Rockets

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Nine Objectives

    So, as my family's minivan sped through the November night on its way home to Boulder, Colorado, I pulled out a pad of notebook paper and started drawing on it. What would the name for my rocket activities be? Flatirons Aerospace Engineering Corporation, as a nod toward Boulder's most famous landmark? No, too broad and general. I had already come up with a film company and a book "publisher" titled by the original Germanic version of my name, Wilhelm (pronounced VIL-helm, from will, a want or desire, and helm, helmet). I had applied this name a few times in the past to a few of my rocketry projects (under the title Wilhelm Rockets). In fact, the use of a German name was symbolic, since Germans were highly instrumental in the advancement of rocket science in the mid-20th century.
    Thus, on Sunday, November 7, 1999, the Wilhelm Aerospace Engineering Corporation was born. (The "Corporation" was later changed to "Company," to more accurately reflect the nature of the organization.) Naturally, I appointed myself "President." I held that office for the entirety of the WAEC's existence.
    Although I was inspired by the story of the Rocket Boys, I realized immediately that attempting to build large, solid-fueled, metal-framed rockets like theirs would be foolhardy at best, and expensive and downright criminal at worst. The world had changed considerably in the forty years since the early test flights at Cape Coalwood. But, there was an alternative which was relatively cheap, simple, and required very little equipment to launch: model rockets. Despite their obvious implications as toys, I realized that they could be used as a valuable tool to learn.
    The first project of the WAEC was to get a brand new rocket design into the air. I had, on my own, been able to successfully launch a rocket of my own design, Space Racer, in August of 1999. But I wanted a different design, created carefully under the auspices of his newly-found company, to fly successfully, and stably, soon.
    This rocket was SAM-66, an imitation of Soviet surface-to-air missiles. I had started the project over a year prior, but then abandoned it, because I was having trouble with the design.  But maybe, just maybe, with larger fins, it would be able to fly.
    It did, on Sunday, November 21, 1999. Just two weeks after the WAEC's inception, SAM-66 took to the skies. It performed flawlessly on an A8-3 engine, and later on a B4-2. The performance of SAM-66 was unprecedented.
    Another rocket flew that day, too. It was a boost glider, named Sunbird II. Unfortunately, its flight was not successful, as our low-quality camcorder footage reveals. The footage showed the reason for the failure (a loose attatchment for the pop-pod), and the problem was remedied. I made it a point to bring the camcorder to every launch after that. Sunbird II later flew successfully nearly two years afterward, but I lost it on the same flight.
    The next launch conducted by the WAEC took place a mere one week later, with SAM-66 punching a hole in the sky using two stages, which is what it was originally designed to do. The launch attracted a rather large crowd of people. Fortunately, the flight was entirely successful.
    The objective of the WAEC was now clear: take small steps, learn from mistakes, and don't jump to conclusions. In other words, be scientific and act professional. This was a valuable lesson to learn, and one that will be of use to me for the rest of my life.
    On December 13, the WAEC's Pi was launched. Pi was initially designed as a scale model of the Gemini-Titan II rocket, but I abandoned this goal and changed the purpose of the rocket to demonstrate clustered-engine flight. Unfortunately, only one of Pi's engines lit, and I deemed the flight unsuccessful from an engineering standpoint. I eventually tracked the failure to the cheap 6-Volt Estes launch controller I was using. It simply did not have enough power to light two model rocket engines at once. About a year and a half later, I successfully flew Pi from a heavy-duty launch pad, performing ignition with a custom-built 12-Volt ignition system.
    Following Pi's unusual performance, the next flight of a unique WAEC design was on February 13, 2000. This was of Sprint, a model designed specifically for high-altitude flights. The flight itself was successful, but weather phenomenon caused the rocket to crash in the median of a nearby freeway. The rocket flew on three more flights of varying levels of success. The last of its flights, on August 3, 2000, likely remains an altitude record for the WAEC; I fired Sprint on a C6-5, and never saw it again.
    In April, I decided that the WAEC needed more members than me. I had been performing solo for almost six months by then. I wanted two types of members: engineers and sponsors, the former to work on projects, and the latter to provide funding. To attract sponsors, I made a brochure, advertising the intentions, goals, and accomplishments of the WAEC, and my need for sponsorship. (The text of the brochure was based on a persuasive essay I wrote for my English class that semester.) I distributed it to interested individuals. The WAEC got a second member, Kevin Pokorney, in May.
    To show what I had accomplished thus far, I hosted a demonstration launch on Sunday, May 7, 2000, the half-anniversary of the WAEC's inception. I had an ambitious launch program planned, but I ended up cancelling all but two of the launches after the loss of Space Racer due to high winds above the launch site.
    The next of my original designs to fly was Leviathan, which first headed aloft on Tuesday, August 8, 2000, from the new launch site for the WAEC, the WAEC Space Harbor. Leviathan used the power of a single "D" engine, the first WAEC design with such a power source. I flew it thrice.
    The replacement for the lost Space Racer, Space Racer II, flew on August 23, 2000, one year and a day after the first flight of Space Racer. The boost was stable, but the recovery system failed to deploy, and the rocket nosed over into the soft dirt near the pad. Space Racer II later flew successfully on February 4, 2001.
    Following an extensive research and design procedure, the next new WAEC design flew on December 31, 2000. This was Arcturus Mk. 1, which was an attempt to create a "passive sounding rocket," to test for wind conditions above the launch site, thus determining the feasability of the launch of a larger rocket in the same wind conditions. It was a bold idea, but the Mk. 1 design was far to light and fast to provide any useful weather data from observation. I intended to revisit the idea with a Mk. 2 or even Mk. 3, but I never did.
    Some months later, the first new WAEC design for the "Year of the Space Odyssey", a flying saucer named Roswell or Bust!, took to flight on April 29, 2001. Its first flight was not successful, but its subsequent three firings went quite well. Oddly enough, its final flight, some two years later, was similar to the first. This illustrated quite clearly that I didn't really understand the intricacies of the design.
    The next WAEC rocket design, Brinley, went in the opposite direction of Leviathan. It had a diameter of only 6 mm and a length of merely 18 cm. Its numerous flights were stable and altogether successful.
    Another tiny design, Short March, was an attempt at creating a scale Micro-Maxx rocket. I reasonably achieved the realistic effect I intended, but the rocket's only flight was not stable.
    The next month, after a number of failed launch attempts, Discovery, based on the spaceship of the same name in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, flew stably on two flights. This was the first WAEC design without any stabilizing fins.
    The next launch of new WAEC designs saw two new flights in one day (both not fully successful).  XW-1, an imitation of the X-1 supersonic aircraft, and Apollo-LES, the most complex and longest-running WAEC project ever, both flew on April 7, 2003.
    Built with the club at Fairview High School, Sprint II, the replacement for the original Sprint, flew thrice with varying degrees of success. While I intended it to surpass its predecessor in performance, it never succeeded in that regard.
    The most exciting opportunity offered yet for the WAEC was my getting commissioned to build and fly a brand new rocket for people who found the WAEC page on the web. Lone Star, resplendent with a Texas-flag paint scheme, flew four times, thrice on "D" engines, and one on an "E" engine. It carried multiple payloads on its four flights, including a raw egg (which survived unharmed), a crayfish named Earl, and a 110 camera.
    Later in that year, and in the ensuing summer, a few other rocket designs took to the skies for the first time.  Mercury-Redstone was a scale model based off of paper plans, while Shenzhou was an entirely original design.
    For the last year of the WAEC, my main focus was a list of Nine Objectives, which I planned to accomplish one year after giving myself the challenge, on July 7, 2004. This list included building four new rockets and a launch pad, experimenting with aerial photography and two station tracking, earning an advanced rocketry honor, and drafting plans for all of my original designs. I began the challenge immediately after giving it to myself. The first objective I accomplished was to convert a plastic model into a flying rocket, which I did in the form of a 1/200 Saturn 1B model which I had built two years earlier. Next, I build and successfully launched from it a 1/72 V-2 launch pad, scaled after the pad at White Sands Missile Range. Shortly thereafter, I received the negatives from an Astrocam 110 flight two years prior, which I, with the help of my photography teacher Russ Croop, scanned at high resolution and enhanced far beyond the quality on the original negative. After a long freeze in accomplishments, I finally earned the Pathfinder Advanced Model Rocketry Honor in February of 2004, about 5 1/2 years after first striving after the honor. After another long break, during which I worked heavily on the film Fences and graduated from high school, I plunged full into the Nine Objectives again, since I had scarcely more than a month to achieve five more objectives. In June, I launched scale models of the Gemini-Titan II and Saturn V, which were disappointing at best. More interesting, but not required for the Nine Objectives, was a 1/72 Juno 1, which I flew the same day. In early July, I launched a flying Chrysler Building, as well as Space Racer II, tracked by two observers to over 260 meters. In the final week of the challenge, I worked diligently on the few remaining sets of plans, finishing up on the Chrysler Building's plans with just one day remaining. I declared myself finished with the challenge.
    The next day, I disbanded the WAEC officially, after 4 years and 8 months of its continual operation, and after having flown 23 original designs, the plans for which occupied 49 pages.