Well 10 months after building this rocket I finally got a chance to go fly it today! Earlier this week I was driving home from work a way I normally don't go (GPS took me a different route due to traffic) and I saw a large open field that had been cleared recently. Apparently there's some construction planned, so before any buildings are built I thought I'd take advantage of the open space and fly the Discovery (and a few other rockets). I packed up my rocket stuff, and my 8 year old son, and went to climb over a chain blocking our entrance to the construction site to fly some rockets.
I flew a couple other rockets first to see how well the area would work, to test the wind, etc. before risking my Shuttle. So I loaded her up onto the pad with a B6-2 engine and took a couple of pictures.
I let my son launch the rocket while I tried to record the flight with my phone. It was a fine lift off and I managed to miss the separation when the ejection charge went off because I was zooming in, but the orbiter flew back into frame.
It flew in a straight line, directly away from me. I hear about other people's orbiters turning and circling down, but both of mine seem to fly straight as an arrow.
In the video it looks like the orbiter goes into trees, or maybe over the tops of them, but it doesn't. It lands well in front of them. If you look closely right at the end you can see the little white spec hit the ground.
[YOUTUBE]TI1bx2xpd9A[/YOUTUBE]
The stack landed under full parachute and was picked up and carried back to the launch pad to be prepped for another flight.
The orbiter was laying on it's side when I got to it. There's one small spot where the soft dirt/mud left a mark but other than that there was no sign of damage.
So the entire rocket was prepped for a second flight and as I was attaching the launch controller leads to the ignitor and I noticed this...
A flame fin was broken, probably from impact on landing. Bummer. No more flights today.
The good news is that damage is likely to be easy to fix and I'll be ready for more flights. I'd like to get in a bunch before 1) I get caught and told not to trespass again by the site owner or worse, the cops, and 2) they start major construction and ruin the open area for flying.
Even though I broke a fin, I'm calling this day a success!! The shuttle flew fine and will be able to fly again another day. Hooray!!
