OT (and long) "Toy" Rockets

A friend just emailed me this almost certainly apocryphal story.
Knowing this group, I thought it might have some entertainment, and
possibly even instructive, value. IIRC, it's right up Om's alley.

--------------------------

SOME THINGS ARE MEANT TO BE PASSED ON TO OUR SONS


About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier. I
located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this mondo sky
rocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a SkyDragon. These
things
are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch wooden dowel.

Pure aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two cases of these
things. They arrived at the freight dock in a few days and I had to
drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each 2 feet by 2 feet by
4
feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The 'Class 4 Explosives'
sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am gonna have to
save them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket launch ceremony.
I
placed one of these beauties in a liter-size glass bottle and the
bottle
fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was waaay too big. I looked around the
shop
for a pipe to set it in, but realized that the only dirt I could drive
the pipe into was in plain sight of my neighbor's house. I knew he was
a
cool guy, but I didn't want him to call the cops.

You see 'projectile-type' fireworks are totally illegal in this
county.
I was surprised that the Buncombe County Sheriff Department wasn't
waiting for me at the loading dock when I picked these things up.

Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch pad by prying up one of the driveway
drain grates with a crowbar and sitting the stick into the deep pit.
Looked sorta like an ICBM silo with its hardened lid slid aside.

I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse, but all took
a
few steps back and politely declined. Chicken****s. Kids just aren't
made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger quotient by shooting
bad guys in video games. About as far from real danger as you can get,
if you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to light the device
with a Bic lighter. The lady at the fireworks importer promised me
that
these things would NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be
relatively quiet so I could shoot them off in my neighborhood without
causing 'undue alarm'.

She said I wouldn't have any problem. I emphasized the particular
legal
problems I would have if there were any type of loud report at apogee.

I emphasized the fact that I lived right next to a National Park and
that any type of firework that was discharged or assumed to be
discharged on that property would get me sent before a FEDERAL judge
right before I got sent to the COUNTY judge. She again assured me I
would have no problem.

That lying bitch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I had EVER
seen,
and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees. Diamond shock
patterns
extended from the back end. It kept going and going and going.

When it hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket disintegrated into a
huge shower of silent red sparks. Pretty cool, I thought......until
the
shower of sparks burned out and suddenly transformed into a cloud of
extremely bright and loud explosions.

The kids scrambled into the back door 'Three Stooges' style (ie: where
all three try to get through the same closed door at once) and left me
standing in the smoking haze waiting for the cops to arrive.

The dogs that live along our street were all barking their heads off
at
the apparition they had just witnessed in the night sky.

That ended the fireworks test for the night.

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were gonna 'neuter'
one of the rockets so it wouldn't make any noise. I took him into the
closet where I store the gardening tools and he saw these two huge
cases
of fireworks standing there.

The kid went nuts. He wanted to open BOTH boxes so he could see what
all
159 rockets looked like lined up next to each other. This kid has
promise. I told him: "Since mom only thinks I have a few of these
things
lying around, maybe that wasn't such a good idea."

He mulled that over for a few seconds, then gave me a real big smile
in
agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked the closet
door. He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to take it
apart. It was a standard issue big-ass Chinese sky rocket. I bet they
used these to kill people 500 years ago. As I sat there taking layer
after layer of paper off, his brain was filling with the details of
construction.

Tissue, cardboard, plastic, fuses...etc. Realizing that he was
mentally
storing the design for some future project sorta made me shudder. All
I
was thinking was the fact that this thing was probably put together by
a
political prisoner in a hellhole somewhere who is probably gonna get
'executed' so they can sell his internal organs on the transplant
market.

Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do a bit of
explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace engineering
regarding
how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only 4th grader in the U.S.
who can now describe the principle of thrust using a control volume
model.

The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster engine
topped
with a warhead that contained the red sparkly things that exploded.
Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a quick twist, and I
assumed the neutered rocket would fly higher without the payload.

I was correct. Doug and I did a daylight 'stealth' test and were able
to

add about 50% to the altitude attained the previous night. We decided
to
modify four more rockets and put them aside in the closet for easy
access.

When this was done, Doug had a jar full of stuff that came out of the
warheads including: 12 fuses about 3-inches long each, some paper, 4
plastic nosecones and a big handfull of these little black balls about
the size of 12-gauge buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly
popper things'. It appeared that the outer layer was a simple
gunpowder
coating designed to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I
surmised
that the inner core had some kind of magnesium thermite that gave off
an
intense white light and a loud bang.

Pretty cool if you ask me. Lots of energy packed into one teeny little
ball.

I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so I told Doug
we
were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set them off. He gave
me
another big smile. It's amazing how kids think alike...even when
separated by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked if it would
be
alright to put an army man next to these things so that "When they go
off, it would look like he was getting shot with a machine gun".

Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and he ran off to his
room
to dig something out of the mess. He returned in about 3 seconds, out
of
breath and holding a cheap plastic imitation of Robert E. Lee on
horseback and a Civil War cannon.

I pointed out that they didn't have true machine guns in the Civil
War,
but we would overlook this for the purpose of the demonstration. He
handed me the action figure and I placed it and the cannon next to a
rather large pile of black beads from which a few of the fuses
extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds to burn, so I
had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a few steps
back.

I neglected to recount the night before.....when the warhead ignited
IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese. They had installed
extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and that fact Totally
escaped me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy. Doug laughed. I
took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the fuse. One flick
got the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL REMEMBER FOR A LONG
TIME.

My hand holding a lighter next to a pile of explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that occurs
immediately before something bad or really stupid happens. It is where
that little voice in your head says: "You dumbass."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second range. The pile of
little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a tremendously
brilliant
ball of fire. All I could think was... "... th.... th.....
thermite..."

Unfortunately, when they are viewed at ground level, these little
popper
thingies become REALLY BIG POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump
up to 15-feet in every direction from their point of ignition.

I instantaneously became engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot
like being in a half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.

It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers. After the
smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt off. That meant I was
still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at dismembered limbs. He said
I
jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not remember. I checked my
clothes for burn marks, and found none. He checked my back to make
sure
it was not on fire. No combustion there. The driveway was peppered
with
black holes where the concrete had been scarred from these things.

A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the tapes again to
re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being inside something
akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion. Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero. Instead of a machine-gun
peppering, he got nuked. He and the horse he rode in on.......and his
cannon too. One side was untouched, but the other side was arc-welded.
Real warfare. Doug examined it real quiet-like and then started
laughing
again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he
will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that
this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket
construction.

Oh well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you how to get your
ass blown off, who will ?

Author Unknown



--------------
Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring one imaginable."


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In article ,
John Beaderstadt wrote:

A friend just emailed me this almost certainly apocryphal story.
Knowing this group, I thought it might have some entertainment, and
possibly even instructive, value. IIRC, it's right up Om's alley.

--------------------------

SOME THINGS ARE MEANT TO BE PASSED ON TO OUR SONS


About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier.

(SNIP!)

Author Unknown


Sounds like Pat's writing and experimental style to me . . . :-)

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
Columbia Loss FAQ:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

John Beaderstadt wrote:

A friend just emailed me this almost certainly apocryphal story.
Knowing this group, I thought it might have some entertainment, and
possibly even instructive, value. IIRC, it's right up Om's alley.



I can't find any reference to a "Skydragon" skyrocket in a Google search
other than multiple references to this letter; but the description of
the incident and the details sound right on....with two major
exceptions: the amount of money that would be required to buy this large
of skyrockets in the numbers mentioned- we are probably talking $10-$15
per rocket, easy.
So unless this guy dropped around somewhere around two grand on a lark,
there is something wrong with that 160 rockets total number...I would
have gotten one or two and found out just what I was dealing with before
spending that much money.
The fuses on the flash/bang balls are also strange- why not just use the
ejection charge to ignite them? A "instantaneous fuze" is sort of a
pointless thing.

Pat

Herb Schaltegger wrote:


Sounds like Pat's writing and experimental style to me . . . :-)


Wherever it came from, it wasn't one of mine- although we do both seem
to have the same high safety standards.

Pat