Up, up and away!
Note: This is the 4th in a series of fictional pieces for the book I am writing/researching.
This Viking 10 missile, erect in a vertical thrust, some 20,000 pounds of it, propelled by a delicious union of liquid oxygen and alcohol, uniting and combusting, lifts off the launch pad at White Sands Proving Ground in the early 1950’s.
Thick and strong, artistically rendered and marked by modest fins and an unpainted nose cone, Viking 10 travels upward in a rumbling roar. Capable of piercing the heavens at 155 miles in altitude, it has one thing on its mind: lift-off.
Below, Viking’s handlers, mouths open, crane their leathery necks upward in anticipation of the successful release of their charge to the skies.
The expanse of the sky takes in the rocket, as she always does.
You left out the part about the handlers sitting back and having a smoke after the launch. He’ll, I don’t even smoke but felt like having one after reading the post. Wow.
Seems ter me there’s a lot of Freudian stuff here.
S: are you related to me? I also left out the part where the rocket and the sky don’t cuddle after the launch.
And Phillip, ya think? wink…wink…
All that delicious oxygen and alcohol reminds me of something. The space shuttle has put satellites in space that are supposed to tell us if we really need to ‘save the earth.’ Meanwhile, the shuttle rockets are among the big ozone depleters. It’s a bit like burning a woman to see if she’s a witch. (If she dies, we can rest easy knowing she wasn’t a witch. If she doesn’t then we better kill her). The more things we put in space the more likely it will be that we shouldn’t be putting things in space. So, to continue your description of a thinly veiled erection (and the like), be careful where you put that thing!
Mr. C:
You are truly the Bomb. I have a question; what the heck is an oxidizer in the rocketry context. I remember building a rocket 43 years ago and we mixed to substances (not vineger and baking soda) and one of them was an “oxidizer”. It must have something to do with solid fuel rockets.
Sb
Wait until you read my piece on the Honest John missile.
I’m not a rocket scientist, but I think an oxidizer is an oxidizer (you can quote me on that). Vinegar is acidic and acids are oxidizers. Some are better than others. The oxidizer provides oxygen for combustion. At the slow end, there’s rust (iron, oxygen and water). At the fast end, there’s perchloric acid and just about anything else. I had to look up the ‘model rocket’ oxidizer. I built many rockets many years ago, but I never stopped to wonder what the oxidizer is (was). It looks like it might be a nitrous or nitric something or other. There’s a whole other world where we could learn just enough from dubious sources to put ourselves in danger. I’m game. We can get helmets and jumpsuits.
Mr. C
I think I had some sort of solid fuel rocket where I mixed two granular substances and fired the rocket off with some sort of ignitor. Maybe it was a remnent of my Dad’s experience at White Sands.
Hey, we could meet in the desert with out helmets and jumpsuits (and a good Tawny port or whiskey) and blast a few off!! oh how I cherish my memories of a juvenile pyrotechniciam. Thanks for the info. I live very close to Aerojet and there has been litigation ongoing for 5 years or so over perchlorate in the ‘ol aquifers.
Best,
SB
I can’t help myself. I must bring up the Greek myths I am re-reading every night with my daughter.
Here the earth sends a rocket into “the expanse of the sky”, who “takes it in as she always does.”
The Greeks had it the other way around: Uranus, the sky, was the male penetrator of Gaia, the receptive female earth.
Indeed, when Uranus visits Gaia again, their son, Cronos, takes a scythe to Uranus’s rocket, which he then launches into the ocean where it makes quite a bit of foam, whence emerged Aphrodite.
Cheri, the model rocket discussion is not a digression after all. Check it out. From Wikipedia; model rockets, White Sands and a person by the name of Mr. Stine.
The model rocket engine, was designed in 1954 by Orville Carlisle, a licensed pyrotechnics expert, and his brother Robert. With the launch of Sputnik, many young people were trying to build their own rocket engines, often with tragic results. The Carlisles realized their engine design could be marketed and provide a safe outlet for a new hobby. They sent samples to Mr. Stine in January, 1957. Stine, a range safety officer at White Sands Missile Range, built and flew the models, and then devised a safety handbook for the activity based on his experience at the range. The first American model rocket company was Model Missiles Incorporated (MMI), in Denver, Colorado, opened by Stine and others.
I recommend ‘October Sky’ for your reading list.
AK: The Greeks had rockets (the word rocket, even)? Seriously, literally, I mean? What was the basis of their rockets?
SB and Mr. C:
I have printed out your comments and suggestions. Amazing that Mr. Stine was at WSMR. Makes sense to me.
You are providing A with an opportunity, here, with your last question.
And to think my web diva linked this blog post to my business website…she did not think anything was thinly veiled or veiled at all.
We have since obliterated that link in a furious move.
Mr Crotchety: No, no, no. They did not actually have rockets. Cronos scythed of Uranus’ penis, threw it into the ocean and out of the foam came Aphrodite. I was just being coy about the part of his anatomy, and swapped in the object of Cheri’s post.
I overrule myself: Helios’ chariot, which he drove across the sky every day, might have been a sort of rocket. Pegasus, the winged horse that Bellerophon rode to slay the Chimera, was an organic rocket. Oh, I better stop and do some work….