Getting Into It

Softly As In A Morning Sunrise Launches from Chixulub on Vimeo.

The rockets have been a thing I do, in part, to spend time with my kids. I get a kick out of it, too, obviously. Or why would I launch on weekends I don't have my kids?



Still, it's mainly something we do together.



But building them, painting them, designing them. This is strictly my doing. The girls consult on color choices and names, but that's all.



And until this weekend, all the flight prep was me, too.

Then, out at Shawnee Mission Park, while I prepped BeBop at length, Em decided she wanted to prep Hatful of Hollow, so she did. She took him over to the RSO for a safety check, logged the flight, filled out an entry in the Set Duration competition, and loaded the rocket on the rod. She also pushed the button for launch, something she's done before, but that used to be the limit of her involvement.



She must have enjoyed it because she did Mr. Creosote next, then Scribble V. She made a couple of beginner mistakes, but none cost us a rocket, and she learned form them.



It was great.



Then, at the Purple Park when Em had gone on a sleepover party, Mo got into it, wanting to pack parachutes and load rockets onto the rod and whatnot. I was beyond impressed.





The weather for launches this weekend was spectacular. Sometimes a light breeze, but mostly the winds were 3-5 mph, load 'em hot and fly 'em straight up.



Got Floyd up for the third time, and he about landed on me.

Also flew ÜberTubester Chixulubster on an AeroTech D21-7 composite motor. It was startling how fast this heavy-ass rocket went up. Basically, the letter in a motor description is how much total impulse it has. The number after the letter is the average thrust. The third number is the delay before ejection.



So in the case of a D21, it's a 20 N-sec motor, and the burn time is just under one second. Meaning you get all that power right now. By contrast, an E9-8, for instance, has about half again as much total impulse, but burns over three seconds, with an average thrust of only nine N-sec.



The reason I include all this is I'd launched this rocket on D10 Apogee composite motors and was impressed. But the D21, which is basically the same motor with half the burn time, is just scary.



For that matter, the E-30's I fly Floyd on are pretty astounding. I'm always surprised that they're actually so loud it's painful for a split-second. Almost as painful as the price tag on this motor (about $15).