HitchHiker

THE FIRST STEP...

"Stopař" (Hitchhiker) is historically the first project of the Czech Rocket Society, with its name inspired by the popular fantasy novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams. The rocket shares similarities with those launched in the Czech Rocket Challenge, but CRS members build all its components from scratch, including the engine.

Stopař's main mission was to unite the newly formed CRS team and see if they could build a rocket capable of flying from scratch. Inspired by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who put his Tesla Roadster on his Falcon Heavy rocket, CRS chose a miniature car as Stopař's payload. The rocket released the car at the highest altitude with a parachute and filmed its journey back to Earth using a mini camera.

The rocket is a 1.2-meter-tall, single-stage rocket with a 60 mm diameter composite fuselage provided by CompoTech, propelled by solid fuel (a mixture of sorbitol and potassium nitrate). It can reach an apogee of up to 500 meters and land safely with a parachute. During its 70-second-long flight, Stopař reaches speeds of up to 55 m/s, similar to the maximum speed of a Cessna 152 airplane. The rocket was launched on September 25, 2021, at the Medlánky airport as a non-competitive rocket during the Czech Rocket Challenge competition. Today, it serves mainly for further promotion and as a historical artifact.

Team members

Chief engineer

Jiří Kovář

Structures

Ivan Šonka

Avionics

Richard Bláha

Propulsion

Vítek Putna

Rocket parameters

Maximum altitude

500 m

Max. velocity

55 m/s (200 km/h, 0,15 Ma)

Mass

Engine parameters

Impulse

160 N⋅s

Thrust

150 N

Burn time

2 s

Partners

The main partner of this project is CompoTech, which provided the composite fuselage of the rocket.

Děkujeme moc! Bylo to naprosto úžasné! 🚀❤️ https://t.co/jDu8FpC6W8
— Xperience Aerospace (@XperienceAero) September 26, 2021

Kameramana mi tam nechali💔odstoupili do bezpečí, odpočítali a odpálili. Czech Rocket Society, raketa Stopař, medlánecké letiště, sobota T-10. pic.twitter.com/VDpM0HVe9P
— Dominika Řebíková (@Rebikova_CT) September 25, 2021