Sometimes the YouTube algorithm just understands me, you know? This delightful video of model rocketry fails popped up in my recommended list, and brought back so many memories of questionable decisions made with my siblings launching models in our desert backyard growing up.
In the words of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes: “Why can’t my successes be as spectacular as my failures?”
I think I saw one of our failures play out right in the video. One of my siblings had purchased a rocket similar to the picture below, save that on his rocket, the blades were hinged at the bottom. Now the idea here is that the three blades are held snugly against the rocket body during launch, then when the rocket motor burns out and fires the ejection charge, the nose cone pops up just enough to unfold the blades, the rocket turns nose down and auto-rotates down like a helicopter.
Emphasis on “supposed to.” Unfortunately, the first time we launched this one, we missed one very important little detail: namely no one thought to dab a bit of lubricant on the sliding nosecone to ensure that it successfully popped up when the ejection charge fired.
Imagine a bunch of tween and teenage boys clustered around the launch button. There’s a five count, someone pushes the button, and “Whoosh!” Up goes the rocket. We watch as it goes up, and up, the motor burns out, and… nothing. The rocket flips a couple of times, then definitively points itself nose down like the angry lawn dart from Hades.
The boys scatter. Trying to figure out where the rocket is going to land, and hoping it doesn’t actually damage anything. We’re so dead.
And it lands on the roof! And there’s no damage!
We even flew it again a few weeks later.
Then there was the Death Star rocket. But that’s a story for another day.