We got up early, met up with some friends for breakfast, then crossed our fingers that the clouds would clear and headed off to our rocketing place. When we got there, the sun came out, and it was perfect. Low wind, not too hot, dry. Just lovely.
Unfortunately, my camera battery drained about an hour into our outing. So I missed some pretty good footage of some very interesting rocket launches. But, without having the camera in hand, I was able to help with rocket recovery - I made three catches! That was really fun. R made his first catch, too. He was so proud.
R has this two-stage paper rocket that he made himself, adorned with our club's logo (that A designed, too). A has launched that rocket many times. Yesterday, though, the pieces separated, and the nose cone ended up embedded in the field. It was funny watching A and R trying to pull it out of the ground. When they finally got it out, it looked like a rumpled blue carrot.
A's rocket on the launch pad
Pulling on the elastic to try to get the nose cone out of the ground
Surveying the damage
We had launches with a rocket that had an on-board video camera (but the footage didn't come out), one launch of an egg rocket (we didn't bring a real egg this time, so we used a plastic Easter egg with a rock in it), several launches of rockets with gliders attached, and launches of a mini Saturn V, a Mercury Redstone, and space shuttles. Two rockets were lost in the trees, and one landed on our car and made a dent in the roof. It's pretty small, so A and I didn't mind.
Everyone had a great time. R and his friend Z ran all over the place and played nicely. They even caught one of the rockets together - without arguing! Afterwards, we headed to this incredible pizza place nearby. I thought it was going to be the usual pizza slices, subs, etc., but the pizza and pasta choices were amazing, they use all natural/organic/free range meats and have a wood-fired oven, and I had a gorgeous and delicious spinach salad with warm, grilled chicken, gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, and cranberries.
I'm glad I took the day off. Although it made it that much harder to go to work today!
3 comments:
Looks like you had a really fun day. I love launching rockets and we should get some up and running here shortly, I think I have one that hasn't been built yet. Years ago I used to build and launch them all the time with my 2 oldest boys. We had many total destruction launches. I think we had only about 3 that were lost and never found, usually by modding one that was supposed to take an A and putting in a C engine. The first time we took AJ to launch he freaked out and was screaming in terror'"Put The wokets in the box!" Scared the crap out of him.
Oh and I think I just found my calling.. Gorgonzola.. Eating it not making it :D
NASA Watch out.... R is an up and coming star....
Great shots Kristen...
LOL:Wanda
Awesome! Any Estes rockets out there or are they all home-made?
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