Rocket Man

Published 15th Sep 2011

Rocket Man

As part of the British Science Festival, Thorite, the UK’s leading supplier of compressed air products, Be Involved and Space Connections held a challenge for young people in Bradford - Woooosh! the Thorite Rocket Challenge.

Thorite designed and built a powerful compressed air rocket launcher and challenged young people in Bradford to create rockets that will fly the furthest. In tests the rocket launcher reached over 180m! The event took place On Thursday the 15th September at Lower Fields Primary School, Bradford.

Over to Sarah-Lister Blow who has recently joined the NCA Team
Ever competitive, and having a large craft box and collection of fairly useless ephemera at home, I was the natural choice to lead on the NCA’s entry for the Thorite Rocket challenge.

The challenge, to build a rocket that had personal touches, but also crucially flew. With this in mind it seemed only right to create something that reflected the straw bale fabulousness of the new Inspire Bradford Business Park; hence the scarecrow rocket idea was born.

Faced with this challenge, I did what only any parent would do, and recruited my more creatively talented teenage daughter to help. Sitting at the kitchen table, the night before the challenge, surrounded by craft materials, we spent some considerable time with me muttering expletives under my breath about why glue and plastic tubes don’t mix. We all know that when professionally bodging a job, you can rely on certain well known household products when all else fails. So a couple of hours later, a roll of duct tape and the over exuberant use of straw, the rocket was born, complete with flights. My eldest child, chose at this point to make comment that the rocket wouldn’t fly because the nose cone wasn’t straight, I explained ‘ it’s not a nose cone it’s a hat’ and that we would see who was right tomorrow.

No 1 daughter then made it look pretty, with copious amounts of stickers, googly eyes, and the appropriate 5,4,3,2,1 down its centre. I then felt compelled to post pictures of it on Facebook to share our moment of triumph. I then put together an emergency repair kit, containing straw and more duct tape and stowed the rocket safely, out of reach of the dog.

Thankfully the day of the challenge was a gloriously sunny one. The Be Involved team staged the competition at Lower Fields Primary School, complete with the WOW space bus and a really amazing mobile planetarium. Frankly, the Thorite rocket launcher looked like it had been created by the ‘Brainiac’ team and when they said they had test launched their rocket over 150 metres, I did think I may as well pack up and go home right away. The other contestants had brought their rockets, one of my favourites was the sticky glitter rocket, (it was still sticky), and we lined them up ready for action.

Prizes were on offer for the furthest travelled, the most attractive rocket and a booby prize for the rocket that didn’t achieve any of the above. I felt sure that the NCA rocket stood a good chance of succeeding in the latter category. If you can hear someone shouting really loudly on the footage, it’s probably me, or my fan club of 1, my ever supportive husband who having witnessed the shenanigans the night before decided to come and watch the launch.

When it came to my turn, I was so distracted by the countdown and the big button to press, I don’t think I really saw the launch properly. Thankfully the video footage is great, my fears of failure were unfounded, and the rocket travelled an astonishing 84.9 metres, gaining us 2nd place in the competition. My only disappointment was the fact that a bunch of equally competitive kids managed to get their rocket to fly 144.1 meters taking the cherished 1st place and the amazing prize of a day for their group at the STAR space centre in Keighley. So it was triumphant I brought a battered rocket back to the Holybrook Centre, but I took more pleasure in ringing my son to tell him we had won 2nd place and that just shows how much he knows about the art of competitive rocketry!