Reviews : Estes Mercury Red Stone

This rocket is a very good scale addition to one's fleet, and is a solid challenge at Skill Level 3. Most of the assembly is conventional Estes: the engine mount / engine hook assembly, and the typical shock cord mount. The nose of the bird, in this case the capsule is a bit more challenging. Sand and re-fit the parts to the Mercury capsule as much as necessary, it will pay off in the finish. The escape tower is tricky at best, but I've found that using straight pins on a cardboard building surface allows a jig to be setup to hold the parts as the plastic cement dries. Make sure and get good quality masking tape for painting, and you will have a beautiful rocket that Werner himself would be proud of!

I have an older release P/N EST2167 and like the 2 parachutes, Main 18inches, Capsule 12inches and it keeps the Main parachute lines from getting tangled in the escape tower, at ejection. The recent release only has a single 15inch chute. Wish I had up powered the Mercury Redstone to 24mm C,D&E motors, so I will have to purchase another. Upgrade your shock cord to heavy duty 1/4inch elastic band and mount to the tube coupler, this will give you a longer lasting shock cord, mount and give you years of successful launches. Wait to glue the escape tower to the capsule and paint first for easier application and an ejection baffle would help also, for longer parachute life.

The good: Why settle for a mere 200' when you can possibly reach 2000'? I changed the stock Estes 18mm motor mount for a 24mm mount. The bad: Estes might need to work on their quality control a bit as the plastic pieces were warped and had to be bent to fit into place for cement. Also, the balsa fins were punched irregular and are horribly fragile. The fins need a lot of patience with filling the irregular gaps with wood filler, titebond slurry hardening and sanding. Patience is the key to this kit.

The Mercury Redstone is not only fun to build but it provides an opportunity to learn about the origins of manned spaceflight. This is the prettiest rocket I've built and I just love the way it looks. It brings me back to my youth and watching our space program in the 1960s. I painted it to look like the Liberty Bell 7 and the decals are just great. I think you'll love it too. The escape tower can be a bit tedious to build but its not too bad if you take your time and read the instructions.

This rocket featuring an old version of the mercury redstone that sent austronaut alan shepard into space is a neat rocket have on display or nice sight in the sky.

A great build, you might want to paint the capsule and escape tower first. I retrofitted mine with a D engine. Great launch and flight.

A really good looking model rocket. Paint job came out well. Decals went on smooth. Flew it once and retired it.

Awesome build. Had fun doing it as my first build going to be doing a lot more of these in the real near future

Very nice rocket and capsule take time but nice. Patience make nice build

Excellent and fun to build and fly. Had no problems