Make: Rockets

Chapter 21. Air Rocket Glider

When an airplane goes into a dive, the lift of the wing or the tilt of the horizontal stabilizer causes the plane to pitch up at high speed, so it recovers. That doesn’t work well for a rocket, though, which would generate enough speed to spiral around in loops! Icarus, from Chapter 20, solves this problem by moving the motor well ahead of the wings and tail surface. Here, we’ll look at another approach.

Daedalus

There is another way to prevent the rocket glider from looping as soon as it leaves the pad, and that’s to change the shape of the aircraft. That’s the approach Rick Schertle used in a rubber band–launched glider he presented in MAKE volume 31 (also available online). The glider uses a really cool mechanism ...