Up, up and awaaaayyyy!

by Preston

A guy I carpool with has gotten into hobby rockets lately, and told us about a local launch. So I took Caiden yesterday to check it out. They had several launch areas set up: the close ones are "low power", there were some pads for "mid power" and a few farther out for "high power."

When we got there, we were able to get pretty close to the "low power" while they were launching. Some of those seemed to be pretty HIGH powered! Others not so much. One "rocket" was a cardboard tube with a plush soccer ball stuffed into the top (for the nose cone) and a motor mounted to the back. That was simply called the "soccer rocket." Most of them (low, mid and high) were all outfitted with parachutes to slow the descent.

I tried to capture a couple of liftoffs. A "MID POWER":

Some of the high power rockets were huge - easily 8' long!

We saw one of these larger rockets get launched, and the parachute never deployed. When the boys retrieved the pieces, it was AWESOME. It had obviously landed nose-down, as it was "crumpled" like an accordion. I felt bad for them, because that rocket probaby cost them hundreds of dollars.

One fun event was the "drag race" where they attempted to launch 10 rockets at the same time:

The day was quite fun - probably something we'll go to again, and maybe even start launching rockets of our own!