Possumblog

Rocket Boys. And Girl.

Got home and de-sweated a bit. (And yes, I did remember to stop at the store on the way back and get Ritz crackers.) Time to assemble the rocketry!

Now, both of them are the fancy premade types with hickeymadoos and thingamajiggers on them to make kids want them more. Back when I was young, just having stuff that could blow up was enough, but nowadays, the youngsters want more. Jonathan's rocket has a little 110 camera in the nose cone that promised to take pictures from 500ft up in the air. Sorta like your own Google satellite image. Sorta. Catherine's rocket has a velocity meter of some sort to tell you how fast it went. Both had shiny metal-toned plastic fins and sparkly mylar covering the tubes. SHINY THINGS! OOOOhhhh!

Catherine's rocket. There's a story. She was with Jonathan and I in the store when we picked out his rocket back in May, and she wanted one so bad she could hardly stand it. Which I thought was kinda cool.

HOWEVER.

Once we got home that night, she would NOT leave it alone. She was bound and determined to get into that package and start messing with it, even if it was bedtime. After many times of telling her "no" and "put it UP NOW!" I finally told her if she touched it one more time, I was going to take it away from her.

Well, you can guess what happened.

"WAHHHHHHHHHHH!! I'll be good, Daddy! I won't touch it no more!!"

"HAH! YOUR DOUBLE-NEGATIVE SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION BETRAYS YOUR TRUE INTENTIONS AND THOUGHTS!"

I didn't really say that. But I did tell her she could no longer say it was her rocket, and I was going to put it in the garage, and if it never flew, well, that was just too darned bad.

"WAHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

She finally got over it, and although Jonathan's rocket package sat in our bedroom floor, she never touched it.

So, time to lift her probation.

First step was to assemble the pieces of the launch pad and figure out the mechanisms for the various doodads. Load the film, advance it, close the window, etc., etc., then figure out the speedometer on Cat's rocket. FINALLY, TIME TO GO!

We piled into the car and set out for the high school--big open spaces, no trees, no people.

Aquiver with anticipation, we set up Jonathan's rocket first--connected the leads, backed off, counted down using the NASA standard T-minus nomenclature, and

WHISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

WHOA! Way cool! Perfect launch, nice and high, even with only a B motor in it--perfect chute deployment, and recover about fifteen feet from the pad.

Now, time for Cat's!

Set the speedometer, connected the leads--she wanted the stronger C motor on hers, stepped back, countdown, launch and

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

It had gotten stuck on the launch rod, and after jumping a foot up in the air, it quickly fell over and skittered across the parking lot, made an abrupt U-turn and flamed out, then shot the nose cone 10 feet out the end onto the pavement.

Awwww.

Poor Catherine! She was so looking forward to getting to launch her rocket and it had messed up. I hugged her and told her it was okay, and we'd fix it for the next time. I looked it over--seems there had been a big dollop of glue on the guide loop thing, and I guess it stuck to the rod. I got that off, and we redid the wadding and parachute (which got a bit melty) and fixed the end of the tube where it got crushed a bit. New motor, set up the launch pad again, hooked up the leads, stood back, counted down, pressed the button and

SCHWISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH!!

Yea! Another perfect flight! It went straight up, the nose cone popped off, the parachute opened right up and it only landed about twenty feet away. And the speed of the rocket was--ooops.

Seems Daddy forgot to turn it on that time. Bad Dad.

Oh well.

Time for Boy's second launch. He was using the stronger motor this time, so we got everything set, wadding, parachute, camera, contacts, leads, countdown, button and

SHHHHHUUUUUUUUUSSSSSHHHH!

Wow. I mean WOW. Incredible. I love crap like this. Very, very high and--uhhh--uh-oh--it's going over--way over toward--like a textbook illustration of a balllistic arc--toward the gym. Which was close to a couple of hundred feet away. Still climbing--finally it quit and the recovery charge ignited, blowing out the parachute and nosecone. There it goes. Slowly drifting down onto the back of the gymnasium.

"Uh. Hm. Well, Buddy--looks like your rocket is on top of the school."

He was speechless.

"It's okay--we'll get it back--I'll call the school on Monday and they can maybe get the maintenance guy to get it for us. BOY, IT WENT WAY HIGH, DIDN'T IT!?"

He was still a bit disappointed, and I don't blame him. A few puffs of wadding blew off of the roof.

"It really did go up high, didn't it, Dad?"

"Oh, sure--that was WAY COOL! Even if it did land a bit too far away from us."

"Can we go home and get the ladder?"

"Well, I think the school people would get mad at us if we started stomping around on the roof--we better let them do it, okay?"

"Ooo-kaaaay."

We packed up our stuff and got our spent motors and headed home.

"I wonder what the picture will look like!"

I just hope it snapped--it would be terrible to have yet another disappointment on top of the first!

I just got off the phone with the school, and thankfully, the lady who took my name and phone number seemed to be quite amused at the explanation of the embarrassing goings-on. Unfortunately, the maintenance guy is in Chicago for the next two days, and won't be able to look for it until Wednesday.

::sigh::

Home, and time for baths--we had us a wedding reception to go to!

NEXT: Boy, it's dark in here.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 12, 2006 11:02 AM