My son and I lanched a rocket that landed in Rhode (err.. road) Island
This has been a great weekend for my son and myself. Pimm and I bought "The Boy" a model rocket, and "The Boy" and I chose this weekend to assemble and launch it. We assembled it yesterday. The project took about an hour.
I had the History Channel on in the background and while we were taking a break, waiting for some glue to dry, a commercial for "Band of Brothers" on DVD came on.
"The Boy" asks "did all those people die?"
I told him "Well, some of them did."
To which he asks the inevitable "Why?" Now I'm provided with the challenge to bring WWII down to the level of a 6 year old.
It went something like this...
BFP - Well, a long time ago the meanest man there ever was decided he wanted to take over the world and kill all the people he didn't like. Allot of good people got together and decided to stop him. So they had a fight.
The Boy - What was the bad man's name?
BFP - Adolf Hitler.
The Boy - Did he have powers? (The Boy watches way too much "Harry Potter")
BFP - In a way, yes. He could make some people do what he wanted.
The Boy - Did this happen when you where a boy?
BFP - No it happened when grandpa was a boy.
And so on, and so on for about 45 more questions.
By the time our Q&A ended it was time to finish up the work on our rocket.
With the rocket done I had to go over to canology's dust filled house to help him move some furniture around. My lungs still haven't recovered. Afterwards we decided to go see "Bad Santa". I'll refer you canology's journal for a review, but I will say I thought it was funny in a disturbed way.
This morning The Boy and I launched his rocket at a local park.
The launch went well. I'm pretty sure the rocket went higher than the advertised 1000 ft. Though we kept an eye on it, we actually lost site of it for a while.
The recovery did not go as well. The chute opened, but the rocket landed in a tree, on a road island about 500 meters away. I drove The Boy home, left him there, and returned to above-mentioned rocket eating tree with a broom, and hauled my fat ass up the tree to retrieve the rocket.
When I got home The Boy and I talked about how much fun the event was, but we decided that we needed to find a better launch site to avoid rocket-eating trees. I found the local rocket club on the Internet only to find out that our launch was "illegal". Apparently to launch model rockets you need permission from the local fire authority. The easiest way it to launch legally it seems is attend the club's sanctioned launches.
The Boy and I had so much fun that we're going to build some more rockets get involved with the local rocket club.
Later
I had the History Channel on in the background and while we were taking a break, waiting for some glue to dry, a commercial for "Band of Brothers" on DVD came on.
"The Boy" asks "did all those people die?"
I told him "Well, some of them did."
To which he asks the inevitable "Why?" Now I'm provided with the challenge to bring WWII down to the level of a 6 year old.
It went something like this...
BFP - Well, a long time ago the meanest man there ever was decided he wanted to take over the world and kill all the people he didn't like. Allot of good people got together and decided to stop him. So they had a fight.
The Boy - What was the bad man's name?
BFP - Adolf Hitler.
The Boy - Did he have powers? (The Boy watches way too much "Harry Potter")
BFP - In a way, yes. He could make some people do what he wanted.
The Boy - Did this happen when you where a boy?
BFP - No it happened when grandpa was a boy.
And so on, and so on for about 45 more questions.
By the time our Q&A ended it was time to finish up the work on our rocket.
With the rocket done I had to go over to canology's dust filled house to help him move some furniture around. My lungs still haven't recovered. Afterwards we decided to go see "Bad Santa". I'll refer you canology's journal for a review, but I will say I thought it was funny in a disturbed way.
This morning The Boy and I launched his rocket at a local park.
The launch went well. I'm pretty sure the rocket went higher than the advertised 1000 ft. Though we kept an eye on it, we actually lost site of it for a while.
The recovery did not go as well. The chute opened, but the rocket landed in a tree, on a road island about 500 meters away. I drove The Boy home, left him there, and returned to above-mentioned rocket eating tree with a broom, and hauled my fat ass up the tree to retrieve the rocket.
When I got home The Boy and I talked about how much fun the event was, but we decided that we needed to find a better launch site to avoid rocket-eating trees. I found the local rocket club on the Internet only to find out that our launch was "illegal". Apparently to launch model rockets you need permission from the local fire authority. The easiest way it to launch legally it seems is attend the club's sanctioned launches.
The Boy and I had so much fun that we're going to build some more rockets get involved with the local rocket club.
Later