Month: June 2016

One interesting person from the past is Ray Dunakin.

Please check out his site:

http://www.raydunakin.com

Aerial rocket photography is neat.

I helped by contributing a little bit of money for this school to complete its project back in 1994 and this is something that any engineering department in High school could accomplish.

http://www.spacecraftreplicas.com/shuttle

Robert Crippen was a neighbor of mine where I grew up and the space shuttle is a program that should have never been canceled.

A free program for designing your own rocket is called Open Rocket.

Here is a good link that talks about the program:

Open Rocket Information

software source:

http://openrocket.sourceforge.net/download.html

Supporting documentation:

http://openrocket.sourceforge.net/techdoc.pdf

http://openrocket.sourceforge.net/thesis.pdf

Rocket plans that can be viewed with Open Rocket of RocSim:

Rocket plans database:

http://www.rocketreviews.com/openrocket-design-library.html

RocSim plans database:

http://www.rocketreviews.com/rocksim-library.html

The three day class was very fun and educational.  Seventeen students were present on the first day of class.  The first hour covered safety.  Then the next two hours went over the beginning of building the Estes Viking rocket kit.  We first assembled the shock cord mount, and then attached the fins to the body tubes, launch lug and engine block.  At this point we stopped for the day.

On the second day, we continued with completing the building of everyone’s rocket kit.  We even set up an area where each participant could spray paint their rocket if they wanted to.  During the last hour of the second day’s class, I brought out the multiple launch control system and went over the launch procedures.  I addressed who the Range Safety Officer would be and what their responsibilities involved. Then I went over the Launch Control Officers duties.

On the third day (launch Day) the weather was just right.  We had a mild breeze of a 7 mile per hour wind coming from the west.  We were having a Spot landing contest and everyone did a great job.  The closest distance from the target was 73 feet.  Everyone was able to launch their rocket twice with an Estes A8-3 motor.  Two competitors had their rockets land in a tree.  They were given a new kit to build at home, since their rockets were not able to be retrieved.

I hope that we will have more classes offered similar to this one by the Parks and Recreation department again.