Thing is, Mo asks to go launch rockets because she wants to color on the street with sidewalk chalk. And Em is all about it if there are other kids she can regale with the full history of the Midwest Rock Lobster Space Program.
I think I finally got the parachute on Thor's Candycane fixed. I untied it and set it up fresh and it opened perfectly on all three of its launches today. Mr. Creosote went up four times, and the only time his parachute didn't open I think I just had the wadding wrapped around the parachute too tightly and the air couldn't get into the 'chute to open it in time. There isn't much time with him, he blows his nose cone about a 75 to 100 feet above the ground, so if it doesn't open fast it ain't gonna. He landed in the dirt, though, and was none the worse for wear, just a bit dusty.
I made the Queen Izen mistake with the Crapper and I think it's now an officially retired rocket. I could probably patch it up, it's just a couple of cracks in the roof, but I dunno. I put an A8-3 in it, knowing it has all kinds of drag. I thought I'd launched it on a B before, at least, but now I'm thinking I never put anything smaller than a C6 in it. And from the look of things, that was the way to go. He hits the ground before his recover charge can blow.
We also lost Tubester. Well, we did find his nose cone, but not the rocket. I'm building his big brother now, the ÜberTubester Chixulubster (bet you didn't know there was a rhyme for 'tubester'). ÜTC is 56 inches tall, should be considerably harder to lose.
I've also got a couple of two-stage rockets under construction. One with the booster from Two-Da-Lou (M.I.A.), the other on the same scale as Thor's Candycane and Long John Silver but with the bottom 2.75" of his 34" body tube cut off to make a booster stage. I tried the epoxy putty they sell in the plumbing section for fin fillets this time, using a wet finger to smooth it out. Not bad, not as bad as the other two epoxy putties I've tried, but it still doesn't want to smooth out like I want. It makes a kind of welded look, which is cool, but part of the idea is to decrease drag and a rough surface doesn't do that as well as a smooth one.
In other disastrous news, Delta Farce separated from its nose cone and streamer, landing on pavement and fracturing another fin. Delta Farce is famous for this, but maybe I can patch him up again. Teach me to name a rocket with a Larry the Cable Guy reference, right?
The biggest disaster, though, was Stinger. He's been with us for a long time, maybe a year now. Little guy, flies on a mini-A, he's unaccountably failed to get lost in numerous launches. There's not much doubt about his retirement after this.
My theory: a crack in the fuel. When I launched him, it sounded like a firecracker going off, and he launched, but only about twenty feet up, coming down nearby. His engine hook was by the launch rod, and his body was burned and broken into pieces. This is why they use that spongy fuel for larger model rocket engines (and for the big-boy stuff NASA flies). With a mini-A it's a horrible, violent death for some paper tubing, balsa and plastic. With a J570 it would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. With the SRB on the Space Shuttle, the Challenger would be unremarkable in view of all the other vaporized missions.
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