Rocket Jones Skunkworks

Smoke, Fire, Noise, what's not to love?

Boy howdy.

Now this one was called the Invader Zim Song of Doom, and if you don't know what that's referring to, then you don't watch enough cartoons. It eventually crashed.

This one was called the Higher Calling (note the past tense). A two-stage rocket, she folded nearly in half just above the fins on her first full-up flight. Estimated speed was 300mph. I repaired her and she made many more single-stage flights before being lost in a farmer's field.

This is my youngest daughter, Rachael, five years ago, holding the rocket she won as a prize for the Rocket Design Contest. We built it from a kit, and she still flies it.

That's me a few years ago, holding a semi-scale model of the Phoenix air-to-air missile. I still fly this one too.

Although we fly some rather large rockets, ours our actually on the smallish side when in comes to high power rocketry. This, for example, is a scale model of a Nike-Hercules, with four motors in the first stage, and a single motor in the second stage. More power in one flight than we do all day long.

Now here is where my wife would make a joke about overcompensating. Me? I'm just jealous.

This kind of launch is what keeps me loving the hobby.

Posted by Ted at March 16, 2006 01:33 PM