This reminds me of my fairly brief time in high powered model rocketry. I am supposing that Hamas uses the same propellent as we did: ammonium perchlorate. I loved the sound that they made much better than the black powder powered Estes rockets of my youth.
We had very few “miss fires” It was a fairly safe hobby, but did see a few mistakes. Just as I was phasing out of the hobby, our club was beginning to make their own ammonium perchlorate. I understood this was very dangerous. I never attended one of their propellent making sessions, or fired any of the home made propellent.
I know it was not cheap to buy, especially for a large quantity. I paid $500 for the propellent for an M motor. But the club said it was a lot cheaper to make it. BTW, I used a D propellent to ignite the propellent of the M motor.
All that tracks and the amount of solid rocket fuel.
Usually it’s not the fuel that causes the problem. It’s either a structural failure or design failure where the center of pressure isn’t correct on the rocket. Wrong center of pressure will cause a rocket (even a small model one) to flip and head a totally different direction. Judging by the video shown in the WSJ article above, it looks like a structural gap let go and propellant ignited there instead of the nozzle causing a force vector in the wrong direction. Obviously that’s speculation based on a grainy video, but tracks based on literal rocket science.
I am no rocket scientist, but I have seen the damage missiles / bombs like the ones Israel has access to and is using out in the desert as a guest with Redstone Arsenal.
From what I have seen - that hospital / parking lot was not hit with any Israeli ordinance as the damage was very minor comparably.
I would think that the weight of the warhead in the nose of the rocket would move the center of gravity (one diameter) in front of the center of pressure.
Considering the shear size of my rocket that limited the size of the fins I could use (I did use 6 fins) in order to transport it to the launch site, I took the “warhead” approach and added a 5lb lead ingot in the nose cone of my 14ft, 95lb rocket to assure that its center of gravity was greater than 12 inches in front of the center of pressure.
You’re assuming good design was followed here. Considering that 80% of them do fly correctly (at least according to the video), I would presume some sort of structural failure is definitely more likely the cause.
How high were you able to get that rocket out of curiosity? never manged to fire one that large, but did design one in college to be fired from underneath a weather balloon after reaching high altitude.
The only reason I built that rocket was to get a Level III Certification. I built it a simple as I could that minimized the number of possible failure opportunities. I was required to use a M motor and incorporate electronics for rocket retrieval (via parachute.) On decent the rocket separated into 3 different sections. The fin section on one chute and the other two sections on a larger chute.
The propellent went into a 4" diameter motor (aluminum casing) that was 1,727 lb-sec total impulse. It burnt for 3.3 seconds, where the bulk of the thrust time was over 500lbs.
I wanted a heavy rocket to minimize the altitude and the distance to retrieve it (wind carrying my chutes far away.) Because it was heavy I needed a lot of power to get the velocity up fast to stabilize it when it left the launch rod. So I went for a full M and fastest burn (it was called a Blue Thunder).
Because I used an electronic altimeter to initiate a small black powder explosion to separate the sections with their parachutes at the apex of the flight, the electronics also included the highest altitude achieved. It went over 4,200ft. I used to know the exact measured number, but don’t remember today. My rocket was 11.4" in diameter, that is, plenty was wind resistance to slow it down and not get higher than I wished.
My rocket was actually too large and heavy for their largest launch pad. I was extremely anxious that it might be blown over by a gust of wind, and potentially become a missile (Hamas style).
This. Even when you leave the Jews and Christians out of it, Islamic countries are all incredibly volatile, violent, and war torn. Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the Kurdish areas, and Lebanon are all areas of recent and ongoing Muslim on Muslim violence. We saw similar violence in Egypt and Libya a few years ago. If Israel was destroyed and all Jews and Christians were killed or expelled from the Middle East, it wouldn’t lead to peace. The Muslims would just keep fracturing and killing each other.
I consider Jews as potential true believers, as well as Muslims and Christians.
I am not antisemitic, nor does my religion teach antisemitism.
Not everybody that claims Islam counts as a “true believer”, likewise for Christians and Jews.
Earlier in the thread you had asked me about Visigoths. Here is the second Caliph, first generation Companion - he was chosen to lead by those who stood and sat with Muhammad (saw). His example reflects Islamic values:
Besides, Islam teaches that children are inherently innocent. I have a strong suspicion that you already knew that.
