Lightning rocket - GIF

Lightning rocket used to trigger lightning.

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Previously:

https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...629#post193468
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...707#post186339
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...811#post152357
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...030#post134086
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...660#post201572

Ben Franklin would have liked that

for a milli second......

Does the bolt follow the contrail down the the igniter & then follow the wire back to the launch control?

I bought a fulgurite for my display case. It's a tube left when lightning strikes sand. I couldn't find any information on how they make them, but I had imagined it was a frame with electrodes down to beach sand, then they fire a rocket similar to this to stimulate a lightning strike.

...or they just glue sand together and I got scammed. One or the other.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frank S

Ben Franklin would have liked that

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Very scary Frank, Ben was my very first thought when I saw that video... :lol:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nova_robotics

I bought a fulgurite for my display case. It's a tube left when lightning strikes sand. I couldn't find any information on how they make them, but I had imagined it was a frame with electrodes down to beach sand, then they fire a rocket similar to this to stimulate a lightning strike.

...or they just glue sand together and I got scammed. One or the other.

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Perhaps; the lightning bolt could have been the entrepreneurs concept, tired of waiting for real lightning.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Haroun

Does the bolt follow the contrail down the the igniter & then follow the wire back to the launch control?

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From Das Wikipedia:

A lightning rocket is a rocket that unravels a conductor, such as a fine copper wire, as it ascends, to conduct lightning charges to the ground. Lightning strikes derived from this process are called "triggered lightning.

Design
A conducting lightning rod is grounded and positioned alongside the launch tube in communication with the conductive path to thereby control the time and location of a lightning strike from the thundercloud.[4] The conductor trailed by the rocket can be either a physical wire, or column of ionized gas produced by the engine. A lightning rocket using solid propellant may have cesium salts added, which produces a conductive path when the exhaust gases are discharged from the rocket. In a liquid propellant rocket a solution of calcium chloride is used to form the conductive path.

The system consists of a specially designed launch pad with lightning rods and conductors attached.[5] The launch pad is either controlled wirelessly or via pneumatic line to the control station to prevent the discharge traveling to the control equipment. The fine copper wire (more recently reinforced with kevlar) is attached to the ground and plays out from the rocket as it ascends. The initial strike follows this wire and is as a result unusually straight. As the wire is vaporized by the initial strike, subsequent strikes are more angular in nature and follow the ionization trail of the initial strike. Rockets of this type are used for both lightning research and lightning control.

En-lightening! Who knew modern science was still channeling Benjamin Franklin? That description makes the process come alive.

Sometimes a rocket getting lightning is definitely not a good thing. In 1969 Apollo 12 got hit by lightning (twice) during it's ascent. It was a scary minute, traveling with 7 million pounds of thrust behind you and suddenly the control panels go crazy. The story reads like a movie: https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap12fj/...ingstrike.html

Yabut... Did the pilot do it one hand on the steering wheel, grasping door frame with the other?

re; 200 mph+, 94" wheelbase, Willy B. Borsch, even 1200' out of the gate, the "Winged Express", later 1960's.
Still years before graduating high school, but remember it clearly. Most sat in view of the starting line, we'd pick spots at the traps to watch and feel it fly through the timing array.
I'd post pics, but the interested will google, a better surprise.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Toolmaker51

Yabut... Did the pilot do it one hand on the steering wheel, grasping door frame with the other?

re; 200 mph+, 94" wheelbase, Willy B. Borsch, even 1200' out of the gate, the "Winged Express", later 1960's.
Still years before graduating high school, but remember it clearly. Most sat in view of the starting line, we'd pick spots at the traps to watch and feel it fly through the timing array.
I'd post pics, but the interested will google, a better surprise.

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I've seen 130 on a 57" wheel base many times, 97 once in an 8th mile but that was with only 2 wheels.
Wild Willy's reputation was well known to us kids even here in Texas in the late 1960s

Up On 2 Wheels is fine, long as that's how many you started out with......

Yes, we were kids once. Still may be, having the itch to return to motorcycling. The test would be if I can right it from off its side, and manage kick starts.
Missouri and Kansas are not only adjacent, but outside town have tolerable traffic, and helmets are by choice.
They were duped on the masking paranoia awhile. You know, answering the one so deadly, yet averted by mere hand sanitizer or soap.