MrKlingon's Mercury Redstone Simulator

Welcome to MrKlingon.org Building MrKlingon's Spaceship!

February 1st, 2003 "The unthinkable happened this morning."

A wonderful memorial to the Columbia that you can make

Flying in Orbiter Sim :

Relaunch! On 11/10/2002 The Mercury Redstone Liberty Bell 7 model has flown again! AND on the first anniversary of its original flight. Great launch and landing.. except I need to rebuild one of the fins. Happy Birthday USMC!
Taking Off in Freedom 7 11/23/2002!!

Taking Mercury to Mars! 10/26/2002!! The Buford Avenue Missle Agency Summer Project

The Buford Avenue Missle Agency New Launch! 6/22/2002! See the take off of the Freedom 7!

Here I am at work on my spaceship

I've begun building a Mercury Redstone (okay, a model - but a flying one). (click pictures for an enlargement)*note*

Liberty Bell 7 II news!: We had the first flight this weekend, 11/10/2001 - the same day as most of the photo's above were taken. All systems worked perfectly and recovery went without a hitch - should be good to fly another day!

Here's my attempt to build a simulator.

MrKlingon's Mercury Redstone Simulator

WAY too simple a model. Kind of a model rocket, going straight up, till it starts falling back to earth. (I am working on a more complex version, with throttle and pitch angle controls).

You can set the thrust, weight full and weight empty. All in pounds.
Set the time of burn in seconds. (this is how long the engine will burn at 100% throttle)
Drag coefficient is part of a really rough attempt to add in drag.
You can set the percentage (0-100) of thrust.

Press "FLY" to run, then "STOP" to stop.

The Speed button displays the mode it is running in, either real time or high speed.
The flight will stop when the velocity reaches 0 or less.
Click on the Mercury capsule (on right) to see maximum acceleration, altitude (feet and miles) and velocity (fps and mps).
For fun, there is a digital display of the current time at the top.
Double clicking on the screen resets to default parameters (real for the Mercury Redstone).
click to download
For serious references: http://www.astronautix.com/ (where I borrowed the nice image of the Mercury capsule).

Hey, look, you can make your own!

Here are some more serious simulators:

Orbiter Sim! A pretty complete AND FREE! Simulator for Windows!
Here is NASA's Mercury page - recommended!

NOTE: The Mercury Redstone pictured above, is a real ship, and one I've built in my home. However, thanks to the creative use of a digital camcorder, PC and pbrush.exe I have made it appear to be a bit larger than it really is. The real model is about two feet tall. The Mercury spacecraft is really about 2-3 inches across.