The Severed Cortex

For Christmas I received an Estes model rocket kit. It came with a prebuilt rocket, launch pad, controller, and two B stage engines with igniters. For weeks I've been wanting to shoot the darn thing off and for every weekend Robert and I could hang out it was either raining, or snowing, or freezing, or too windy. But not a couple weekends ago. The weather was plenty warm and even if it was a little bit too windy, I was still going to shoot rockets.

Two rocket engines is not near enough. We needed way more and the only place close enough that sold them was a little radio control store over in Collinsville. After meeting Nancy for lunch at the new Noble Romans Pizza (thumbs down if you ask me), we headed to lovely downtown Collinsville. We picked up some more B stage and some C stage engines and headed off to SIUE to shoot them off. We wanted to shoot them off where the R/C airplane guys like to fly because there is tons of room, but a couple of them were already over there. We settled on an area across the road instead, which was lined by trees a little too much for my taste. However, I figured if we aimed the rocket into the wind a little, the wind would drift it back to us. ... and for the most part that worked.

The B stage engines propelled the rocket about 300 feet in the air and the rocket drifted safely within the confines of our area. The C stage engines propelled the rocket about 700 feet in the air and the rocket drifted just outside the confines of our area, but not in the trees. But, as I well know, tangle with Mother Nature too many times and Mother Nature will win. The last B stage rocket we were going to shoot off, the wind decided to just quit blowing, somewhere around the time of .0001 milliseconds after the rocket took off. The rocket unfortunately fell into the trees nearest to us and lodged itself about 25 feet off the ground. We threw sticks and bottles and all kinds of things to knock it down but it was too tangled up. The tree wasn't big enough to climb either, otherwise I would have done that ... resulting of course in me falling and breaking my neck. Good times.

Good thing I bought another rocket, which we will put together some time in the future.

I have a Quicktime video of Robert shooting off a B stage engine, but unfortunately it's in some sort of oddball format that I can't make work on the web. It's kind of funny too because you'll hear Robert goof up the countdown, and you'll get to hear my voice, where it's clear the Southern twang is still there. Mail me if you want it.