Orbit???

Discussions about rockets, construction materials, adhesives, nozzles, nosecones and fin design.
xenon
Advanced Member
Advanced Member
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:20 pm

Orbit???

Post by xenon »

B.C. inventor wants to put pop bottle rocket
into orbit
http://antigravityresearch.com/

Published: Sunday, February 17, 2008 | 3:42 PM ET
Canadian Press: Scott Sutherland,

THE CANADIAN PRESS CHILLIWACK, B.C. - Mr. Widget wants to go to space.
Ken Schellenberg, who has adopted the alter-ego on his company website, wants to put a simple but
highly engineered bottle rocket into orbit.
This could be impossible, but the CEO of AntiGravity
Research already holds the altitude record for boosting
an elongated plastic pop bottle - propelled by a bicycle
pump, water and a bit of soap - into the air.
Firing the ubiquitous, two-litre plastic container
usually consigned to the recycle bin into space might
create a whole new definition for space junk, but the
dream keeps Schellenberg going.
"I got side tracked off what I should have been doing,
which is electrical engineering," said the red-headed,
49-year-old father of five.
"I named the company before I had anything to do and
people still call wondering if we've got a (Star Trekstyle)
transporter ready or if we've been able to defy
gravity in the way that people think of anti gravity.
"I tell them 'No,' but we're hoping to stumble across
that sometime soon."
From a large workshop in a pasture behind his home
on a wooded mountain plateau high above the Fraser
River valley, Schellenberg designs and builds "stateof-
the-art-technology" pop-bottle rockets.
They're made by attaching plastic or cardboard fins to
an empty bottle, punching a hole in the bottle top to
act as a nozzle and pressurizing the bottle with air
from a bicycle pump.
Add some water before pumping in the air and the bottle will go higher. Add a squirt of dish soap to the
water and it goes even higher.
Schellenberg's two-stage model is easily capable of reaching altitudes of well over 200 metres.
Several years ago, one of his "toy" rockets - actually a Kevlar-reinforced, experimental, single-stage
Ken Schellenberg, shown in a handout photo, wants to put
a simple but highly engineered bottle rocket into orbit.
This could be impossible, but the CEO of
antigravityresearch.com already holds the altitude record
for boosting an elongated pop bottle - propelled by a
bicycle pump, water and a bit of soap - into the air.
missile pressurized with compressed nitrogen and packing high-tech instruments - flew to just under 379
metres.
Based on that research, Schellenberg is now convinced that it will be possible to put a bottle rocket into
orbit. In preparation, he's working on sending a modified two-stage rocket - reinforced with ultra-strong
carbon-fibre and fuelled by liquid CO2 - up about five kilometres.
"I've already got the thing half-built," he said.
But he won't be launching that from his pasture near Chilliwack.
He acknowledged he'll need a proper site where passing airplanes would not be at risk - something along
the lines of the military test facility at Cold Lake, Alta.
He said he'd definitely look for an organization to sanction the attempt at a new record, but he said these
things always take time.
"It always takes me 10 times longer than I thought," he admits. "On the last world record I figured it
would take a month, and it was about two years."
The first record-setting launch is documented at antigravityresearch.com, where Schellenberg sells a
variety of one-and two-stage rocket kits, plus accessories like his China-built bicycle pump which he
says "is the best in the world."
The website also features a dozen or so madcap movies, featuring Schellenberg as Mr. Widget in a white
lab coat and heavy-framed glasses with the pre-requisite adhesive tape repairs.
In person, however, Schellenberg is soft-spoken and extremely self-effacing.
A graduate of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, he spent more than 20 years as a designer in
the digital world, focusing mainly on micro-controller data loggers.
But he said he got bored with the work, while becoming fascinated by bottle rockets.
"They're simple," he said.
"You fill them with a little bit of water and you pump them up with air and then they fly way up and
then come back down."
His shop is filled with machines he has modified or built himself.
Think Wallace and Gromit without Gromit.
One homemade contraption turns out the rocket's three stabilizing fins. It's pieced together with masonry
nails welded to motorcycle chains that pull a sheet of meat-tray material through modified, $40 pancake
griddles from Wal-Mart.
The griddles heat the thin-foam plastic, then the plastic advances to where a tiny vacuum tube holds on
while a heated wire cuts the outline of the piece.
The vacuum then reverses to blow the completed component into a bin. The waste is sent off the end of
the machine into another bin to be recycled.
The machine isn't pretty and plywood and auto-body filler are used extensively.
"If there was a place to go and buy a machine like this I would have. But there isn't, so I had to figure it
out myself."
A metre away, another contraption heats a standard two-litre bottle and an extendible steel rod stretches
it into a more aerodynamic shape. The bottle is then cooled to keep its shape.
Schellenberg has been making his primary living with AntiGravity for seven years through sales almost
entirely on the web, although he does some consulting and still considers himself a part-time hay farmer.
He said schools are among his customers - the rockets are ideal for teaching physics.
"Acceleration, velocity, mass, thrust, all those good things that teachers try so hard to teach the kids," he
says.
He has also sold large numbers of rockets to American Honda Corp. for use in management training
courses, to Whirlpool Corporation for a program with the Boy Scouts, to mechanical engineering
departments of universities, and to the U.S. Army.
Part of the selling point is safety.
"With (my) rockets, there's no burning fuel. The pressurized bottle is 25 feet away from you and the
pump, so if the bottle should burst it's a good safe distance and at only 60 grams, if falls and hits anyone
it doesn't hurt."
He knows because he's tested it himself with rockets falling from as high as 100 metres.
"I tested it in stages," he said. "If a baseball falls 6 inches on to your head, that really hurts, whereas a
rocket of this type falling 300 feet doesn't hurt a bit."
AntiGravity's motto is: "Ongoing research projects of little or no gravity."
Orbit would be the best fulfillment of that. And Schellenberg says he sincerely believe's he'll get there.
"Well, perhaps sincere might be the wrong word. Overly optimistic might be better. It certainly looks
possible," he says with a grin, trailing off.

© The Canadian Press, 2008

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/200 ... 69-cp.html
User avatar
Andromeda
Senior Member
Senior Member
Posts: 144
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 4:21 pm

Post by Andromeda »

Why do you post this nonsense? It looks like a commercial late night TV diet advertisement only for selling of water rocket products. Everyone on here knows how hard it is to go just 300 meters up and you want us to believe 5000 meters is within reach of a water rocket? Youre nuts if you believe this is possible with a rocket made from pop bottles. There's no way to meet the energy requirements or exhaust velocity needed to go that high, and going 5Km is not 'orbit' by any stretch of the imagination.

Posting articles like this makes water rocket builders look like a bunch of crackpots to the rest of the world. Why even bring it up? Shame on you for spreading misinformation and shame on the author of the article for not checking their facts before publishing this propaganda!

Does someone have the email of Mr. Scott Sutherland of the Canadian Free Press that I may write him with a complaint?
Andromeda
No matter where you go, there you are.
- Buckaroo Bansia
User avatar
Mark Chen
WRA2 Member
WRA2 Member
Posts: 179
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:13 pm

Post by Mark Chen »

This story is completely retarded. Who writes this bunk?

"If a baseball falls 6 inches on to your head, that really hurts, whereas a rocket of this type falling 300 feet doesn't hurt a bit."

WARNING: Science Content

Baseball Mass = 145g
Drop Height = 6" (0.152m)
Velocity at impact = 1.73m/s
Kinetic Energy at impact = 0.2165 joules

Water Rocket Mass = 60g
Drop Height = 300' (91.4m)
Velocity at impact = 42.3m/s
Kinetic Energy at impact = 53.7 joules
Mark Chen
Team Enterprise
User avatar
Tim Chen
WRA2 Member
WRA2 Member
Posts: 871
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:44 am

Post by Tim Chen »

I don't "get" it either. The whole thing seems to be an advertisement for AGR. I have my doubts that any of it is true. I bet someone else made those contraptions in his shop and he is saying he created them. Look at how he made up some world record for water rocket pumped by hand. I've never heard of that one before. How did he measure it? How does he know how high everyone else has gone? It's not on his website, so even if someone did beat him how would they even know what his altitude is or how he measured it? If you look at his website it still says he's got the world altitude record and yet he's been beaten several times by a couple of other groups since then.

I also see he's got a 2-stage rocket on his site he claims will go over 1000 feet high. Yeah, right. More like half that! I hope nobody bought one of these things trying to win the 1000' challenge!

Nothing but a snake oil salesman. I'm sure a lot of people will see it and he's probably losing more customers with the false advertisements.

Now I'm pissed off and I'm going to beat his 379 meters just to make a point!
Tim Chen
Captain, Team Enterprise
xenon
Advanced Member
Advanced Member
Posts: 48
Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:20 pm

Post by xenon »

Andromeda wrote:Why do you post this nonsense? It looks like a commercial late night TV diet advertisement only for selling of water rocket products. Everyone on here knows how hard it is to go just 300 meters up and you want us to believe 5000 meters is within reach of a water rocket? Youre nuts if you believe this is possible with a rocket made from pop bottles. There's no way to meet the energy requirements or exhaust velocity needed to go that high, and going 5Km is not 'orbit' by any stretch of the imagination.

Posting articles like this makes water rocket builders look like a bunch of crackpots to the rest of the world. Why even bring it up? Shame on you for spreading misinformation and shame on the author of the article for not checking their facts before publishing this propaganda!

Does someone have the email of Mr. Scott Sutherland of the Canadian Free Press that I may write him with a complaint?
I know it was a load of BS that is why I put a bunch of question marks in the title. I just thought everyone would be interested in it because it was a previous record holder. What it really looks like is that sales must be down at anti gravity research and they concocted this "story" to get some publicity. If you submit an article to enough news organizations then eventually one of them will publish it as "fill"
User avatar
Andromeda
Senior Member
Senior Member
Posts: 144
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 4:21 pm

Post by Andromeda »

Haha he would know. He is the King of fill to get his post count up. He probably is trying to get into privileged topics! LOL!
Andromeda
No matter where you go, there you are.
- Buckaroo Bansia