Looks like the crawling mechanism would have worked a lot like this:
Maybe it will come down on the Kremlin.
Waste not want not, I guess, but weβre literally flying decades-old engines that were scavenged out of the shuttles as they were headed to museums. I just wish that this program were able to deliver on the intended cost savings that this strategy was meant to bring.
Typical Washington wastefulness. Just buy a bunch of these. Simple!
I wonder if anyone has tried modeling that in KSP yetβ¦
Edit: looks like KSP and Estes already have a thing going:
That looks promising. Only slightly more dangerous than the N1.
naw, not those⦠at least use a G Motor:
a friend and i stupidly built model rockets not from kits. we got our hands on one of these. built the rocket from materials sourced from print shop scrap - foil core tubes (2"diameter), foamcore fins, polymer nose cone, and other scraps. took it out to the desert outside the Yakima firing range and sent it up. wobbly, twisty, short flight ended up arcing straight down into the Columbia River, near Wanapum Dam.
good times!
Kits donβt necessarily work either 
I remember watching one class in school that did an Atlas model. Sucker flew straight up, and when the engines finished, turned over and flew straight down. Took 5 people to be able to pull it out of the ground.
I think they put in too much wadding so the back fire wasnβt enough to trigger the chutes.
this was 35 years ago, or more, when i lived in Seattle. we were sort of renegade rocketeers - the kind that Estes and responsible model rocketeers would shun, with good reason.
about the only responsible aspect of our βinner-atmo, near-earth space explorationβ was firing them over a large body or water in a sparsely populated area next to a military firing range. our homemade rockets had our DIY fireworks as payloads to our - admittedly dangerous, stupid, yet aerial spectacles. mixing magnesium chips (from trimming magnesium foil stamping plates in the letterpress shop we worked in) with different grades of black powder would make bright white showers somewhere between 600-1000 feet up.
D motors with long lift/ short eject charge was our only βsafetyβ consideration.
goddamn lucky we never set the palouse on fire.
we could build 'em to go up, but like Musk, we were not so much worried about where they came down.
