This past Tuesday, Florence was in town! Since she lives in the desert now, we don’t get to hang out much, so the most had to be made of it.

The decision of what to do was easy: it was time to launch model rockets!

“What, what?!” you ask? Well, I had kept it a cunning secret that Florence had purchased me model rocket supplies for Christmas, knowing this day would eventually come. Here’s a rare shot of me assembling one of the rockets a few weeks ago:

There were three in total. Before her trip I built everything and made sure it was all ready to go. A scouted out a location and bought a few extra engines. Very soon, I was to send an emissary into the cold, dark depths of space! And the very first said emissary would be no less than ‘KUMA 01‘, the bear-rocket:

We launched in Delmar park, near my house. The weather, as you can see, was perfect. KUMA is a little rocket, and it had a B-4 engine in it. What does that mean? Who knows! We certainly didn’t. I think you can gauge from this launch video how high we expected this rocket to go:

It went so high! And there was apparently a wind up there, since it traveled quite a distance (via the parachute) before touching down. In the future, remind me to snip a hole in the parachute prior to launch. Happily, KUMA survived the trip intact:

Giddy with success, it was time to move on to the big rocket, LOADSTAR. This guy is designed to carry a payload, and has a (frankly ludicrous) dual-stage that requires two engines. It was also a total bastard to assemble, and I had less than 1% confidence it would survive a landing. Here it is ready to be launched:

The launch was spectacular… ly bad! As I half-expected, the second stage failed to ignite, and therefore the re-entry mechanism did not deploy. LOADSTAR fell like a stone, nose first, into dirt:

Although it failed, I was amazed it survived intact. Kudos to gorilla glue, I suppose! I will tinker with LOADSTAR and try launching him again one day.

And then we moved onto what was perhaps the craziest of the three rockets, ATOMOS. And yes, I just made up that name one second ago. At any rate, here’s a few shots of the pre-launch procedure:

This rocket carries two shuttles, which detach at the zenith, and then glide to earth (probably bearing messages from God). This rocket kit had existed in my car for a millenia, and was actually damaged when I built it. If LOADSTAR was expected to fail, ATOMOS was expected to explode!

What’s that? The thing in the top left of the above shot? Here’s a closeup:

OMG it’s Florry, hiding behind a plastic lid because she was scared after the LOADSTAR tragedy 🙂

I had put a stronger engine into this guy, a C-5. What does that mean?? Who knows! Let’s launch:

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD IT WENT HIGH! You can see from that photo (taken on my phone…), this rocket had purpose. It raced up, screaming through the troposphere, writing “Goodbye fair Earth” with its exhaust. Maybe. At any rate, it was an amazing launch, one of the shuttles even worked correctly (the other fell like Icarus) and both the rocket and both shuttles were recovered intact.

There was only one engine left. A strong one; a C-5. It made sense to put it in the smallest, lightest rocket. KUMA 01 was on a one-way trip to infinity and beyond!

The final launch was so momentous it required two people. This may have been because the launch device had two buttons, and we both wanted to photograph the rocket as it was taking off. We hid behind our plastic shield, said a quick prayer, and pushed the button. This happened:

Look at that power! Look at it:

It was like all the angels got beneath this little bear-rocket and lifted to heaven at faster than light speed! It just went so fast, and so high, and penetrated the atmosphere and we never ever saw little KUMA again…

…at least not until he touched down safely a minute or so later 🙂

As you may be able to tell this was big fun. I already have some ideas for my second round of rocketry later this summer.

Thank you Florence, both for the rockets and for helping me launch them. 🙂