Exciting rocket weekend

Yesterday was a rocket weekend. It was Mr.3's first time and of course, on his first time something awful had to happen...my Dad suggested that he might be a jink, but more to the point the fat bastard in the green shirt was his own jink.

Model Rocket engines are explosives, and they range in lettering from A-N. A's are the smallest engines, B have twice the power of an A, C have twice the power of a B and so on and so forth. Well obviously with this amount of power buildup you have to have some form of checks on the system, so once you get up to an H, you have to be qualified. My Dad is a level one (he can shoot H's and I's). There are a total of three levels. Once you get up into the third level you are allowed to do experimental rocket engines, and for this I think that more should be done to qualify these guys...a remedial phyisics class might be a good start. So yesterday this fat green shirted guy had 4 launches, out of those 4, 3 misfired in some ways. 2 of those misfires were with using experimental liguid fuel, and one of those misfires almost killed someone.

With this particular rocket, it had a liguid gas tank, so they had to wait for it to fill and then it would go off. You could tell when the rocket was ready to launch because he would begin waddling very fast away from it. So the rocket goes off, between 200 and 500 feet up, the nosecone explodes off and the rest of the rocket begins to barrel towards the ground like it's a projectile missle, towards the cars. Specifically towards my car, when it got close I closed my eyes, so I didn't see it land, but I definitely saw the aftermath. It didn't hit my car, but the one next to it, a suburban, and it hit straight through the windshield into the driver's side window. Once everyone got past the "whoa" factor of it, they went to the "oh shit" factor as there were people in the car, in the front seat. The boy sitting in the front seat, which the rocket went through, was luckily turned to the side playing on a game boy. If he had been sitting normally, the rocket would have taken off his leg. The dash board was ripped off, the carframe was bent because of the shock, and they had to disengage all of the electronics (that still worked) in the engine as the stupid rocket still had some of the hydrogen fuel in it.

Unfortuately, this was the one time that I didn't bring my digital camera, but when I get the photos from Mr.3 or my mom, I will post them. The suburban was completely totalled. Thank goodness that it didn't hit my car, as it would have impaled it to the ground. Luckily the boy and his mother who were in the front seat were all right but it could have been much worse.

The fat bastard did do the right thing in the end as he gave the rocket to the family. That is only fair, you destroy a car with a rocket, the owner of that car should get to keep it. Of course, this didn't dissauge the guy from trying another rocket with the experimental fuel...this one went up a 100 feet, misfired, took a sharp right turn, again heading towards the cars but went past them towards the highway. Somewhere between the cars and the road it exploded and no one was hurt and thankfully no more property damage.

The family whose car was destroyed were pretty cool about the whole thing. The father had quite the time explaining to his insurance agent that a six foot rocket had destroyed his car, but there are plenty of pictures and video of the incident to back him up. The Model Rocketry Club HAD prided themselves on not having any accidents...well I guess this messes up their perfect record didn't it?