In 2005 fellow Salfordian and ex-Starchaser Jon London started his own business doing space and science based educational presentations and activities. He now offers an exciting range of activities for all ages and can be contacted here: www.out-world.co.uk
As part of developing his resources he asked if I could design him a transparent desktop rocket engine for use in lectures. These have been made by a number of groups for this purpose and exploit the fact that Perspex makes a good rocket fuel. By running on low pressure oxygen and a thick rod of clear Perspex you can actually see through the engine as it's running; just turn it off before it reaches the outside of the Perspex!

I had made one as part of my MSc project, partly to use for testing ignition techniques and partly to see what itwas like. TH1 though was rather rudimentary and not very convenient for use in lectures.



I set out to design a more user friendly, self contained version in Autodesk Inventor

 

It was then made for him by an outside company and has seen frequent use ever since. It can also be fitted with a larger Perspex tube so that other opaque but none the less intriging fuels can be demonstrated. In this capacity Jon ran it on Salami and Oxygen for Channel 4's questionable reality show Space Cadets, which led on to the nitrous oxide/kebab/fish and chips engines for Brainiac!