I'm not the man they think I am at all, Oh, no no no...

[RecoveringKinkoid]

So the Old Man goes out this past weekend and picks up this rocket kit for the kids to play with. Paid twelve bucks for it, which was about eleven seventy five too much.

It wasn't assembled, much to his chagrin, so he put it together and we had it ready to go today. Had my daughter, my nephew, and a friend's kid who I keep on Mondays.

This rocket runs on vinegar and baking soda. It's supposed to go three hundred feet in the air.

He's getting it out of the shop and he leans over to me and mutters "This thing is a piece of shit."

The kids grab it and run off to the "landing pad" in the field. I sit down next to Mom and say "Dad did a good job putting the rocket together." Mom just leans over and mutters "That thing is a piece of shit."

Okay. So the kids assemble some distance off and the Old Man packs the thing with baking soda the way he's supposed to, dumps in a cup of vinegar, shakes it up, sets it down, and starts hauling ass. The thing gives a mighty ripping fart, shoots about twenty feet in the air, and spews a bukake of wet, vinegar-reeking foam all over Dad's retreating back and head, and then falls on it's nose cone with a heavy thud.

I laughed so hard I'm sore now. I laughed so hard I'm still laughing typing it out, and this happened at around five today.

Believe it or not, he relaunched it several times. He'll do anything for little kids. He got soaked. He said "Yeah, it'll go three hundred feet, but you have to launch it twenty five times. This sucks!"

What a piece of shit.

[Food Lady]

Aw, but it was priceless time with the kids and hilarious memories. I have a mental picture that's making me

[El Pollo Guerrera]

Awesome. Sounds like you had a great time.

Need video clip!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Believe me if I had known how funny it was a there would be video.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

And those are the kinds of tales that will be re-told years later at family gatherings.

The mental image I've got is absolutely freakin' HILARIOUS.

[MadMike]

Now THAT'S funny!

We've done rockets in the past, but we use the good kind, with the engines and electrical launch system.

The first time my wife set one off, she screamed when it shot up in the air. She thought it would launch slowly, like a real rocket. I pointed out to her that real rockets weigh tons, while these models only weigh a few ounces.

Once she got past that, she decided she wanted to build a rocket of her own. So we bought a kit, and she put it together, and painted it quite nicely. Then she launched it, and we never saw it again.

[Seraph]

...you just had to use the term bukkakke, didn't you? XD

[cashierbex]

Sounds like something my family would do. And not for the kids. They would be there, though. Fun times fun times. I am shocked about how mature my cousins are compared to my aunts and uncles.

[Chromatix]

The reason real rockets tend to launch "slowly" is twofold:

1) They are so huge that even quite a fast launch *looks* slow from a distance. This is a similar effect to why a flea, a frog, a human and a horse are all capable of jumping roughly the same height, but it looks so much more impressive when a tiny flea does it.

2) Some of the biggest ones are actually incapable of lifting off when completely full of fuel (gross thrust equal to weight). So the first part of the fuel is burned just to warm the engines up properly - look up what turbopumps are to see why that's necessary - and after being thus lightened it begins to rise. The net acceleration picks up with altitude until the first-stage fuel is exhausted.

[Maria]

Wow, that brings back memories! When I first got placed with my family, my sister found a film canister among my belongings while helping me unpack. So she took me outside to show me the film canister trick which consists of putting an alka-seltzer tablet and some water into the canister, slapping the lid on, and putting it lid-down on the front walk. Then we'd watch it launch 15-20 feet into the air, while howling with laughter. Fifteen years later, that's still our favorite "dumb trick" to do when we're together... good times!

[Etna]

Never had a vinegar rocket, but I remember quite a few from my childhood where after putting them together and being ready for launch they just explode like a claymore. I have still never seen one of those mini rockets actually launch come to think of it.

[Kogarashi]

Wow, that brings back memories! When I first got placed with my family, my sister found a film canister among my belongings while helping me unpack. So she took me outside to show me the film canister trick which consists of putting an alka-seltzer tablet and some water into the canister, slapping the lid on, and putting it lid-down on the front walk. Then we'd watch it launch 15-20 feet into the air, while howling with laughter. Fifteen years later, that's still our favorite "dumb trick" to do when we're together... good times!

My kindergartener's after-school science program did this as one of their projects. They made rockets out of paper (complete with fins and nose cone) that they decorated, all around film cannisters. The rockets used alka-seltzer and water and launched fairly well too.

[Misanthropical]

Are you sure your dad isn't Mr. Mis? He has done all kinds of dangerous things with rockets just to amuse our children and sometimes our neighbors. I don't know how that man hasn't killed himself.

[Jester]

I don't claim to be a rocket man or even a science geek (I majored in broadcasting and minored in political science, for goodness sake!), but is it possible that Dad didn't put in the right amounts of baking soda and vinegar? I would imagine (and someone please correct me on this if I'm wrong) that you need the right ratio of A to B for the optimal launching effect. If that is the case, and he then loaded the rocket overly full of baking soda, he would not have had enough room for the right amount of vinegar, I would think.

Naturally, as always, and especially with stuff I really don't know diddle about, I could be very wrong on this.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

No, I was with him when he measured it out per the instructions. Soda goes into a tube an inch from the top. One cup vinegar into the body of the rocket. Insert tube, screw down, shake, haul ass.

It goes up, no problem there. There's just no way in hell it's going to be propelled three HUNDRED feet in the air. Maybe off the surface of the moon it might, but not from an actual, you know, planet with atmosphere and gravity.

You get just enough time to turn your face away before it fires. Which I suppose is something.