Nicole brought a shinny purple rocket with a “Princess Ariel” theme that I had made for her at Christmas in hopes that it would encourage her to come some of the launches Christopher and I attend.  This would be it’s maiden flight.  Christopher on the other hand had his “X-3”, a rocket he had designed with a cool ribbed transition and fins mounted to a balsa boat-tail.  Pretty tricky!  I brought an old Quest Nike Smoke that I’d been flying for years that had what I thought would be the essential elements for success; it was heavy, sturdy, and had a big hole in the parachute!

Once we got to Goddard and registered, we began to prepping our rockets and watched as rockets drifted here and there with only a rare few actually coming down on the “Moon”.  With around 60 contestants, there were a lot of rockets in the air!  When it was our turn to rack our rockets we were lined up with Nicole’s first, my rocket next, then Christopher’s following.  Nicole’s rocket attracted a lot of attention, “What a beautiful rocket!” several people commented.  “Thank you” she blushed pridefully.

We angled the rockets with the best finger-in-the-wind judgements we could muster and left the rest up to chance.  As the first rocket on the rack went off and drifted far from the circle my hopes began to sink.  Then, off went the “Princess Ariel”.  It had a good trajectory and when the chute popped it drifted back closer and closer to the “Moon” and landed pretty darn close to the flag!  As we celebrated, my rocket went off, and with a similar fight path it drifted back landing in the circle but somewhat further away than Nicole’s.  Then Christopher’s was fired.  It flew comparatively higher due to it’s light weight and all looked well as the ejection charge popped the chute, but as it descended, the chute didn’t unfurl and it landed in a tree outside the grounds.  With one more rocket on our rack we watched as it landed what seemed like right next to the flag dampening our excitement somewhat!

When the officials measured our distances Nicole’s came in at 19 feet and mine more than double that at 45 feet.  The rocket that had launched after ours was a mere 9 feet from the flag.  Despite our good showing, I was sure that there must have been many more out of the 60 contests that had better scores than ours.  We packed up our rockets and were preparing to leave when I checked the scores on the official’s computer and was completely floored to see that Nicole had taken 3rd Place!!!  What’s more, I had placed 1st in the senior division! 

While we sat at the awards ceremony and waited for them to call Nicole’s name I could barely hide my excitement.  We didn’t tell her she had placed and as they called out the names, starting with 8th place, she began to think she was out of the running.  Then they held up the third place trophy and called out her name.  The look of surprise and joy on her face was one I’ll never forget!

It turned out to be a fantastic time on a memorable day.  There couldn’t have been a better way to celebrate the day that had done so much to shape my youth than to share some of that excitement about rockets and space with my family! 

Thanks to NARHAMS for putting on such a great event.  I encourage everyone with an interest in space or model rocketry to attend one of their Goddard launches.  It’s a great time!

See more photos of the event here.