Rocketing on New Year's Eve
Shortly before driving out here, Pete got in touch with the Colorado Springs Rocket Society (COSROCS) and we got an invitation to an impromptu lauch this morning out at the club's launch range waythehelloutthere beyond Peyton, Colorado. The photo above gives a good impression of the area. Is it just me, or does the image suggest an alien planet on the edge of some star's habitable zone? (If the sun were at the horizon it would look like the twilight band of Longshadow, the tidally locked world in the Zeta Tucanae system on which some of the action of The Cunning Blood takes place.)
It was 22 degrees when we got there about 9:30 AM, with a good stiff wind and some powder snow in the hollows. The club was testing some newly built launch gear, so it was a small gathering, with Pete and myself and just three other club members plus the owners of the ranch on which the club's launches are held. Pete brought along his newly completed (as of the night before) Estes Interceptor E rocket, a 39" beauty into which he had poured many hours over the past week or so. (I have one underway too, but we knew we didn't have time to finish both of them before the launch this morning.)
Pete had a couple of other rockets with him, and we fired them all without losing any of them. His 15-year-old Phoenix model cracked the glue joint on one fin as it touched down a little awkwardly, but it's nothing that a little 90-second epoxy won't cure.
The photo above shows the Interceptor E on the launch rod ready to go. We got some terrific video of the launch and recovery, but the .mov file is 53 MB huge and I don't have the server bandwidth to make it a download. (We may post it on YouTube after Pete does some video editing on it.)
The wind was intermittent, but when it was blowing it was blowing hard enough to be a hazard. One of the other club members put an E-class engine in his rocket and may have hit 1,000 feet, after which the wind took the vehicle a long, long way. He jumped in his truck for the chase, and through binoculars we watched him scour a field across the road more than half a mile off.
We got about a dozen launches in before pausing for some hot chocolate and homemade cookies with Tom and Eileen Preble, our very gracious hosts. Tom is that kind of guy you'd like to have behind the same tree as you; in addition to being an amateur astronomer and a private pilot, he built his passive solar house with his own hands. It was a toasty 72 degrees inside even though the nightly lows had been touching zero and they hadn't had the heat on in three days.
Pete and I drove back to Colorado Springs marveling at how well it had all gone. I realized once I got out of the car again that after being fired, model rockets carry the unnmistakable whiff of black powder. (I myself hadn't fired a model rocket in thirty years and had completely forgotten...) The car is in the garage with the windows open, and I'm considering a gasket case for toting future vehicles to and from the launch range. You live and learn.