Fun with small rockets

How fanciful a thought to be able to send a small private satellite into space... and for it to then relay back pictures of the Earth, the sky and the stars to your own private living room TV set. I have often dreamed of such journeys up to the stratosphere, that reveal the curvature of the Earth and the black horizon of outer space beyond the fringes of the upper atmosphere of our world.

To launch such rockets to orbit means getting air space clearance and overcoming many governmental and legal restrictions. In other words... it's next to impossible for a private individual or enterprise that isn't listed on the NYSE with a stockmarket capitalisation above $1 billion .

To quench one's thirst for such unmanned aerial reconnaisance adventures, all hope is not lost... as I discovered from my own "microscale" aerospace program back in 2003:


http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ahad/rocketry.htm

A Ahad wrote:

To launch such rockets to orbit means getting air space clearance and overcoming many governmental and legal restrictions. In other words... it's next to impossible for a private individual or enterprise that isn't listed on the NYSE with a stockmarket capitalisation above $1 billion

So just do like everyone else, aim a powerful telescope at your neighbor's window. lol

How mature of a reader does one have to be?

I was wondering if readers really have to be bi

Lin,
I've always wondered why love and rockets were associated.

Here are the in-flight images of the distant payload from the rocket coming down on a parachute at the end of the powered flight (shown by a vapour trail at right):












One of the earliest rockets I launched was a fireworks job that took a packet of sycamore seeds up to 500 feet into the sky. When it exploded at the end of the vertical flight, the idea was to see the sycamore seeds helicoptering down to the ground in their spiralling motion as they do.

of course then there are some who may perceive these 20 centimetre long rockets of mine as "weapons of mass destruction"!

Might be that last picture

Dear Abdul,
The red maple seeds do the same heliocopter flight down to earth. I loved the rocket that released the sycamore seeds to float down to earth. Beautiful!

Love,
Betty

It's all fun, Betty and it helps one to experience rocketry beyond books and television. BTW, I do like those roses on your avatar

Everyone surely knows about the "moon trees" of America?

It happens to be an extraordinary coincidence that the astronauts of Apollo 14 took sycamore seeds (along with four other varieties of tree seeds) to the Moon and back.

At least 400 of these seeds are likely to have germinated after they'd been brought back to earth and are now flourishing into full grown trees in some part of the States.

http://www.ecoisp.com/goodnews23.asp