Hehe... Amateur rockets... now that brings back some memories.

We used to play with 1-2 litre Cola-bottles when I was little.
By cramming them onto the mussle of the garden-hose and securing the
contraption on a sloped or upward pointing rig we made ourselves a little
rocket with engine.  Turing up the pressure on the hose slowly, one managed
to get as much water into the bottles as possible without vacating any air.
Now, a gentle tap on the bottle with a stick released it from the hose and
sendt it soaring.
We had a tonn of fun with this and could keep at it for hours and hours.
Only problem was people getting hit by bottles coming down.  They often got
a bit upset...  Can't imagine why???

The higher the pressure, the better the lift.  Sop, naturally we tried my
dad's high-pressure water-blaster.  (You know the type everybody buys to
wash their car and rinse their driveway but it always ends up gathering dust
somewhere instead...)  We ended up making them explode instead, some of
those that didn't explode got a very good soar before landing on the roof of
the next building.
I think we got the bottles about 10 meters up with normal gardenhose
pressure, not quite sure.

It's great fun for both dad and the kids and everybody should try it.  Then
if it's not5 fun enough start building powder-rockets instead.  There is
nothing wrong with equipping the bottles with some finns and stuff, but be
careful so they don't steer the wrong way!

Have fun :-)

Because you can't help getting wet, I don't reccommend this unless it's a
warm summer day.
NB: We only used plastic-bottles!  (--> So I'm not that old hehe.)


    KreAture


----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell McMahon" <apptech@PARADISE.NET.NZ>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 1:42 AM
Subject: Re: [OT]: Unlikely looking rocket ship


> > the black box valve controllers are going to break off, under any kind
of
> g
> > load
>
> I ran that past John.
> He said
>
> >> The valve motors do tend to break when we crash, but it doesn't cause
> leaks.
>
> Hopefully (!), by the time they get to serious manned flight, crashing
will
> be an extremely unlikely event. In the earlier days, when every aspect was
a
> major learning experience, there were some quite interesting crashes. But
> none were anywhere as "good" as the disasters of the early US space
program.
> Such events are an essentially mandatory part of any rocket development
> program. I've seen a video of a 100+ foot long US rocket flying sideways
at
> ground level - gives a whole new (or old) meaning to the HPR term
> "landshark". And I have a picture of a Trident missile about to complete
its
> second full powered loop at sea level. Presumably it didn't have an armed
> warhead at the time :-)
>
>
>         RM
>
> --
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>

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