Eat Your Heart Out, Robert Goddard!

This morning at Windrock, on a day of departures for some and the end of a glorious week together for all, witnessed another generation reaching for the stars through the magic of model rocketry.  When my cousins and I were the ages our children are now, the Christies often arrived at Windrock with some of Estes finest, and the bluff was a favorite launching pad. 

Quite often we had slow fuses to light instead of electronic ignition, and multiple launches were rare for the same rocket.  Several kits would get modified into behemoth creations, the most notorious of which was a 4 stage rocket that veered for the beach after stage one and missed my sunbathing father by inches.  There was also a rocket with a clear compartment that carried a toad into the stratosphere.  The toad parachute, my cousin John ruefully reminds me, was live tested with its passenger out the third floor window before the launch, but I do not recall whether the astrotoad returned safely to Earth.

No such shenanigans were in evidence today, as a single stage rocket was constructed and successfully fired skyward on two successive launches. The wind is still blowing lightly offshore from the ENE, and much to the delight and amazement of all the first rocket launch went high and straight and landed on the grass a short distance from the launch pad.  My recollection of past rocketry attempts is that those that did not explode at take off often ended up lost in trees or far out to sea. The second launch today, while epic, did not end in disaster.

Ignition was once again flawless, and the rocket went so high we lost track of it for a moment against all that bright blue sky.  Then it reappeared, drifting out towards the bluff, splashing down just at the edge of the shore in less than a foot of water.  A little damp but none the worse for wear, it now reposes in the sun, awaiting a third launch later today.

My son, who just turned seven years old last week, has asked for a model rocket for his 8th birthday.  The outlook is good for Christmas.

Comments

[Al Mollitor]

As a kid in the sixties, I built and flew many Estes rockets - like you, with highly mixed results. I did about 99% of my rocketry unsupervised by adults. I suspect that would be a rare thing today. I'm not prepared to say if that's good or bad, but times have certainly changed.