Project Ragnarok Rocket

Introduction

When I was a young and naive maker, I was a bit bored with my friend Polo and we decided to use our last moment of high school to build an experimental rocket out of garbage. I now look back with nostalgia at those days of hope, enthusiasm, and thoroughly non-academic work!

Here is the short film we made of the build and... "launch". Who would have thought that a rocket motor made out of random metal pipe, sugar, and KNO3 would violently explode, destroying the entire rocket!? Probably for the best, since I'm not too confident about the structural integrity of the rocket in flight...

Video of building and launch of Ragnarok I.

I will soon add more details about the project, but in the meantime here are some out-of-context images !

Ragnarok 2

After this rather pathetic first attempt, I spent a lot of time working on the electronics (to avoid any brutal injury). I ended up building a whole new parachute deployment computer and a ground computer to control the launch and do live flight analysis.

Ground computer of Ragnarok II.

Inboard computer prototype (GPS, acceleration, altitude, radio communication).

Altitude controlled parachute deployment system.

Ragnarok I motorization (which exploded).

Plastic motor prototype.

Plastic motor prototype (short burst of trust then slow burning).