02/11/2023 – Mattawan Airpark
After our first launch, we decided to launch the team rocket together in Mattawan. This time we launched our team rocket all together, and we got permission from the Mattawan Airpark to launch rockets there. We arrived after school, ready to launch. This time we were accompanied by Jay Calvert. Jay owns impulse buys, a rocket engine supplier, and he is quite knowledgable in the model rocketry field. After arrival, we started walking out deep into the field, to ensure we could retrieve our rocket because of it’s potential max altitude. After setting up our launch pad, we noticed that there was quite a bit of wind. We decided to continue setup and hope the wind would quiet down a little bit. We finished setup, complete with an all new launch controller. A launch controller is the thing you use to activate the rocket, and it’s a key component to any launch. Once we got everything connected, we realized we didn’t exactly know how to activate the controller. So I setup the camera, and tried to launch it, but I couldn’t figure it out. I turned off the camera, then asked Jay to help us. Once Jay tried to launch it, he got it pretty quickly, and unfortunately my camera wasn’t ready. Unexpected to us, something bad was about to happen
After launch, the rocket shot up, but it didn’t go far. After about one second the rocket exploded. If you don’t know how model rocket engines work, the first part is what makes the rocket go up, and the second part explodes and pushes the parachute out so it can glide to safety. Since we unfortunately have no video of the incident, we can’t be certain what the issue was, but we assume it was a faulty engine, and the second part happened too soon. After it exploded, it flew into the nearby ground. We are quite lucky it didn’t fly towards us. We ran over and put the rocket out with water, and it revealed only the top part of the rocked survived. The rest of it was basically disintegrated, and completely unusable. It’s alright though. We ended up recovering from the incident and nobody was injured. Well, nothing besides our rocket.
I would like to say that we learned much here regarding rocket engineering, but we are still unsure the exact issue. What we really learned is that we should always be attentive when launching rockets, as the unexpected can always happen. Also, ensure you always have proper fire extinguishing technology present when launching.Check out impulse buys!: https://www.impulse-buys.com/
Check out the rocket club: LaunchMattawan.org
