lethal model rockets?

[senom]

if you go into a model rocketry store you can buy a simple rocket, the mosquito
it's basically a nosecone and fins that you can slide onto a small engine, trying to get that little thing as high as possible. what would happen if you made a lrge mosquito out of a much heavier (home made) engine?

i was looking into a site that had directions on how to make size G engines out of easy, legally available, things when i came across a wrning that said you want to be carefil testing these as if one comes flying at you it will be able to go through you. i'm not sure how much exageration went on there, but it got me thinking.

one could quite easily make a rocket that's a foot tall, and an inch and a half in circumference that could easily punch well in to a person, if not through them.

mainly have a large fuel supply, a sharp nose cone, and sharp fins.

my general source for information, a few selected articles:
http://users.cybercity.dk/~dko7904/motor.htm

the home made engine site
http://members.aol.com/sspacepyro/PVCRM/buildyown.html

a site describing another way to make basically the same fuel that the above article used
http://www.jamesyawn.com/rcandy/index.htm

[Silentnite]

Actually aiming at the person and having the rocket go where you want it to would be very hard to do. Plus, carrying it around and prepping it...I think it'd have to be a short range weapon unless you were trying to turn it into an RPG.

[mediumcaliber]

You'd want some kind of tube launcher, I suppose, and you'd probably want it to exit the launcher at the highest possible speed to reduce the amount of backblast directed into your face, which for small rockets should be possible with a closed breech. I once saw a website where someone epoxied D size motors into the fronts of pieces of PVC tube and drilled holes through the walls right behind the nozzles so that they would allow airflow and the tube would act as an ejector nozzle. Doing this should make an aerodynamically stable missile without fins because the center of mass is shifted forward relative to the tube, which now has most of the friction drag. The holes are essential, because without them the tube acts as a nozzle and vastly overexpands the exhaust, decelerating it. They also need to be evenly spaced, or else the thrust will be off center.

As for using this as a KE weapon, it will take a "model rocket engine" a significant distance to burn out and/or reach maximum velocity, so you will either be too close to do a whole lot of damage, or too far to have a very good chance of hitting. Rockets have a much less predictable (by eye) trajectory than ballistic projectiles.

[senom]

another idea that came to mind after posting this was to have multiple rockets, connected with thin wire. thin wire moving at high speeds with that much force behind it should be able to cut flesh...(possibly wrap around somone like a very thin bola)

but that seems less practicle, and more difficult than launching many of the PVC type rockets at the same time... shotgun style. it would be pretty easy to rig up a portable launcher that could pull it off.

[Child-of-Bodom]

I have played a long time with another idea, even more lethal... I don't feel like making a separate thread, so I'll post it here.

Design a rocket which can fly horizontally. This will be a though task, as you need to set the fins in such a way that they compensate for the gravity...

The idea was to have a rocket with a charge in it's cone, not one which is ignited by the endburn of the engine, but on impact... The ignition can be easily archived by a simple switch on top of the rocket and a relay and a capacitor inside. To be safe, the capacitor can be charged just before launch, this will give the one who sets up the rocked a bit more comfort.
Furthermore is a shaped charge of course the best you can make, but that will involve a lot of timing to be done, and quite a few tests to be done...

If it is impossible to launch a rocket horizintal, one can aim it a little high, and fly with a nice flat bend towards the target. I've spoken to a guy who has fired a wire-operated rocket in the military, and even those ones are very hard to steer. The SC in those ones is rather inpressive, it'll go all the way through 1m of steel!
I have no time anymore to do this project, but I think it is a lethal model rocket...:D

[TreverSlyFox]

While the "Idea" of using a rocket to hit a man might sound cool, it doesn't work out well. The Military has spent millions to develope anti-personal weapons and rockets just don't make it except on a large scale.

The military sticks with gernade launchers for anti-personal use like the M-79 "Blooper" of the Viet Nam era and the now used M-203 launcher mounted below the M-16 or M-4. Both 40mm gernade launchers with a varity of different rounds from explosive to flachett (SP?).

As far as rockets go the closest would be the old "LAW" system but it was designed for use against bunkers or lightly or non-armored targets like APCs or trucks. I sort of doubt the old LAW would bother a Bradley IFV or the Marine LAV now. Which is why they've gone to the newer AT-4 system and the up-graded TOW system.

[senom]

i'm thinking of this kind of thing as something you could do if, god forbid, you were put in a modern day warsaw uprising...

in which case it would be a whole lot easier to get you hands on things like the ingredients for rockets than on good quality weapons...

(but i suppose, a rocket is still a pipebomb with a nozzle)

[Jacks Complete]

(but i suppose, a rocket is still a pipebomb with a nozzle)
Most propellants won't explode effectively, as they are designed to burn at a regulated rate throughout the burn time of the rocket. They work hard to avoid CATO as this annoys and injures people.

The difficulty with a rocket bullet are myriad, and a reading of the history of the Gyrojet will teach you a lot about the issues.

Good luck!

[Chris The Great]

Rockets probably wouldn't be useful for using against people, unless the people are in large groups.

However, leaving a GPS reciever equipped cellphone sitting under someones car to guide remotely launched rockets to it could work.

Wipe epoxy on a cellphone equiped to allow parents to 'keep and eye on' their children, turn it on, and toss it onto something. Guy with the rockets picks up the signal (and perhaps a phone call to tell him what kind of rocket to send, for example shaped charge or CW warhead, etc) and launches one. The rocket flies up, travels to near the signal, then turns down and hits it completely by surprise :)

Such a system is going to work better than to just point a rocket at someone and shooting, they can easily jump to the side and dodge it until it gets up to speed. Now, if said person has a cellphone that happens to be guiding the rocket towards them, so it falls from the sky at 800km/h, he's probably screwed (though it begs the question, wouldn't it be alot easier to just shoot him?). A laser guided rocket, with someone with a accurate laser shining it on the target, could also work.

(Please note this post ignores the probably extremely numerous difficulties of building said guided rockets)

[tomu]

Here is a webpage which might be of interest to some one who wants to build a simple guided missile:

http://www.webcom.com/sknkwrks/rcrock.htm

http://www.webcom.com/sknkwrks/guidance.htm

[Jacks Complete]

A far better and easier way to do what you suggest with a mobile phone would be to make a small IR emitter that flashed a code.

It would be like a remote control for a TV, but small. It could run for a few days off a small lithium battery, unlike a mobile which would only run for a few hours (and run up a bill, and be easily traceable).

This code could be changed depending on warhead type, and a dual shape charge could be used.

Making a small detector for IR is far easier to do than RF, as directionality is far easier. A small B&W RF wireless video camera could be used to provide a feed, and guidance would be as you wanted, either fully auto or steerable.

Of course, sticking the emitter to a good place might be the hardest part.

[FUTI]

I think this isn't great issue compared to other better one I have read on Forum so far, but it started a discussion that gave good new information and tracks I haven't followed so far. I wish to thanks Jack's Complete for mentioning Gyrojet that I knew nothing so far. Also I have a question...does anyone have a reliable info about caseless ammo, as I somehow gained an impresion that Gyrojet falls in that category? I know that there were some test for tank caseless ammo for new USA tank, that didn't go well - I saw some video material with orange coloured blasting cloud coming out of turret in the opposite end from the barrel which wasn't promising at the time I saw it - hell it was about 8-10 years ago.

[Emc2]

Didn't ancient Chinese use "small rockets" to deliver BP grenades for currently medium (then long) distance damage; exept instead of "piercing" the enemy they would rather blow them up?

The trajectory and distance would have to be experimented with, but with consistant propelant should be predictable and trainable to anybody.

[Jacks Complete]

I think Gyrojet could be considered caseless, since the entire round flew off, leaving nothing in the chamber.

There are a few caseless rifles, but they aren't widely used. The advantages are many
- less weight and mass to carry, cheaper (as copper is both heavy & expensive),
-faster rates of fire, simpler mechanism , ambidextrous, less dirt ingress, less flash around the ejection port, - generally no ejection issues
-ammo can't fire itself as there is no case to build pressure outside the gun
-no trail of brass left behind, no ejection noise
I'm sure you can think of others.

The downsides are bad, though. Clearing the gun is really hard. A jam breaks the gun, as there is nothing to pull on. Loose ammo stands no chance, it can get damp, dirty, and damaged and become dangerous. It's also more of a fire risk, and isn't as resistant to shock or physical effects.

Personally, I'd be looking at liquid hydrocarbon propellants and small guided projectiles if I were doing weapon R&D. Which I'm not. Honest.

The Chinese used aerial battery salvo attacks mostly to scare, rather than to kill. If you can inspire terror in the army you face, you are half way to victory. I'm sure they used hand grenades, too, though, which must have had some lethal effect in a crowd/formation of troops. (though nothing like a modern one, or even a bottle of petrol!)

Aerodynamics is a big and hard subject. Getting ten small things to do the same thing even twice out of ten is very hard. Darts are designed to be very accurate, and are exensive, yet beyond about 10 yards, they would be impossible to hit anything with. And that's just a thrown object at short range. Move back to 100 yards and put a little motor in it, and it will go all over the place. Even with a very tight manufacturers tolerance and great care, they are not going to be going the same way time after time. (It is thrilling when they chase you though.)

Unless it is guided, you are not going to do well. Terminal guidance will ensure you can hit the broad side of a barn from the inside every time, not just 10%.

Oh, and don't forget wind effects and gravity. Your sleek finless rocket will not have enough drag, so will tumble. So you add fins. Then it won't fit. So you reduce the payload and/or fuel, and springs, and have them pop out after take-off. But they now get pushed by the wind. And they aren't accurate any more even without wind, as the fins are a bit wobbly. So you go for a spin stabilisation idea, and find that the rate of spin varies dramatically with time of flight, and suddenly you can't have fins that lift a bit to stop the rocket dropping into the ground...

It is definately non-trivial.

[GBowski]

another idea that came to mind after posting this was to have multiple rockets, connected with thin wire. thin wire moving at high speeds with that much force behind it should be able to cut flesh...(possibly wrap around somone like a very thin bola)


Wouldn't it be a lot easier to to make a pneumatic launcher or "spud gun" and load it with bolos, rathat than stringing up a bunch of model rockets and praying that they go off all at the same time?
This opinion comes both as a hobbiest with model rockets and a pneumatic launcher designer and builder.

[Gollum]

If you have the resources to make rockets capable of penetrating metal, those resources could have been better spent making a gun, or making a rocket designed to launch more serious payloads.

For example why not use a multi staged, radio controlled rocket design to launch an explosive payload. You could even simplify it by making the payload the controllable platform (Think MIRV here) and simply steer it onto your target walleye tv guided munition style with a small radio transmitter camera and RC joysticks. There's endless possibilities.

In the end though if you want a rocket capable of really taking out targets you need to design your own engine. For safety sake I would say that a liquid engine design would work best as long as quality components are used, unless you are very experienced in creating solid fuel rocket engines capable of high thrust ratios (impulse). Liquid fuels are also easier to obtain. God help you if you fuck it up though. If liquid fuels mix on the pad you had better get out of the area, not only is it extremely poisonous but the whole unit will explode. That's one advantage of solid fuel motors.

In short; the best option for taking out a medium to large sized target is a guided or ballistic rocket with either an accurate launch and rocket guidance procedure, or a ballistic rocket with guided payload system in place. The second option is much less complicated than the first unless you are talking about doing this at extremely long ranges from launch site.

If you want to take out small targets with a line of sight rocket, you're better off using something already available like an RPG or recoiless launcher. Even a potato gun could be substituted for a rocket, with a little practice in marksmanship.

Edited to add:
There is a way to retain guidance for your 'mirv' once it gets far away. You need to have another airborne relay between yourself and the target to pass the signals back and forth. So basically, a repeater. You could put it on a balloon, an RC airplane, or even a real plane flying over the area. As long as it's within radio range. The TV signals would be the hardest to keep from fading out.

[Chris The Great]

Or, a parachuted repeater launched from the rocket could be used to pass on the signal. Keeps it all as one unit. Or a glider, or something. Maybe a ballon that it filled with helium from a canister.

Either way, it would be best that it is launched from the rocket if you're going to be doing something that complex anyway.

[NoltaiR]

This thread actually gave me an idea that made me laugh...

In reality it would be very hard (if not impossible) to have a rocket hit a target as small as a person.. especially if it is a moving target. You would need all the stuff the military uses; lasers, precision guidance systems, not too mention you have to know how to build the damn thing to begin with.

But being a little hypothetical, say you could come up with a rocket with a range of a few hundred yards, and the nose cone was fitted with some sort of blade, and you had all the necessary instruments to get it to the right location.

What an odd assassination that would be. The guy is walking around in the park.. maybe chatting with an old friend. When out of nowhere comes a high-pitched hissing noise. The target stops to see where the noise is coming from.. when he gets speared right in the chest. When officials try to find the killer, they don't have a whole lot to go off of.

The rocket could have been sent from anywhere.

[Gollum]

It would make a lot more sense to shoot the guy in the head with a supressed rifle or a rifle from a great distance.

If you're going to use a rocket it should either be extremely high power line of sight (high explosive or other similar warhead) or of the guided/ballistic type with a huge warhead or some kind of chemical/bio payload. Otherwise everything is just easier accomplished with a gun and bullets.

[NoltaiR]

Like I said, just hypothetical.. because obviously the idea serves no real purpose beyond a comical thought.

It would be just as amusing to get a gas-powered model airplane and mount a remote-controlled pistol to it. Just have a pinhole wireless camera on the front of it that transmits to your location on a discreet frequency. You would just have a TV set up and you would have the radio controls for the plane in hand. It would be like playing a video game.

[Gollum]

Here's another freebie for anyone who's at all interested in building a ballistic or cruise missile. You can buy all your guidance equipment for under 150 dollars US.

Flight controls computer: PDA capabable of running Windows or linux. I.E. Dell AXIOM or Zaurus linux pda.

Navigation system: Portable GPS receiver with attitude readout, if attitude readout not available then use high speed gyros to control pitch functions.

Write the software to link it all up and connect it to servos or other control surface movers. It could probably be written in visual basic.

For a cruise missile you could have a missile less than 10 feet long with 'good enough' accuracy especially if delivering non conventional payload. For ballistic trajectory missile your accuracy is going to be extremely high especially if you include visual or IR seeker technology in the nose of the missile for terminal homing.

[Jacks Complete]

Yes, you could. GPS will work for your guidance, with a terminal phase guidance from a secondary sensor. There's a guy in New Zealand who built a cruise missile with a pulsejet engine a while back, and a long range large size model airplane would do the job at slower speeds and with better endurance.

VB would be rather slow. You would need an ASIC or Stamp2 (or better) microcontroller, for control and reading the gyros, which you would need, as otherwise the 1 second updates from your GPS is going to screw you right up, as it is too slow for something that could roll three or four times in a second!

The other option I thought of, was to have two or three GPS units, and stagger the readings, giving a reading every .5 or .33 of a second. Perhaps best would be to have a reading at t and t+0.05, then wait a second, as this would remove all uncertainty.

Anyhow, we all know that using a model rocket for anything dodgy is nearly impossible, which is why they are still legal in both the UK and USA. Of course, the twats at the DHS are still getting twisted panties about them, claiming they could shoot down airliners! But the odds are tiny, and anyone who solved the guidance issues would have zero difficulty with the building of a rocket engine! Also, without a payload, what would your Estes rocket do?

Finally, they would ban them overnight, certainly in the UK, if someone did something "interesting" with (or even without) one.

[akinrog]

VB would be rather slow. You would need an ASIC or Stamp2 (or better) microcontroller, for control and reading the gyros, which you would need, as otherwise the 1 second updates from your GPS is going to screw you right up, as it is too slow for something that could roll three or four times in a second!

If I were to build something like that I would not be using faster reading, since AFAIK non-commercial (i.e. non-subscription) GPS services are not accurate and reading several times per second may wreak havoc on guidance and stability. And even subscription GPS are not accurate enough to guide missile to an accuracy which is par with military systems. AFAIR, military systems use another (encrypted?) signal in addition to conventional GPS signal to achieve better accuracies.

The other option I thought of, was to have two or three GPS units, and stagger the readings, giving a reading every .5 or .33 of a second. Perhaps best would be to have a reading at t and t+0.05, then wait a second, as this would remove all uncertainty.

This would be a more feasible option, I believe. But again, it would be a pain in henie to write a good algorithm to calculate mean of the readings properly to represent true mean value of the coordinates. Regards

[Gollum]

Well in my example I am not talking about a high explosive warhead munition. Frankly, in my opinion, I do not think it's realistic for people to be creating guided munitions with enough accuracy to destroy targets at great distance with a HE warhead. The guidance software would have to be very robust and would take ages to design.

But you most certainly can use off the shelf GPS for guidance and it is absolutely accurate enough, you can buy stuff in aviation shops that's accurate to something like less than 10 meters. That is definately good enough for opening up a canister of whatever while flying over a stadium. And as for completely ballistic missiles, well all you need is a good inertial navigation system which you can buy from airline scrapyards and then just huck it in and you're set to go. That would be pretty damn accurate if your flight controls are worth anything. You might even get away with an HE warhead for a short range missile.