The Complete Guide to Model Rocketry

Chapter 1: What Is Model Rocketry and Why People Love It

Picture a Saturday morning, about nine o'clock. You're standing in an open field with a cardboard tube about the size of a large water bottle in your hand. It's got a plastic nose cone on top, a small parachute folded tightly inside, and a little paper label on the side that tells you not to stand too close. In your other hand, you're holding a small metal stick - the launch pad - and a controller that looks like a toy gun with a button on top. You've spent the last forty-five minutes carefully assembling the rocket, checking that the fins are straight, making sure the parachute is packed just right, and that the little bundle of wadding is stuffed in place to protect the parachute from the ejection charge.

Then you slide the rocket onto the launch rod, step back to the end of the wire that runs from the controller, and look up. The sky is clear. The wind is light. You press the button. There's a loud whoosh that you both hear and feel in your chest, and suddenly the rocket is gone - not gone as in vanished, but gone as in it's already fifty feet in the air and accelerating so fast you can barely track it with your eyes. It takes about four seconds for the motor to burn out, and then it's just a speck, arcing over gracefully before the nose cone