Watching Elon Musk’s billion-dollar rocket in April this year, I was fascinated when shortly after the launch, the rocket blew up and fell in the Gulf of Mexico.  I was immediately transported in memory to the 1950s when my brother, Wally and his best friend Bill began making rockets.  At that time the United States was in a space race with the Soviet Union.  Our government began encouraging schools to emphasize science and math. Furthermore, they suggested that students try their hands at designing and building rockets.  Wally and Bill jumped right on to that idea and within weeks they had made several rockets.

One early morning before any teachers had reported to their classrooms, Wally and Bill decided to launch one of their rockets in their homeroom.  It was a very small rocket but they knew that the rocket fuel they had produced out of iron filings and sulfur (homemade gun powder) was certain to carry the rocket across the room.  Though it was a small rocket, they nevertheless believed that it would launch across the room and then fall to the floor.  Setting the rocket on a tripod the boys fired it up.  Fortunately, it was angled over the heads of the students seated at their desks.  To the boys’ surprise the rocket flew across the classroom, right through the back ceiling and punched a hole in the roof of the school.

The subsequent noise of the explosion brought teachers, assistant principal and the principal running into the room.  Upon viewing the damage to the room and the light coming in from the hole in the roof, the principal declared that all rockets from now on would be launched from the football field.  In a matter of days, the boys were ready to launch their next design from the athletic fields.

When that ten-dollar rocket took off that day, it went straight up into the air until we student watchers could see only a small black dot.  Then within a few seconds, the rocket came back into view, and like Elon Musk’s Space X rocket, it made a U-turn and flew back down where it landed on the town barn roof, and promptly set the roof on fire.  We student watchers clapped and cheered as we had never seen anything quite so exciting.

Fortunately, the fire burned itself out, and the town barn where all the municipal trucks were stored was not harmed.  However, when my father heard about that close call, he declared that no matter what the government wanted, there would be no more rockets designed or built by Wally.  End of that patriotic project!

The day of the Musk rocket launch, I called my brother to ask him about the year that he and his friend built rockets.  He said even now he shudders about what could have happened when they launched their rocket in the classroom.  The gunpowder fuel had made that rocket so powerful that had they not angled it up, it could have easily killed several of the students.  What’s more, he wondered, why had the principal not ended the rocket experiment.  And as for the town barn fire, he was glad my dad had seen the danger of the gun-powder rockets and ended the whole endeavor.

Several days later, Wally texted me an article from a Florida newspaper which showed some young guys in a rocket club who had won a twenty-thousand-dollar award for their rocket design.  Wally wrote under the picture that had he received an award like these young students had been given, he would have been able to design a much better rocket.  I replied that with that kind of money, I suspected that he could have come up with a better fuel than gun-powder.