Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Rocket Man: To the stars and beyond
Columnist Bill Rettew talks about a lifelong love affair with sending things into outer space. Far out, Bill.
I’ve loved rockets since July of 1969 when Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon. Poking holes in the sky in search of the final frontier fascinates me.
From just a few miles away at Cape Canaveral, my father tried several times to view a Space Shuttle take-off up close, but he was disappointed when launches were delayed. I consider myself lucky to have seen the Space Shuttle take off from just few miles away. I watched at the Cape from across a causeway at night as a shuttle blasted into space.
Earlier in the daylight, we’d seen the rocket, poised for launch. It sat eerily still and silent, loaded with what looked like more than enough fuel to shoot into space. All that coiled energy felt like the Olympic 100-yard dash a split second prior to the starting gun. After dark, hundreds parked along the causeway, while others sat partying in the sand on Cocoa Beach.
As the space ship majestically rose, we caught a fire-ball reflection in the water. The burning fuel was brighter than three suns.
I wasn’t prepared for the noise – a deafening popping, like fireworks magnified at a Chinese New Year’s celebration.
At first, it seemed like the tug of gravity would win, the shuttle was slow to rise. But we knew this big bird would win its fight with gravity. For the 30 seconds or so before it was out of sight, the fireball grew smaller as its speed increased.
As a Florida resident, five or six times, I watched shuttles lift off from more than 50 miles away. Many in Florida were able to view launches from their front yards and office parking lots.
My neighbors in Sebring and Bartow were everywhere outside, looking to the northeast, at the prescribed time. Teachers even led classrooms of students to areas with a view unobstructed by trees or buildings.
Although not as spectacular from a distance, watching astronauts heading for space is always a treat. You watch a trail of dark smoke, much like a contrail from a plane, as a spaceship makes a beeline for outer space.
While a rocket follows a relatively straight path, a cloud of spent fuel wobbles behind in the sky, much like a toddler taking his or her first steps. Touch down is supposed to be spectacular. Even from inside a building, we sometimes were surprised by a sonic boom when a shuttle reentered the earth’s atmosphere.
With no propulsion used for landing, the captain gets just one shot at that 15,000-foot-long, and 300-foot-wide Florida runway. During high school in the ‘70s, the kids in the neighborhood (and more than a few parents) would gather around when my brother, John, shot off model rockets in the backyard. Similar to a large rocket experience at the Cape, much of the allure with model rockets is the sound or swoosh when an igniter kicks off an engine.
Another magical moment with backyard rockets is when the parachute opens with a pop. You can sometimes hear it from 500 feet away.
Once the chute opens, up to 20 neighborhood kids in Westtown would take off with the wind, in a bid to be the first to retrieve the model rocket or even catch it in the air, prior to “touch down.”
We all hoped the rocket would not be lost high above our reach in a tree. Golf courses and school ball fields, used with permission, are more ideal launch pads.
We shot raw eggs into “space,” just to see if we’d used enough toilet paper padding to prevent breakage. Usually the eggs remained uncracked.
I especially enjoy multistage rockets with two or three engines. With a delay when engines fire, it’s possible to have three stages shooting in separate directions.
I recently visited a local hobby shop. More than 100 Estes model rocket kits filled the shelves. You assemble a model rocket with glue, may paint it and attach stickers.
My brother went wild and often customized. He preferred the rockets using big “D” engines over the smaller ones. These could fly up to 550 feet high, versus 200 feet.
Engines run $10 to $12 for a pair of the bigger ones and are the same price for a four-pack of smaller engines. Everything needed to mimic spaceflight can be purchased for about $50 or less.
When in Washington, you can walk through and touch real spacecraft at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. I’ve touched a moon rock there several times and it never gets old.
A favored moment of mine was shaking the hand of Florida Sen. Bill Nelson. Although his hand isn’t a moon rock, the senator had taken it along with him into space.
Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Ray Bradbury books show me that I’m not the only one who appreciates rockets.
Please support NASA – and exploration of our universe – where no man has gone before.
Bill Rettew Jr. is a Chester County resident and staff reporter. You can read his travel novel, “Chasing the American Dream,” on your phone for less than the cost of a model rocket engine, available at Amazon. You may contact him at brettew@dailylocal.com