Long, Slow Burn

As the rocket ascended, cheers rang out during every crucial step of the launch sequence, and at the final stage their headquarters in Hawthorne, California erupted in excitement. (Wired.com viewed the launch over the Internet on SpaceX’s live webcast.)

The tensest moment came just before stage separation. At that critical juncture, the third launch attempt had failed. This time, it worked out perfectly.

Eight minutes after leaving the ground, Falcon 1 reached a speed of 5200 meters per second and passed above the International Space Station.

“I don’t know what to say… because my mind is just blown,” said Musk, during a brief address to his staff after the successful launch. “This is just the first step of many.”

Read more here:
SpaceX Did It — Falcon 1 Made it to Space

I’m late in posting this, but our re-scheduled launch date was a success.

To be honest, the kids showed up with some rockets that didn’t have a good chance of flight.  We flew them anyway, and many of them didn’t fly too well.  While out in the field, we made some tweaks, some adjustments, … and the kids learned from their first flights … and in the end, we had lots of smiling faces.  That’s the best.

I’ll try to get some pictures posted soon.

I hated to do it, but we’re under high wind advisories for today.

The kids were working hard on rockets with parachutes and other cool designs.  Wind is the bane of parachutes and I didn’t want the kids to get their hard work ending up in a tree.

Oh well.  Postponed until next Wednesday.

Here’s the story from CBC.ca: B.C. inventor wants to put pop bottle rocket into orbit

It’s cool that he’s earning a living at water rockets. Maybe someday I’ll be able to earn a living from it too.

There was some interesting news coming from the world of space exploration today.

First, I am pleased to announce that the Space Shuttle finally launched yesterday.  This mission is to deliver the Columbus module to the ISS.  Congratulations NASA on what appears to be a flawless launch, and congratulations to the EU for a major step.  Good news all around.  Read about it here.

The second article is in regards to SETI, a program that I’ve participated in the past.  SETI is starting to re-evaluate on whether we’re searching for ET intelligence in the best manner.  This is a great example of what science is all about.  Come up with a theory, experiment, if the results are not as predicted, re-examine, refine, and test again.  Bravo SETI.  Don’t give up.  Read more about it here.
One interesting fact from the story is that there are over 70 sextillion stars in the visible universe. Sometimes written as 7×10^22.  Let me write out what 70 sextillion looks like:

70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Very cool.  Gosh, we’re small.

A week ago we had the first launch day for the kids.  You should have seen their faces when they launched the rockets.  Priceless.  No one got hurt and they had loads of fun, and learned a lot.  Here are just a couple of pictures from the day:

You can see the kids and their families showed up for the launch.  This is a picture of the first launch of the day.  You can see how surprised most of them were on how high and how fast the rockets launched.

The kids loved getting involved and loved loading their rockets onto the launchers.  Some even custom painted their rocket.

This is an unusual picture.  It’s hard to capture a rocket during launch but sometimes we get lucky.  Here’s a great picture of the stream of water coming from the rocket on launch.

What a beautiful day.  Only a couple of weeks until the next launch date.

Yawn.  CNN (and every other news outlet) appears to be trying to create news and fear and angst.  Some US military satellite has lost power sometime in the last year or so, and is going to fall to Earth.  “Strike” is the term that CNN uses.

Here’s my prediction: most all of it will burn up on entry.  What is left will hit somewhere on Earth and it will be very difficult for the scientists to tell us where it actually hit.

Yes, something may fall on populated areas.  It’s very unlikely but it may happen.  Damage may occur.
I think my prediction is going to be much closer to what happens, that what CNN is leading us to believe.  Yawn.

I’m just an hour away from leaving for today’s course.  I’m a bit nervous.  Today is the day that I’m most concerned about.  Today the students are cutting their fins for their rockets.  I’ve already cut the PETE from the bottles, folded them, and marked them.  That may be part of the hardest part but there is still lots to do.  Cut the fins, bend the footing flange, cut the relief cuts, cut the spars, tape the leading and trailing edges, and then of course, glue them to the rocket.  Gluing involves applying the glue to the footing flange, positioning it on the rocket, taping down (temporarily) the flange while the glue dries, and then moving on to the next fin.  Four fins per rocket.  After the fins are glued and taped, we wrap a rubber band around the fins to apply a good amount of inward pressure to help keep good contact between the rocket/glue/fin.
Luckily the weather today should cooperate.  It should be high of about 50.  Since the glue will be room temperature, I’ll be able to take the kids outside and get the fins glued to the rockets.

On top of that, I’ve been developing Homework #2.  It’s a bit of work making sure that all of the calculations and units of measurement are correct.  I think I have it done however.  It seems that every homework assignment means edits and enhancements to the Water Rocket Book as well.

Next week: The Launch Day!

I’ve done a write up for my water rocket class I’m offering.  Here’s some instructions on how to build The Bouncer.

We had a great time presenting at Sawnee Primary School today. We did two sessions with each session containing about 60 fifth graders. The weather was perfect and the students seemed to have a great time. Lots of good questions coming from the group.

I’d like to thank Kim, and the “Mysterious” Mr. Brown for assisting. Tom Brown did a great job of keeping the launchers loaded and primed. This was of immense help in keeping the presentation flowing.

Now I have to rest my voice. I’m not used to speaking to *anyone* during the day and I had to speak for 45 minutes twice today outside. It’s not used to that kind of workout.