Space age hobby: Model Rocketry

Model rocketry is a scientific space age hobby. It can be an exciting pursuit for almost any age, though it’s best suited for ten years and above age group. Model rocketry brings together a host of hand-building modelling skills and thrilling time outdoors to create its unique experience. While the hobby can be pursued on an almost turn-key basis for some, those who delve into its fundamentals can undertake important personal growth, self-education and enhance their lives by becoming rocket scientists.

Modern space science is in fact the offspring of amateur rocketry dating to the early 20th century. But many amateur rocketeers don’t know where to start from as non-professional rocketeers do not have the expensive material, training, or any experience to build the rocket right from a scratch. Hence there arose a need for safe, relatively inexpensive form of rocketry and this is how the Model Rocketry Club came into existence at the Vikram A Sarabhai Community Science Centre thirty years ago. The model Rocketry Club for the first time in India initiated conducting model rocketry activity for school students and lay people.

In its craft aspect, the model rocketry offers its constituents like the fun of cutting, gluing and painting the models themselves. Constructed of only lightweight materials such as balsa wood for fins, rolled paper tubing for the body, and some small amount of plastics, the models built are striking, yet easy to prepare, and provide several hours’ indoor activity working with the hands to get each model ready for flight. The final finishing is crucial for its performance, and modellers quickly learn how to make their models slender, sleek and slippery, to cut down drag (the air’s resistance), enabling higher altitudes to be attained in flight.

In model rocketry, propulsion is provided by using simple Diwali Rocket engines. The explosive part is removed before placing it in rockets for safety, without the fear of the danger of compounding chemicals to get the power needed for impressive flights.

On the launching day, the modellers enjoy the ritual of rocket launching like packing their supplies, engines batteries, launch stand and heading to a large open space to send their handiwork aloft. The models with their engines installed are placed on a launch stand. This guides the model until it gains enough speed to be stabilized by aerodynamic forces. Typically, this is a 1/8 inch rod about 3 feet in length supported by a stable base, which cannot be blown over by a wind gust.

Model rocket engines are ignited for flight with incense stick from safe distance or it can be done remotely through an electrical ignition hooked to a small piece of heating wire inside the engine of the rocket. The second method is quite safe compared to the first one. Minimum distance for these systems place the rocket launch crew a safe ten feet from the model. The area around the launch of model rockets has to be clear of people; a countdown is initiated and the current is applied to ignite the rocket engine.

With a significant whoosh, the model vaults skyward, accelerating rapidly to sometimes many hundreds of miles per hour. Several seconds later, having the engine burn out its propellant supply, the model may continue to coast upwards for seconds longer before a small charge deploys the recovery system. Typically, these are parachutes of plastic film, that return the model gently to earth, so it can be re-used in future flights.

Quite often, the launch team will have to use instruments to sight it on the model, so that calculation can be made of the model’s final altitude. This involves some mathematical calculation, and is often a younger rocketry hobbyist’s practical introduction to trigonometry. Those who are inclined have many options as they grow within the model rocket hobby.

Specialties exist, such as models that glide for recovery, the space plane model. Some have fun with the pursuit of measuring in flight performance through radio transmitters on the model which send back telemetry of acceleration, spin-rate and the like. Model rocket is not only for fun and entertainment but it forms a very powerful tool of education. One can establish one’s own model rocketry club at school also; it will provide a base for the children to pursue their interest in this wonderful hobby. By using model rockets, one can teach the concept of rocketry to student. The head of rocketry club may make groups of students with leader for every group, can conduct activity related to model rockets, like construction of the rockets, design and fabrication of model rocket.

Discussion with the students at different stages will help them in exchanging thoughts about the designing aspect of the models. Discussion about the performance of their models would help them to correct their mistake and design new experiments till they achieve the best result. Frequent competition between the groups will encourage the student to put in maximum efforts to get the best results. It is not only about the making of rockets, but developing a scientific approach in them.