Monday, August 06, 2007
The scale models were judged for their static scores Saturday evening. My Saturn 1b ended up in second place. I made made a few additional pieces to help the launch to succeed. My major concern was whether the motors' ejection charges would push out the recovery devices or spit out the motors. I was extremely happy when the parachutes appeared at apogee. All four motors worked great. Unfortunately the rocket spun to hide two of the flames in the photograph Terri took.
Two of the fins were damaged upon landing. The escape motor tower was also snapped in half by the impact. This cost me a few flight points, but I still maintained second place. Its next flight will utilize larger parachutes to minimize potential landing damage.
A nice surprise was to discover an air and space museum in Kalamazoo. We swung by the Air Zoo on the way to Wisconsin. It was a lot of fun and a nice break from driving. They had one of the SR-71 Blackbirds given to NASA after the Air Force retired them. NASA used them for various high speed experiments.
There were some interesting space related items too. El Kabong grabbed my attention. It was used to test methods of landing the Gemini spacecraft on land instead of water. Many of the drop tests resulted in crash landings which earned it the El Kabong nickname. The idea of using parasails for guided landings has always fascinated me. It was neat to see an actual vehicle which used this method.
