The M2 Mars Challenger is a
Sleek Hot Rod to the Sky.
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Kit Specifications:
Skill Level 3: Average Skills Needed
Length: 34.3" (87 cm)
Diameter: 2.6" (66 mm)
Weight (without motor): 22 oz (630 gm)
Recovery: 30" cloth parachute
ORDER This Kit NOW! Just click on the "Own It Today" button below.
Pemberton Technologies M2 Mars Challenger Rocket Kit
P/N: 07576
Price: $89.00
Note: There is a $2.00 freight surcharge due to the large size of the shipping carton, and the additional cost of postage.
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Recommended Motors: See Chart Below.
M2 Rocket Kit. Predicted Altitude (From RockSim)
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Motor
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Manufacturer
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Altitude (feet/meters)
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Comments
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Aerotech Reloadable
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512/156
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Loud, white flame. Drill out 1 second of delay.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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541/165
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Loud, blue flame. Drill out 1 second of delay.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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567/173
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Because of the M2's weight, this fast-burning motor is the only 24mm motor we recommend. Loud, blue flame. Drill out 1 second of delay.
Use with an optional 24/29mm adapter.
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Aerotech Single Use
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657/200
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Loud, blue flame. Delay is a little short. Not a bad choice for your first flight if it's a little windy.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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1042/318
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White flame. Loud.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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1080/329
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Loud, blue flame.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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1206/368
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Impressive volume of black smoke. Perfect for the first flight (no delay adjustment).
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Aerotech Reloadable or Single Use
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1387/425
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Red flame. A great choice.
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Aerotech Reloadable or Single Use
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1451/442
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White flame.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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1463/446
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Red flame.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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1521/464
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Green flame. Loud. This is a truly impressive motor. 278 miles per hour is the max velocity you'll get with a G motor.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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1586/483
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Green flame. Quick off the pad.
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Aerotech Reloadable
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1632/497
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White flame. Best altitude of the G motors we sell.
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H128-10
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Aerotech Reloadable
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2060/628
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Yes, you can do your Level 1 Cert with this sleek beauty. 354 miles per hour.
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See the video below for help in selecting rocket motors. Rocket motors are sold separately from the kit. If you are unsure which one to pick, start with the one recommended for the First Flight, and then another for a more impressive launch. Most motors listed in this chart are available through Apogee Components. For the many other motors that are not listed here, download the RockSim file to see if it will work in this rocket kit. See also Technical Publication #28 for guidance on selecting appropriate rocket engines other than those listed in this chart. If you don't already have Technincal Publication #28, give us a call, and we'll be happy to let you download it free (you have to ask though). |
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Pemberton Technologies M2 Mars Challenger.
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A Sci-fi classic comes to life!
Pemtec's M2-Mars Challenger harkens back to the days when sleek, silver, tail landing spaceships freely roamed the universe. Always manned by big white guys in silver suits, the M2-Mars Challenger is ready to nip off for a quick lunch on Neptune or head toward Venus so you can hang with the Amazons.
The M2 is a hand-filling 2.6" in diameter, is over 34" in length, sports groovy boomerang shaped wings and has extended landing legs.
This is a true builder's kit! The builder cuts the tail cone, the fin slots in the tail, and the angles on the fin struts. The through-the-wall fin and wing tabs must be carefully custom-fit using a razor saw. Plan on spending some quality time with the epoxy fillets along the fin/body tube, spine/body tube, and strut/fin joints to give everything that fluid, seamless, sleek, alien look. It takes patience. When you're done, though, your M2 will impress every other custom hot rodder on the field. All it needs now is too much power...
The resulting showpiece is otherworldly. Some of the guys we showed the Challenger to at our last launch just said, "Oh, man, that's incredible!"
The destruction step you may spend the most time on is getting the fillets just right. The sanding, filling, and more sanding is quickly rewarded when you get to the range, though, when your fellow rocketeer's eyes bug out, like some alien's eyes viewing Earth's vegetation for the first time. The M2 is an engineering marvel, with sturdy materials and through-the-wll fins. You'll find yourself flying this model after just a few days of build time.
I recommend that you do not fly this kit when the ground is hard and dry. No matter how much epoxy you have on the landing struts, they will break off if the rocket lands on hard ground. It's just physics.
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F and G Motors are Perfect for this Kit
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With altitudes of 500 to 1600 feet depending on which F or G motor you use, you have great options for altitude, loudness, and color of flame.
When you do your Level 1 Certification with the M2, you can step up to an H motor. With the extreme-altitude Rocksim predictions, though, you might want to bring binoculars.
This is a phenomenal kit! It's one of my favorites. It makes me want to spend the day reliving my misspent youth watching old sci-fi shows on Hulu. It's tall, cigar-shaped, fun, and no mere mortal will ever mistake it for a "regular rocket".
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Pemberton does creative things with the visual impact of this kit that most rocket companies won't even consider. Those long dowels, the curvaceous fins, the spines running forward from the dowels, through-the-tail-cone fin mounting, and wings: all of these things are audacious engineering accomplishments that give this kit a flavor like no other.
An interesting engineering step is the addition of 2-part expanding foam inside the tail cone where the fin tabs go. This is a lightweight engineering solution to a heavyweight problem: how to provide enough structure to keep those cool fins attached. 2-part foam is a standard building technique in high power rocktry, and this is a great kit to try it on for the first time.
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Why is this a Skill Level 4 Rocket?
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Creating the tail cone from a nose cone, slotting the heavy plastic tail cone for the fins, custom-fitting the plywood fins, and lots of sanding and filling mean that you need to plan on spending some time on this model. I highly recommend mounting a dowel through the nose cone to retain the nose cone weight (see photo in the features section below).
I made a calculated choice when I built our display/photo model not to smooth out all the joints with fillets completely, because you the buyer need to know what you're getting. This kit, if built according to the destructions, looks almost alien in its shapely smoothness, to the point that a person who hasn't built one won't know what shape the parts were before they are all smoothed out. Done right, this finished piece of art has an almost metallic-organic look and feel.
Some construction requires epoxy adhesive and/or fillers. This can be messy and cause an allergic reaction in some people. Adult supervision and wearing rubber gloves is recommended when working with epoxy.
The M2 is a big rocket that uses a high power heavy wall body tube. It also has substantial interior lead and epoxy nose weight to provide stability. While the tubes and weight don't make the rocket any harder to assemble, extra safety precautions are required when a rocket this big is flown. Patience and aquired flying skills to know when and where NOT to fly are just as important as quality construction techniques.
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Who Is Pemberton Technologies?
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Flash back with me, if you will, to a time when handsome, brave, wide shouldered, square jawed, homogenized white guys in jump suits made the universe safe for all mankind. Heroes such as Captain Video, Flash Gordon, Tom Corbett and Buzz Corry came to the rescue every week, thrashing bad guys and thrilling youngsters across the land.
From out of that Wonder Bread world of the 50´s, Pem-Tech brings you the coolest science fiction spaceships of all time: Sleek, silver, beauties like the King Krãken and the glorious golden hotrods like Bucky Jones Space Cadet.
Layne Pemberton is famous for his "destructions". The humor infects everything from motor selection to your household pets. Trust us, they're fun. The photos could use some upgrades to good quality line diagrams to improve legibility, but the destructions are otherwise good.
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Super Strong Plastic Nose Cones - The tail cone is built by cutting off the tip of one of the nose cones. Made from polyethylene plastic, these heavy-wall nose cones can really stand up to any amount of abuse you might give them. The 12.5 inch exposed length is just one feature.
They have a molded-in shock cord attachment.
You'll need a Dremel tool to cut the tip and the fin slots in the tail cone.
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Premium Body Tube - Small spirals so it finishes quickly, thick walled for those high power flights.
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Hardwood Dowels - I wouldn't normally say much about dowels in a kit, but I was impressed with these. They're exceptionally smooth, perfectly round dowels of impressively high quality.
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Beefy Motor Mount - The 1/8" thick 5-ply centering ring anchors the 29mm motor mount. The system is a sleek repository for F, G, and even H motors. Rear bulkhead retention is the only method of retention we recommend for this kit. To accommodate the beefy motors, 1/4" launch lugs are provided.
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Quality Recovery Hardware - You get a monstrous 10' shock cord of 9/16" tubular nylon. The Kevlar mounting system on the inside of the body tube is an innovative and inexpensive design that works great.
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Fins - 1/8 inch thick hardwood ply fin and wing material makes the M2 one seriously tough beauty. The fins are laser cut to make the build go a little easier. Spines extend forward along the body from the struts, and these are cut from balsa stock using a template, old school.
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A Great Parachute - 30-inch diameter rip-stop nylon cloth parachute. A kit this big, you have to have a cloth chute for the extra durability; and you get one! When this parachute thumps open, you get a truly bracing rush of adrenaline.
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Here's a great build idea - Epoxy doesn't stick to the inside of plastic nose cones very well and can come loose, upsetting the stability of the rocket. My recommendation is to drill two 1/4" holes, put a dowel through as shown, then epoxy your nose weight. It takes some extra smoothing, filling, and sanding effort, but it makes for a much more positive retention system for the nose weight.
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Tools needed to assemble this rocket kit:
- Pencil
- Ruler
- Masking Tape
- Razor saw
- 2-part expanding foam (optional)
- Micro balloons (epoxy additive, optional), helps to thicken and lighten epoxy fillets
- Fix-it epoxy clay (highly recommended)
- Hobby Knife
- Dremel tool
- Finishing Supplies like paint and sandpaper.
To Launch This Rocket Kit, You'll Also Need:
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Frequently Asked Questions about the Pemberton Technologies M2 kit:
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Q. What launch pad should I use to launch this rocket kit?
- A. Since this rocket can use large engines, you'll need bigger launch pad. The best pad we offer is the Aerotech Mantis Launch Pad.
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Q. I need help selecting motors. What should I do?
- A. Watch this YouTube video.
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Other Optional Accessories That Work Great With This Kit:
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Rocket Motors - This is a reminder that this kit does not come with rocket motors. See the chart at the top of this page to see which motors will work in this particular rocket kit.
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Q. Is a nomex heat shield recommended on the M2 kit?
- A. Yes. While not required, this would be a useful addition to this rocket kit. If you don't use a heat shield, you'll have to use disposable wadding to protect the parachute from the heat of the ejection charge. And for a large diameter kit like this, it will take a lot of disposable wadding.
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To see how the M2 rocket looks and performs with in each motor configuration, download rocket design file now (click here). This file can be opened with the FREE demo version of RockSim (click here). This kit is included as one of the sample designs that comes with the demo software. Both Windows and Macintosh versions are available.
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What is a RockSim Design file? The RockSim software gives you a lot of information about the flight characteristics of this rocket: how high, how fast, where it will land, how will it react to wind, etc. The "design file" is intended to save you time. All the parameters (size, shape, weight, fin design, etc.) of this rocket have already been entered into the RockSim program, and saved as an electronic database file. You can just open it up in your copy of RockSim and start loading different rocket motors to run launch simulations. It's fun and educational to see the rocket zoom skyward, even before you built it. For more information about RockSim,
click here.
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What is expected when you launch your model rocket?
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Are you new to rocketry? Do you think you know what happens when you launch your rocket? Now you can learn about the events that occur as your rocket is launched into the air. So when you launch your rocket, you'll be prepared and you'll be able to show off your knowledge to observers watching your rocket. This article also gives you links to other references that will give you even more background information about rocketry, so you can become a true rocket scientist and expert.
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Thank you so much. You guys are awesome; so much info... I really have enjoyed all you have taught me. I love rockets and am totally hooked at age 57. My school kids (physical science and physics) are into it as well and next year we are starting the Berrien County Missile Agency; our own rocket club. I am trying to steer the interests of our rural agrarian kids to areas of engineering such as rocketry. I would love to attend training seminars on rocket building and how to use Rocksim even if it meant a long drive to Colorado Springs.
Thanks for all your help. You guys are the best."
—Mark J. DiBois
Instructor of Physics and Physical Science
Berrien County High School
Nashville Georgia
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Kevlar® is a registered trademark of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company for its brand of aramid fiber. Only DuPont makes KEVLAR®
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Shipping and Handling Fees:
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To estimate the shipping charges, please see our shipping information page. This page also explains how items are shipped, as well as offering you additional shipping options.
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