Building a Rocket-Drone

this is an entirely new type of hybrid aircraft I've been developing over the past month to find out if a rocket powered drone can actually fly taking off vertically using electric motors transitioning to forward flight and then using a powerful rocket engine to accelerate through a super fast top speed way for the past 4 years I've been building and flying rocket propelled airplanes here on the project air YouTube channel seeing a fair amount of success alongside a few spectacular failures but this would be the first time I'd attempted to build a rocket powered drone and this latest challenge would turn out to be rather difficult to say the least involving a ton of testing experimentation crashing and rebuilding before we finally got it right the plan was to take a basic 5-in racing quadcopter and combine it with a model rocket like with my previous rocket planes a powerful model rocket motor would fire midair acting as a booster stage that would allow it to fly to a higher top speed the big question was the though would the Drone spiral out of control or would its flight controller be able to keep it stable the aims of this project were one could we get this rocket drone to actually fly and two could we get it to fly at over 100 mph and survive the first step was to build the Drone that would become the test bed for this project I've never built a race drone before so I got my new helper Emma to put one together as she's really great at building things like this after a bit of problem solving Emma had the Drone assembled and ready for a first first tentative hop into the air yes it works we got it working oh I'm so pleased it was now time for me to fly the Drone outside and get used to flying at high speeds I'd only ever flown a race quad a few times before so needed a bit of practice flying from the perspective of the fpv feed through my video goggles before long though I was comfortable pushing it and maneuvering around the [Music] trees now it was time for our first test to see how fast this drone would fly on electric power alone so I fitted a small GPS device to the aircraft to gather data about the [Music] flight so how fast was this 5-in drone and how much faster would we need to go to make it over 100 mph okay stop read 98 km an hour there we go so that was our top speed as of today let's see if it goes any faster with some Rockets careful small Rocket Motors as you might already know are used by hobbyists to launch model rockets inside the casing of a model rocket motor solid fuel containing an oxidizer Burns outwards from the center and the hot gases from this reaction expand out of the specially shaped nozzle at super high speeds propelling the rocket in the opposite direction these Rocket motors are usually set off electronically with with a small electronic igniter inserted into the nozzle where it touches the fuel the resulting spark when power is applied to this igniter sets off the Rockets which burns until all of the fuel has run out to test the same rocket engines we'd be using on the Drone we decided to try one out on a standard model rocket to see just how high it would go okay ready yep 5 4 3 2 1 ignition can you see it straight ahead oh yeah oh yay the parachute came out so that rocket engine was very very powerful as you saw the rocket went very high indeed so yeah what's going to happen when we go horizontal with one of those rocket engines on the Drone we're going to have to see aren't we before jumping straight into strapping this large rocket to our drone we first needed to do some low power experiments to see if the onboard flight controller would keep the aircraft stable as the rocket fired the idea for keeping our rocket drone stable was to place the rocket motor along the nominal center of gravity on the Drone which is the point at which the Drone pivots theoretically as the rocket fires the Drone Motors will then be able to easily compensate for any instabilities through increasing and decreasing the RPMs as normal would this actually work though we'd have to find out I 3D printed a range of motor mounts for a range of different Rocket Motors starting with some very small low thrust Motors I made a simple Launchpad from foam board so that the rocket engine could be kept off the ground with this test we're going to be using fuses because fuses are actually like a very simple and reliable way of starting a rocket motor what this test is all about is to see whether the Drone is still stable when it has a rocket booster underneath it it's not going to provide tons of thrust but it will sort of boost us a little bit and show whether the flight controller can cope with the extra you know weird thrust that it's getting so yeah this is really a big proof of concept thing not sure if it's going to work but that's what this test is for well it's working it's definitely [Music] working [Music] wow well first rocket boosted test was such success let's go bigger these next Motors were actually a little weird as they had pulsating irregular Burns but this was just not a problem for the flight controller with these larger engines that had more thrusts the Drone was now able to hover without as much power to the electric motors still smoking right now it was time to go much larger the previous rocket engines had produced just a few hundred G of thrust but now we were going to see what would happen if we fitted a rocket engine with kilog of thrust to the bottom of the Drone if this worked and the Drone didn't crash we'd really be onto something right so we've got an fsize rocket engine here and that's going to go in this new adapter underneath and now look at this thing that looks like it means business so yeah let's give it a test right on my mark yep so we're going to go for ignition in 5 4 3 3 2 1 oh my goodness you pooped it out I pooped it out I'm through the smoke right coming in for a landing quite close to us oh yes we we did it success another successful test flight yeah sick now we Prov that you could successfully strap a huge rocket to a drone without it crashing it was time to radically modify this aircraft to make it much more streamlined so we could attempt to beat our Target of getting it over 100 mph using the rocket booster for this I decided the simplest idea would be to build an aerodynamic shell around the frame using model rocket parts [Music] I reassembled the Drone frame with the new 3D printed plates before reinstalling all of the electronics The Next Step was to modify the model rocket components removing the base of the plastic nose cone and cutting the fuselage tube in half so it could slot either side of the Drone core at this point I could glue in the centering rings for the rocket engine before turning attention to Preparing the four bollewood fins which were delicately sanded into shape with curved leading and trailing edges which would reduce drag and help the Drone to fly faster these were then carefully aligned and securely glued to the lower Fus Lage tube to make up the fin can and with that we were making some real progress I found with my previous project on this channel the SR71 that gold is a great color for these highspeed vehicles as it really stands out against the sky and also against grassy fields which is helpful for finding the aircraft if it makes a force Landing far away so after adding a good few coats of this gold spray paint I could prepare all of the parts for final assembly but now how would I stop the 3D printed parts from melting as you saw earlier I 3D printed the rocket engine mount from plastic but as it turned out from some static tests this wasn't the best idea as the plastic Mount actually melted to the rocket engine during the burn meaning I couldn't replace it I needed to use a material that wouldn't melt so decided to print the exact same motor mount file in titanium using PCB Way's metal 3D printing service as PCB way is actually sponsoring this week's video with an ad after uploading the file receiving a quote and placing an order online the part arrived in just a few days and could be unboxed ready to use anyone who has access to CAD software can design and upload almost anything to PCB Way's website for it to be manufactured remotely and delivered just a week or so later which is really cool I definitely recommend checking out the PCB way website and playing around with the online configurator to see what sorts of Parts you could get manufactured for your projects you can get comp made in all sorts of ways there's so many things I can't even remember what's there you just need to check them out on the website I will definitely be using PCB way again as it opens so many doors to so many different projects that I've been wanting to do on this channel so check out PCB way with this link or click the link in the description with the rocket engine problem now solved it was time to add the battery Mount and screw everything together to prepare for the first test hover with the AOS shell [Music] yes take that SpaceX so the Drone still flew absolutely fine but would the large fins make changing direction at high speeds more difficult we'd have to wait for the first high-speed test flight up at the Flying Field back in the workshop now I just needed to add an fpv camera and importantly the remote rocket ignition system I found the simplest solution was to Simply re use the system on my SR71 Blackbird featured in the previous project air video so I scavenged all the parts I needed from that aircraft and then soldered them together with the Drone Electronics whoa blly me finally I needed to solve the problem of where to stick a camera on this drone which is easier said than done my idea was to cut a hole in the nose cone that could be fitted with a transparent vacuum form canopy from a model airplane kit this would provide a highly stream line bubble to fit the fpv camera in facing at such an angle that I could fly the aircraft at an extreme angle of attack while seeing the ground and the [Music] Horizon right then time for the first test flight of the complete rocket drone so let's put this in the car head up to the Flying Fields and then we'll see just how fast this thing can go so let's crack on with it [Music] our plan was to test the rocket drone incrementally at higher and higher speeds but before fitting any rocket engines I wanted to just fly the aircraft on electric power alone using the fbv goggles for the first time to check the angle of the camera was correct I'm going to take off sort of line of sight and then I'll stand next to you little did I know though that everything was about to go very wrong very quickly 3 2 1 taking [Music] off so I'm facing us right now right putting FV goggles on oh no something's gone oh I've got the controls the wrong way around right I'm going to try and bring it down oh God this is going to go badly I gained altitude to give myself more time to work the problem but it wasn't looking good I'm going to have to focus what's gone wrong oh no I'm going in oh the controls are all the wrong way around oh dear oh that doesn't look good what a disaster Emma and I headed back to base to make a cup of tea get out the Whiteboard and figure out what went wrong and I had a feeling that it had something to do with the camera I think this is it so this was the rear that's the front and the camera was on the rear is it not meant to be no I think the camera was on the back of the Drone so left and right were wrong forers and backwards were wrong as well all you had going was the thrust really yeah so the the camera bubble was here and it was facing downwards like you know down at the ground yeah so wait that means that yeah that was it so I just put the control I basically inversed the controls by having the camera on the back of the Drone rather than the front of the Drone yeah so flying normally was absolutely fine that was as it had been on the previous test but then when I put the goggles on everything was the wrong way around ah oh no that would be it right guess we should just rebuild this with the camera on the right side of the Drone okay after a few days of rebuilding I could hope that all of this extra efforts wouldn't be wasted again I'm nervous so test flight one will just be a quick takeoff go around the fields check everything's working then land then Test Flight 2 is going to be the first rocket powered test flight with an F size and that was the same size that was on the SR71 if we survive all of those test flights it'll be a miracle cuz this thing is such an experimental aircraft nothing like this has been flown before it's a bit rainy but I think on many historic test flights in the UK that has been the case now now with the camera on the front of the Drone rather than the rear I was confident that the reverse controls issue was solved would this be the case though and how fast would the Drone go on electric power alone you ready y yep 3 2 1 goggles on okay I'm going to go from left to right okay God this thing is well fast I'm going to try and bring it down tell me when I'm nearly at the floor [Music] nearly well it flew it flew that was so fast that was really smooth it was so fast yeah thanks yeah no right let's try and find it see if it's in one piece oh is it okay I think the only damage is on the as far as I can tell is is just on the tape join here oh oh good oh what relief now to check the GPS to see how fast the Drone had gone the speed oh 121 this Arrow shell uh with a rocket um sort of shell on it has definitely helped to some extent now it was time for the second test flight with the goal to fire a rocket engine midair for the first time starting on board recording for this flight I decided to fit a high defition camera to the aircraft pointing towards the tail so we'd have a better view of the rocket ignition could we go faster than 100 mph and land safely y okay taking off yep okay lining up for the Run Okay pushing throttle to full and 3 2 1 ignition okay I'm going to come in for a landing now keeping the nose up I'm losing signal we've got a lot of static pretty appro okay flaring and 3 2 1 yes first ever rocket drone successful takeoff Landing flight Etc woo so the big question had we achieved our targets and built a rocket drone capable of flying over 100 milph [Music] read high five I I oh that was brilliant so we did it we actually got this thing to fly go over 100 mph and survive so that's all missions complete which is quite extraordinary really for this sort of uh highly experimental airplane or not airplane I don't even know what this thing is so what did we actually learn from this project well one drones shaped like rockets do actually go a bit faster which is uh a bit surprising but uh then again maybe kind of obvious because drones usually are a bit brick shaped aren't they but the most important thing that we learned was that this whole concept a rocket booster drone is possible and the flight controller can completely stabilize a rocket on the bottom of a drone which is absolutely ridiculous really I didn't think it was going to work as well as it did and finally there are advantages to having a vertical takeoff and Landing rocket powered vehicle over a more conventional airplane if you've seen my previous video with the sr7 1 this definitely was a lot easier to launch now I think it's worth remembering that this was only a 5in quad with a pretty sort of standard setup with a four cell battery and not all that much power so if you want to see me build something that's a lot more powerful and uses maybe even bigger rocket engines then type in the comment section let me know and you never know I might build an even bigger more powerful version of this one thank you very much to you for watching this video I really appreciate it here's a link to another video that I think you might like if you got to the end of this video and yeah subscribe to the channel there's a link down here somewhere thank you very much to my patreons and I'll see you on the next one see you later

Channel: ProjectAir

Views: 513,807

Keywords: James Whomsley, whomsley, James, projectair, 3d printing, rc, r/c, airplane

Id: 0wWA62CLeXw

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024