Don't Try This at Home

Well, did happen to try it at home:

Wanna talk juvenile rocketry??? Ahem . . . My dad (and of course the family) was stationed way out in The Pacific on a tiny atoll being used as a missile base. Pop was in charge of the everything to do with airplanes flying in and out and my buddy's dad was in charge of the missiles. Well, one fine day, we decided to build a rocket of our very own.

We got hold of a paper towel tube, filled it with matchheads, fashioned a nosecone, stuck a sparkler in its ass-end as a fuse, made a launch pad out of erector set parts, propped it up at an angle on the beach behind our houses and . . . viola! Launched that sucker a million miles out into the lagoon! We were besides ourselves with joy.

So, with that success, it was time for further space exploration. THIS TIME, we built the same contraption but had gotten hold of some firecrackers and were breaking them in half to fill the tube with matchheads and gun powder. Well, some of the firecrackers didn't exactly get broken in half . . . So . . .

We invited my buddy's dad to watch our next launch that evening out on the reef at low tide. Our pad was designed, now, to shoot straight up instead of at an angle. We lit the fuse . . . the rocket slowly lifted off a few feet . . . and exploded with a fierce fireball. The colonel was beyond not impressed. He was pissed!

There ended our careers as rocket scientists.
 
That Guy said:
... There ended our careers as rocket scientists.
Click to expand...

Great story!

My friends and I were true nerds in high school, so of course we got into the Estes rockets. They weren't anywhere near as powerful as they now seem to be, but still powerful enough to get into trouble.

I had the bright idea one day of buying the "payload" model - it had a cylindrical clear-plastic chamber near the top of the rocket, about 6" long and 3" across, in which you put ...

... a mouse. Or a hamster. Or an emaciated gerbil. Or a kitten, but we proved that wouldn't work very well even before the first test launch.

My friend had a big sister whom he despised, who by happy circumstance was the loving owner of "Jerry", a little white mouse. Well, Jerry was liberated from his cage early one Saturday morning and gently placed into "Mickey 1", the name we had chosen to paint on the side of the rocket. Jerry's unease at being placed into the confined space was apparent to all, but we were sure that the historic flight he was about to take would make it all worthwhile.

Sadly enough, although we were all science majors we didn't calculate how a top-heavy, 2'-tall, balsa-and-cardboard tube powered by 3 "D" engines (the most powerful available at the time, and each capable of developing 30 Newtons of thrust within 0.25 seconds of ignition, for a total of 90 Newtons at launch) would, as if lightly caressed by the Fates, tip over an instant before launch due to an inadequate gantry support system.

As the designated range officer for that fated flight I was in charge of the "Go/No-Go" decisions, and up until that last fraction of a second everything was fine: the sun was shining, the sky was crystal-blue without a cloud in sight, no wind, no unauthorized personnel in the area. Engineering, Flight Safety, Emergency crews, Telemetry - all were "GO".

I pressed the button on the wired remote control, and as usual there was the barely-perceptible time lag between pressing the button and the ignition of the engines, a lag that this time was filled with the sight of the rocket tipping over.

Jerry roared horizontally down the street, flames and smoke billowing out the back of the enraged projectile, barely missing a deadly collision with a Ford E-150 van, and continued into an open field at the end of the street, where the engines finally died and the rocket came to a rest after a series of flips and tumbles that seemed to go on forever.

We all ran for the recovery effort, laughing and crying at the same time. We didn't know what we would find in the wreckage.




I'm proud to report that Jerry survived his inaugural flight and was returned to his cage in Big Sister's room before she knew the scientifically-important work he had performed that day, although she DID wonder where he had picked up that constant tremble and aversion to sharp, sudden noises.

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