Adventures from the Technology Underground
Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them
1. high-power
ROCKETS
Your finger hovers over the red button, and you move the microphone close to your mouth. You test the public-address system and are relieved to find that it works: When you speak, your voice is clearly heard all over the firing range.
Several hundred feet away is the launch pad, and on it stands the culmination of many hundreds of hours of labor and many thousands of dollars of your hard-earned discretionary income. It is your rocket, a 15-foot-tall accurate scale model of an American early 1960s solid-fuel Pershing I nuclear ballistic missile. It is a machine that you designed and built from scratch.
Your rocket is loaded with two stages of powerful chemical engines. Like the original Pershing, your motive power comes from two stages of precisely packed chemical fuel arranged in solid form. Each rocket engine is designed such that after it ignites, the gas from the burning chemicals will issue rearward in a high-velocity, high-temperature stream from the ...
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