Some notes from the Rocketbelt Convention

I had a grand time at the Rocketbelt Convention in Niagara Falls, NY last
weekend.

I've posted some notes and pictures on my Livejournal,
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com, in particular the following entries:

http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/45184.html
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/45602.html
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/45428.html
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/46380.html
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/46823.html
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/44512.html

Take a look, if you're interested.

(Bell Aerospace always made "Rocket Belt" two words, but the conference
organizers glued them together. Possibly that's because rocketbelt.nl is a
nexus for enthusiasts: http://www.rocketbelt.nl/)

Wendell Moore worked on the X-1 and subsequent Bell rocket planes from the
1940s onward. After the X-1A lost control around 75,000 feet, and Chuck
Yeager recovered down at 25,000, it was realized that aerodynamic
controls couldn't grip up there. Moore devised a set of reaction-control
jets to be installed in the X-1B-- the ancestor of all reaction-control
systems-- which ran hydrogen peroxide over catalyst to produce oxygen and
steam. Bell manufactured similar systems for other X-planes and for
the Mercury capsule.

So Moore was familiar with small H2O2 rockets. Legend has it that his first
rocket belt design was drawn with a stick in the sand of Muroc Dry Lake,
under the wing of the X-2.

Back in Niagara Falls, his team rigged up a tethered simulator using
nitrogen hoses to test flight stability and control. Having determined
that the basic idea would work, they got a U.S. Army contract to build the
Bell Rocket Belt, flew it on a tether in a hangar for a while, then Harold
Graham flew it untethered for the first time on 20 April 1961.

The rest is history, a lot of which I was soaking up at the conference.

I met a bunch of Bell engineers and their families, and I heard stories
about X-planes, rocket belts, Rogallo wings, and lunar flying vehicles.
I toured the Bell plant. I toured the very fine Niagara Aerospace Museum.
I met several people who had constructed their own working rocket belts. I
witnessed two demonstration flights by Eric Scott and the Go Fast/Jet P.I.
team, right over the street in front of the museum.

It was *so* cool.

--
She was only a | Bill Higgins
rocket scientist's daughter, | Fermilab
but she left the boys | Internet:
exhausted behind her. |

Bill Higgins wrote:
I had a grand time at the Rocketbelt Convention in Niagara Falls, NY last
weekend.


Back in Niagara Falls, his team rigged up a tethered simulator using
nitrogen hoses to test flight stability and control. Having determined
that the basic idea would work, they got a U.S. Army contract to build the
Bell Rocket Belt, flew it on a tether in a hangar for a while, then Harold
Graham flew it untethered for the first time on 20 April 1961.

The rest is history, a lot of which I was soaking up at the conference.

I met a bunch of Bell engineers and their families, and I heard stories
about X-planes, rocket belts, Rogallo wings, and lunar flying vehicles.
I toured the Bell plant. I toured the very fine Niagara Aerospace Museum.
I met several people who had constructed their own working rocket belts. I
witnessed two demonstration flights by Eric Scott and the Go Fast/Jet P.I.
team, right over the street in front of the museum.

It was *so* cool.



When I was a kid, back in 1965-66, Bell demonstrated the rocket belt at
the Santa Clara Valley (now better known as Silicon Valley) Fair in
central California. It was an amazing thing to watch. The pilot was
wearing a white jumpsuit and Bell helmet. He took off and flew about
75-feet in the air while flying in about a 200-ft circle for 30 to 45
seconds. The pilot took off and landed about 50-feet from me. It was
fairly loud, you had to put your fingers in your ears.

Rusty

Bill Higgins wrote:



(Bell Aerospace always made "Rocket Belt" two words, but the
conference organizers glued them together. Possibly that's because
rocketbelt.nl is a nexus for enthusiasts: http://www.rocketbelt.nl/)

Okay, it finally dawned on me that the "markings" on the sides of the
top component of the left-hand model two component spaceplane model:
http://static.flickr.com/117/252085327_320ac6602f_o.jpg are windows,
and this is the Bell (?) Hypersonic Transport designed by Krafte Ehricke
and Walter Dornberger in 1957: http://www.buran.ru/images/gif/dorn.gif
The right-hand one is still problematical- what makes it odd is that the
top component seems to date from a later design period than the fairly
crude lower component.

Pat

On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:57:04 GMT, Bill Higgins
wrote:

I met a bunch of Bell engineers and their families, and I heard stories
about X-planes, rocket belts, Rogallo wings, and lunar flying vehicles.

....Hmm, that's an idea. Combining a rocket belt and a rogallo into an
emergency escape system. The belt gets you up off the ground and out
of the ****, and the rogallo lets you glide down to a safer location.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

OM wrote:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:57:04 GMT, Bill Higgins
wrote:

I met a bunch of Bell engineers and their families, and I heard stories
about X-planes, rocket belts, Rogallo wings, and lunar flying vehicles.

...Hmm, that's an idea. Combining a rocket belt and a rogallo into an
emergency escape system. The belt gets you up off the ground and out
of the ****, and the rogallo lets you glide down to a safer location.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[
That sounds like a zero zero ejection seat with a ram air parachute
(the USAF were playing with the concept during the Vietnam war with the
addition of a small motor + fan to get you home).
The difference is that the ejection seat uses a solid rocket motor to
get to altitude and the ram air parachute packs smaller than the
rogallo flex wing and glides at a lower speed.

wrote:

That sounds like a zero zero ejection seat with a ram air parachute
(the USAF were playing with the concept during the Vietnam war with the
addition of a small motor + fan to get you home).
The difference is that the ejection seat uses a solid rocket motor to
get to altitude and the ram air parachute packs smaller than the
rogallo flex wing and glides at a lower speed.


The USAF was also investigating using a deriviative of the Benson
autogyro to achieve the same efffect IIRC.

Gene

Gene DiGennaro wrote:

The USAF was also investigating using a deriviative of the Benson
autogyro to achieve the same efffect IIRC.



And a parachute that released a small hot air balloon to allow you to
float till a pick-up aircraft or helicopter could snatch you Corona
capsule style.
Or until the North Vietnamese SA-2 missile of spite arrived.

Pat