Brief:
The "A Salt Vehicle" was built for the EMRR Challenge 2007, to be a rocket made entirely from trash and finished in a unique style. This rocket is a tiny saucer, 1.5in tall, 3in diameter, and weighing 0.5oz. It was made from a standard container of salt and was finished by covering all surfaces in salt.

Construction:
The components needed were: 1 salt container, 1 soda straw, glue, spray mist adhesive, and salt.

To begin, I used an empty salt container and the free 13mm "delta" saucer plans from Art Applewhite. I cut a rectangular portion of cardboard from the bottom of the container and wrapped it around a spent 13mm casing, gluing around the seam. With some scraps of cardboard from the first step, I fashioned an engine block and glued it in place.

For the saucer body, I used only the top portion of the Applewhite plans. Due to the curvature in the salt container, my saucer disk didn't retain a nice conical shape, so I cut out three triangles, serendipitously mimicking the nuclear radiation symbol. These were glued to the motor tube, remembering to cant them as for the Applewhite saucer. Since there was no bottom saucer disk or support struts, I made extra thick glue fillets. A launch lug was made from a soda straw, slit and resize appropriately.

Finishing:
All the holes were plugged with wadded paper tissue. I layered some salt in a shoe box. Then I sprayed Stick It Mist Spray Adhesive all over the saucer, placed it in the shoe box, and poured more salt over the top, burying the craft. After a drying period, I removed the saucer and repeated the whole procedure twice more. I ended with an overspray of the adhesive. When finished, the saucer was so fuzzy that I rubbed off some of the larger clumps to get an even finish.

Flight and Recovery:
All three launches were on 1/2A3-2T motors. Boost wasn't pretty--some spin and lots of wobble. There was clearly some tendency toward instability in at least one flight. A stratosphere-busting altitude of 50-60 feet was achieved. From there, tumble recovery onto the grass was not a problem. I should mention that I have also built a 13mm Delta Saucer stock, and it flies flawlessly (plus you can launch it from a small back yard!)

Summary:
This was sort of a silly little project, but I did learn one important thing for some future build. The salt container comes with one of those little metal, retractable spouts. A much niftier version of the Applewhite saucer (or some other small rocket) could be made by building the rocket completely according to the standard directions, then inserting the spout as a retractable saucer hatch from which miniature aliens might emerge. The spout is just the right size and would look really cool, especially on the mini-saucer.