Is rocket building still popular? I don’t remember building rockets in science class, but maybe rocket clubs came along after public school. They would have been available to boys in the 1960s.
Today there are lots of toy rockets by Estes. Beginner rockets are ones you easily assemble, they are colourful and ready-to-fly. They cost under $20 to over $150 for a Blast-Off Birthday party pack. I guess there are 12 packs because once you start, you probably want to launch a few. The age group for stomp rockets is 6 and older.
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory has an instruction set for rocket launching. The paper rocket instructions, the Stomp rocket launcher (a PVC-pipe launcher which is teacher-built), altitude tracker, and data sheets, clipboards, a long measuring tape, and so on.
Are you interested in the stomp rocket launcher? It includes 2-litre soda bottles and duct tape. As the name suggests, students stomp on the body of the bottle to launch the rocket. The NASA instructions include placing a basketball in the landing zone and have the students imagine that the ball is Mars.
Here’s the full set of instructions HERE. It says that stomp rockets can launch quite high, up to 200 feet. It seems to me that the altitude tracking methods are the most complicated part of the activity, having to use a protractor for the manual calculations.
This is the simplest form of amateur rocketry. One can move on rocket motors and fuels, and on to significant sizes.
We’re coming up to Christmas train season. This one is at Allan Gardens in Toronto.
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