Rockets ??

[mete]

I'll be attending [working at] the North East Regional Rocket Festival this weekend near Middletown NY. Anyone interested ? www.nerrf.com

 

[Chris Meyer]

What planet will you be traveling to?

 

[Cougar Allen]

I like rockets....

 

[kozak6]

I was really into model rockets when I was a kid.

Although, I must admit, bottle rockets do have quite a hold on me.

 

[mwerner]

After watching the Mythbusters episode, I really wanted to build a water rocket, typically made from 2-liter soda bottles.
Of course, I greatly admired their "Civil War" rocket, trying to duplicate the legend of the Confederate forces launching a 2-stage rocket some 127 miles.

They pretty much disproved the legend, but their creation was impressive; a nitrous oxide/parrafin-fueled device that went some 1200 yards.

 

[Goldtanker]

When I was growing up in the '50's the whole Sputnick thing took over the lives of myself and my friends. We made rockets out of various pipes, copper stock, vacum cleaner extensions, etc. We would crimp one end and fill them with the exotic fuel mixture of match heads soaked in gasoline. The other end was sealed off with a bottle cap with a hole filled with wax. The launcher was my father's wooden mitre box pointing skyward. A pan of gasoline was placed under the rocket (more like a pipe bomb actually) and set ablaze. The heat melted the wax, ignited the fuel (explosive charge?) and off it went out over the lake and onto the ice where we could retrieve it. We measured the time it took to fall from its apex with a stop watch and determined the height using the equation for that purpose which we had learned in science class. We even took notes of each flight (sorry, classified). Recognizing the safety hazards involved (this was pre OSHA) we all wore are father's WWII helmets and hid behind a rowboat. Hard to believe all of us survived this lunacy. Easy to understand how I ended up as a tank commander a few years later.

 

[mete]

Have you ever seen film of Goddard's early flights ? Many were failures and of course they were very primitive but things did get better !!