Lube,
Cool story, thanks! My son and I have had alot of fun building and launching Estes rockets since he was about 7 (he's 14 now). I used to launch them at my brother's house in the "country" and we left the chute off and just put on a streamer so we could see the rocket come down. One day, we launched and recovered the same rocket 12 times!

Flower Mound Police?


When I was in fifth or sixth grade, my buddy and I decided to see if we could make an underwater explosion sort of thing. Gathering our supplies, we had a pack of firecrackers and a garage. We found a small pipe, probably pvc or something, cut it to length and sealed one end with sealant. We stuffed three firecrackers into it and sealed around the top of those and up the inter-twined fuses. Our test body of water was an aquarium in the garage with some feeder type fish. I lit the thing and dropped it into the water and it sank down, still burning (really cool we thought) and then BAM!!! The bottom of the tank blew out and the water and fish were now streaming out onto the floor! We gathered the fish and put them into those small plastic slide out drawer things you would see in a hobyist's shop. One fish per drawer seemed OK to us. The main thing was to clean up the mess and get the heck out of there!


Nope. Out comes his Dad and man did we get it :)


LOTS of stories with that guy.........wonder if he is still alive?


-Chris

I remember trying to make a 3 stage rocket out of 9 D engines... 3 to a stage... Homemade rocket. Prollum was that it was too heavy. Went up 30 feet, started falling and the next stage went off horizontally across the local state park. We didn't stay long past the third stage... Went into the river fortunately...

Maybe we are onto something here. Why is it again that "todays kids" suck at math and science?

That looks like fun. I may have to do some of this with my kids soon. Lot os fun memories.

When I worked at Space Camp I modified an Estes Aerobee 300 kit(a small rocket made for A,B, or C motors) to use a D motor by removing the motor adapter. The D fit perfectly. Then I made a second stage for it and another D motor. We lost sight of it after the second engine started. One of the other counselors built a larger 3 stager, but used inferior tubing. The first stage took it up about 20 feet, the second provided enough acceleration to buckle the weak tubing and the third went mostly sideways. Thankfully no one was hurt, but he ruined our chances of shooting any more fun rockets that summer. We were limited to the 1/2A jobs the campers got to fly.

cbeers - Flower Mound is the next town over. There is some story about the origin of the name. I never found out what it was.

Rob Channell - hopefully sooner rather than later!

After an entertaining science project, I discovered that with an x-acto knife and just a little patience, you could cut a groove in the cardboard of the rocket motor and remove the propellant, stage separations, and chute charges. There are many wonderful and interesting things a Montana kid can do with such things with his best friend over the course of a summer. Of course, I think that's one of the few places in the US where it isn't illegal to do stupid dangerous things if you are a kid. It's sort of a natural selection process. The stupid ones drown in the river, get caught in the hay bailer, bit by rattlesnakes, and so on....

Micah

Cut me some slack, my shift ends in a couple hours.