Got a last-minute email from a rocketry bud letting me know that at 9pm last night on the SciFi channel, the show MasterBlasters would be focusing on rocketry.

I'd never seen the show before, but what it seems to be is a set team of generalists (engineers, fabricators, etc), known as the MasterBlasters, go up against a team of "experts" to accomplish a given task for the episode. For last nights' experts, the rocketry guys were led by Erik Gates, who is a legend in high-power rocketry. The rest of his team included his brother Dirk, plus some of their friends who've helped on other big Gates Brother's projects (great photos of their work are available here). You may have seen the Gates Brothers on the show MythBusters, when they assisted in the episode where they strapped rockets to the top of a car.

Back to MasterBlasters. Inspired by the movie Wizard of Oz, each team was given a kid's playhouse made of wood. These weren't flimsy little structures, they were basically mini-houses with an attached porch and full roof, maybe six or eight feet to a side and about that tall as well. The challenge was to launch the house with four rocket motors to the greatest possible altitude, the house had to spin at least three times on the way up (tornado!), at the top the wicked witch on her broom had to be released to fall seperately, and the house - with Dorothy (and her little doggie too!) on the front porch - had to be returned to ground safely.

Quite a task.

I won't give spoilers, because it's quite fun to watch the final results. I found it interesting that, as is usually the case in these kinds of shows, the two teams came up with radically different solutions to the problem. The rocketeers basically used the house itself as the nosecone of their rocket, whereas the Masterblasters built a mast containing their rocket motors to drag the structure behind. It worked very much like the escape tower functioned on the US manned capsules (and I talked about the escape towers here and here with my posts about the Little Joe series of rockets).

Fun episode. If you get a chance, see it. I'll be checking back to see what other kind of fun the MasterBlasters get into in future shows.

Posted by: Ted at 11:34 AM | category: Rocketry
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I was commenting on a post below and suggested a google of "RATO packs". Being the curious george sort, I went ahead and took my own advice and lo and behold, lookie what I found:

(caption from 3rd photo down on the page)

Prowler just lifting off from STO launch using RATO pack with AeroTech™ M2500 motor and Aero Pack RA98 retainer.

The M2500 of which they speak is a popular Level 3 certification motor. That's right, we hobbty rocketeers get to play with military-grade propellants, or maybe it's the military that gets to play with consumer-grade rocketry motors.

Posted by: Ted at 09:17 AM | category: SciTech
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This just in:

This yearÂ’s contest challenges secondary school students to design, build and fly a model rocket that carries one raw egg to an altitude as close to 800 feet as possible and stays airborne for as close to 45 seconds as possible and returns the egg to the ground safely.

Hmmmm, altitude and duration. Very interesting...

Because of the need for altimeter's in the rocket (altitude measurement), they're limiting the number of entries to the first 750 teams. The National Finals are scheduled for May 20, 2006, at Great Meadow, The Plains, Virginia. Sponsors include 39 major aerospace companies. More information is available at www.rocketcontest.org.

Posted by: Ted at 07:23 PM | category: Rocketry
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Rich attended our last club rocket launch (I couldn't make it, dang) and posted a mini-launch report. One of the flyers there is a rather unique individual who does unholy things with aerodynamics (translation: way fun). Rich has links up to the guy's site showing some of the unusual things he flies, as well as his typical nifty photo album full o' rockets and the folks who fly them.

Posted by: Ted at 09:58 AM | category: Rocketry
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