The Rocket Scientist

When I was eleven years old  I was an avid reader of Collier’s magazine. The magazine had a lot of articles about space travel. The Allies had won WWII and captured some of the German V-2 rockets. The Americans had also captured or recruited some of their rocket scientists.  Werner von Braun was the most famous. The magazine had many color illustrations of what the rockets that would take Americans to the stars would look like. As an eleven-year-old country boy I was obsessed. I had to build a rocket.

I dug into the encyclopedia that Momma and Daddy had bought from the traveling salesman. When the bookmobile came to school I asked the librarian for all the books on rocketry.  There was very little about solid fuel rockets on the 1950 Ford pickup truck which had been converted into the bookmobile. It came very two weeks to Bradley school, which was much too infrequent for me. I had always been a voracious reader. Yes, I was one of those kids who would be reading by flashlight under the covers in my bed past bedtime. I eventually read the complete encyclopedia and held the record for the most books read in the school library when in the eighth grade, but that would happen in the future.

My big problem in rocket construction as an eleven year old rocket scientist was to find the proper fuel for my rocket. Finally, I determined that gunpowder would power the rocket. My research on primitive firearms provided a recipe for the fuel. Charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur were all that was required. By filling a coffee tin with wood chips,  putting on the lid, which had a small hole punched in it, and heating it on the kitchen stove, I could make my own charcoal. I found that dry pine wood chips made the best charcoal. I would grind it up with a mortar and pestle. But I never did get around to grinding it up, because I could not find one of the other ingredients.  The sulfur was not a problem, because I had some in the Chemcraft chemistry set I had gotten for my tenth birthday. Saltpeter, on the other hand, was a big problem. I could not find any anywhere.  As a teenager I would find out that we had potassium nitrate fertilizer on the farm that would have served me well as saltpeter.  But, not to be prevented from achieving my objective, I found another solution: modern gunpowder. Gunpowder such as found in shotgun shells. I had access to such, sort of. I had some for my own gun, a sixteen gauge Ior Johnson single shot shotgun.  Also, I knew that Daddy had some. I could borrow some of his, and he would not miss them. After all, hunting season was six months away. I managed to cut the shot shells apart with a bit of trepidation. A shotgun shell had a cap in the brass part of the shell which when struck by the firing pin of the gun ignites the gunpowder in the shell. If per chance I had caused one of the caps to fire I probably would not be writing this today. But some caution was thrown to the wind.  I had to build a rocket.

My plan was to make the fuselage of the rocket from a discarded toilet paper tube. I could not dispose of a complete roll of toilet paper for my cause. Would I be so brazen to use a complete roll of this treasured commodity for my efforts? No, I had to find a better way. So I made my own tube from poster board scavenged from an old wildlife poster I had made in the third grade. The tube was about one half the diameter of the toilet paper tube. A scrap of wood provided the material for the nose cone. My pocket knife sharp and I quickly

carved out the nose cone. Unfortunately, Mickey Spencer had stolen my Hopalong Cassidy a few years earlier.  I hoped he had cut his finger. The back of a Blue Horse tablet provided the cardboard for the rocket’s tail fins. Mom interrupted me for the noon meal.  I wolfed down the tomato sandwich and followed it with a glass of milk.  A man who had been without food in the desert would not have eaten faster. I was on a mission. The next part of the project was to fabricate the ignition system. My mind’s eye could see it clearly.  It would be an electrical system. In operation, I would count down 3...2...1...and push the button, sending my rocket skyward.  I would use nichrome wire attached between two nails and inserted into the tail of the rocket. There was an old lamp cord with a plug on it in my spare parts box that would carry electricity to the nichrome wire. The electric current would cause the nichrome wire to get hot and ignite the gunpowder.  I turned my cap around on my bicycle as I rode to this big ditch where we threw away our trash. When I was scrounging there before I had seen an old hot plate.  Hot plates used nichrome wire coils for heating elements.

On my way back to my room I picked up a scrap of wood from the wood pile in the back yard. With two nails and a hammer I had all I needed to build the rocket igniter. The igniter assembled quickly, and I was ready for the test flight.

I decided that it would not be a good Idea to fire the rocket in my room, so I carried it outside. But that did present a problem. We lived in an old farmhouse and electrical outlets were scarce. A number of extension cords would be necessary to get electrical power to the rocket’s igniter. I had to convince Mom I needed all the extension cords we had. It so happened that at that time I was working on an electricity project for the 4-H Club. Mom always supported my 4-H projects. She believed in the organization sponsored by the U. S. Department of Agriculture for rural youth. And she brought me every extension cord in the house. It took five extension cords to get power to the launch site. I decided not to include a launch button in the electric circuitry. There was not a push button switch anywhere on the farm! I would simply plug the rocket ignition power cord into an extension cord. I would countdown, of course. You can’t launch a rocket without a countdown! The time had come.

Ten...nine...eight...seven...six...five...four...three...two...one...I plugged the igniter into the extension cord. There was smoke! There was fire! There was a scream! There was not a rocket streaking toward the heavens. I wrote in my journal that it was a marginal success. Although the rocket did not lift off it was a tremendous learning experience. And the scream? That was from my mother, who was using an electric food mixer while making a cake at launch time. The launch put a strain on the electrical circuits of the house and blew every fuse. Mom was not angry with me. She appreciated the fact that I knew where the spare fuses were  and and how to replace the blown ones. I told her the problem was due to the very old wiring in the house.  If my Daddy had been home things would have been different.

I pursued my dream of becoming a rocket scientist until high school. Much to my chagrin the study of physics without skills in algebra and higher mathematics was impossible.