Retropropulsive Water Rocketry

[RosPlav Development]

Hi all,

I've noticed many water rockets are very basic in nature and/or don't have many electronic/control systems. I'm looking to create a water rocket that can mimic the Falcon 9 behavior. In other words, I want to launch this rocket with a conventional release mechanism, then, on the descent, use a second pressurized vessel and a set of two gimballing nozzles (in essence an independent system) to deaccelerate the rocket and land. These two nozzles will gimbal on the same mount, but can tilt outwards relative to each other, so that the thrust vector is variable. This eliminates the need for any complicated valves other than a simple on-off valve to initiate the process.

Obviously, there are many engineering challenges related to this, which may be why I haven't been able to find any such successful rockets. If anyone has any experience or knowledge of such endeavours within the water rocket realm, I'd be interested to see them!

-RosPlav Development

[RosPlav Development]

On a side note it appears I've managed to post in the "Introduce yourself" category- oops! I'm a university student pursuing a degree in Robotics Engineering in Canada. I first got started in this stuff as a high school student and have always been particularly interested in control systems and their implementation in water rocketry.