Who wants to go look at a real Saturn V? How about a real one lying down where you can see it up close, and a detailed mockup standing tall outside.
And how about all that, and about 25 other real rockets and a full Space Shuttle Stack? The only place you can do that is in Huntsville, Alabama, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, and SoAR is getting up a road trip for June 15.
Go to the sign-up sheet and click on the “RoadTrip Huntsville” tab at the bottom and add your name to the list.
A year or so ago we announced a contest for people to build and fly a rocket based on the yellow rocket in the SoAR logo. The one built by Steve Corrigall was by far the best, but we never got around to awarding the prize. So, Steve has won a rocket kit worth up to $35 from Roy’s collection of kits (which is still pretty large, though getting smaller). Congratulations Steve!
There was an incident in Lawrenceville on June 30 — five acres burned after a fire started by a model rocket — that got into the news. The person arrested (a dad flying a rocket for his two kids) is not known by SoAR.
Please be aware how easy it can be to start a fire when the ground is this dry, and don’t be fooled by primarily green looking grass. There can be a lot of dead grass underneath that is dry and ready to burn. It doesn’t take much: a still-hot igniter falling from the rocket, improper recovery wadding, a rocket that goes unstable and falls to the ground before the ejection charge goes off.
If you must fly, use a proper launch pad with blast deflector, and set it on a small tarp or blanket to cover the underlying grass.
If you fly those popular “flying saucers,” cubes, spools, or pyramids that use drag recovery, use ONLY booster motors (i.e. dash-zero motors), so that any pyrotechnic events occur while the rocket is still in the air, not when it reaches the ground.
Better yet, wait until one of our launches and fly rockets with us! We have extinguishers!!
At each SoAR launch there is usually a bucket (white, about 12″ diameter), whose location on the field is chosen at random, that is designated as Dale Windsor’s Bucket O’Rockets. Land any part of your rocket in that bucket (after a safe flight and recovery!) and you’ll win a jackpot of rocket kits. If no one gets in the bucket at a launch, the prizes will roll over to the next launch, and another prize will (seldomly!) be added!
In the eight+ years that we’ve been doing this, only a couple of rockets (more…)
Who wants to go look at a real Saturn V? How about a real one lying down where you can see it up close, and a detailed mockup standing tall outside.