Saturday, October 09, 2010

Rocket Launches

We launched a whole bunch of rockets on the lower field at an (unofficial) club meeting on Friday, Oct. 8. Here are some videos, courtesy of Joe Barnard:
This was actually before clubs started this year. It's actually the lamest rocket kit ever… the fins and launch lug are one big plastic bit that is held on just by fitting tightly–no glue–and apart from that there's the shock cord/mount/streamer thing, the nose cone, the body tube, and the thrust ring…
This one is awesome. It's an Estes Eagle boost glider, meaning it's a glider hooked onto a rocket. When the streamer ejects on the rocket, the glider is knocked loose and flies around a bit. Though it landed in a tree, we have recovered it now and will launch it again later…
I TOLD NICKS AND CLIP IT WAS A BAD IDEA TO ANGLE IT INTO THE WIND.
This is the Snapshot. It's meant to take pictures but it needs some kind of fancy film… and now it's in the graveyard…
…And… the X-Wing. Clearly designed for looks and not stability.

Not pictured is Joe's Estes Wizard, a tiny little one that (although we didn't know at the time) is apparently designed to fly VERY VERY HIGH. We put a B in thinking it'd not go very far but be recoverable… but boy were we wrong… It ZOOMED up and then we saw something falling very fast into someone's yard. I think either the ejection charge didn't eject the streamer or the rocket exploded. Nicks insisted it had to be a C engine, but we counted how long it took in the video and determined it to be a B6.

Welcome to 2010/11!

The BSEC continues into the 2010/11 school year! We are under new management:
John French–Co-President
Joe Barnard–Co-President
Noah Goldstein–Co-Vice-President
Diego Fiore–Co-Vice-President
And we are going to do lots of awesome things! For instance we are planning a huge and awesome rocket launch, which will include the ginormous E-powered Mean Machine and possibly an F-powered flight (if we can figure out how to do that…) as well as an attempt to launch the 10 or so Sword rockets that everyone (attempted to) build at once, and a couple of boost gliders! It'll be exciting.
We also have some thermite in the closet… And dry ice will certainly return…
Any ideas? Post them in the comments!