That way, it's not going anywhere and not going to destruct itself. Now that I'm done with the body tube, it's time to move on to the fins, and I'm going to sand these, and we sand all of these because you want to have better surface area for that epoxy to latch onto. So, sanding it helps with that bond that the epoxy is going to generate. I've already pre-added my fins into my rocket, and I number them to make sure that they're put in the correct areas, and look at that, I'm not even using a spoon, just using the gloves, and I'm adding on what's called a fillet. I'm laying down epoxy, and I'm creating a bond between the fin and the body tube on both sides. I have to do that with all four of my fins here on my rocket, and I have to be very, very careful with this because this is often where people make their mistake with their rocket. But as long as it looks good, which in this case it does, I think we're ready to get this rocket ready to fly. And of course, when you're ready to fly your rocket, you've got to take a really cool picture of yourself just before you get ready to fly your rocket, because you want to make sure that if you don't have a rocket to come back to, you at least have a picture to come back to. I am walking. Very shortly we lost my rocket, but one of my friends, Eric Giever, was able to take a photo of my rocket during the launch because my GoPros failed. So there it is, flying up and away, and here it is after the launch, my trusty steed, ready to fly again, off into space, and now I've built a rocket, and you can build one too. Thanks for watching the SpacePod, I'm Jared Head. Are you going to build your own rocket? And if you are, are you going to go low power, high power, really high power, multi-billion dollar high power? What are you going to do? Let me know in the comments below. And don't forget to like and subscribe to us across all of the platforms that we are on, and a big, big shout out to all of the patrons of the SpacePods who help make the Tomorrow SpacePods actually happen. These folks have donated per month to allow us to make all of these SpacePods possible. If you do that, you get things like early access to SpacePods, access to things that you wouldn't normally get to see, like bloopers and other things. Consider crowdfunding us at patreon.com slash spacepod. So until the next SpacePod, keep exploring. And the directions. Directions? We'll throw those away. Alright, so...