Can a rocket have a Blue or pink smoke trail?

Is it possible to have a blue or pink smoke trail from a rocket as a birth announcement?
Not my baby asking for a friend.

CZTeacherman used blue/pink flames for a gender reveal rocket launch. Only Tim the wildman knew beforehand what it was going to be.

edit: these were both CTI motors of the same grain size/diameter, so it was a preloaded, unmarked motor.

One of our fliers recently used a big pan of baby powder and (I think) colored chalk dust under a rocket to do this at liftoff. We learned that baby powder (which is mostly cornstarch) is fairly flammable when dispersed, so the results were more visually interesting than expected No bad outcome, but I'm not sure I would recommend it.

solid_fuel said:

Is it possible to have a blue or pink smoke trail from a rocket as a birth announcement?
Not my baby asking for a friend.

Click to expand...

You can always put pink or blue powder in a pouch with the parachute so it’s ejected near apogee.


Steve Shannon

mikec said:

One of our fliers recently used a big pan of baby powder and (I think) colored chalk dust under a rocket to do this at liftoff. We learned that baby powder (which is mostly cornstarch) is fairly flammable when dispersed, so the results were more visually interesting than expected No bad outcome, but I'm not sure I would recommend it.

Click to expand...

Given the explosive nature of flour and dust from agricultural products dispersed in the air (think of grain elevators exploding) this is not surprising.

You can get those color flames, but not smoke. Firework smoke bombs use a very low temperature formulation that does not break down the dyes used, but rocket motor flame temps are much too high.

mikec said:

One of our fliers recently used a big pan of baby powder and (I think) colored chalk dust under a rocket to do this at liftoff. We learned that baby powder (which is mostly cornstarch) is fairly flammable when dispersed, so the results were more visually interesting than expected No bad outcome, but I'm not sure I would recommend it.

Click to expand...

Check the label. Baby powder may be either talc (talcum) or cornstarch. Cornstarch burns very nicely when dispersed, but talc is a silicate mineral, nonflammable.

Regarding chalk powder, if it's actually chalk (calcium carbonate) it ain't gonna burn. If it's powdered plastic or a colored organic compound, that's a different matter.

Best -- Terry

I’ve seen tracking smoke canisters for skydivers online, but those burn and require a pull ignition (and HAZ shipping).

https://www.chutingstar.com/enola-gaye-eg18-high-output-smoke-grenade

I have no idea how hard you have to pull the wire to get it to light or how hot it burns, but you may be able to rig up something to the harness so when the chute opens it yanks it hard enough to light. You’d also have to protect the harness from burn-through. 90 seconds of gender colored smoke could be a pretty dramatic, fun way to do it if you could make it work.

Exactimator said:

but those burn and require a pull ignition (and HAZ shipping).

Click to expand...

Pull via launch? How large a rocket are we talking here?

From time to time I've thought about making a rocket that carried a "smoke bomb" in the nosecone, so that a ton of smoke poured out on the way up. I know there are rules against carrying fireworks but since these things don't produce flame or sparks, only smoke, I wonder if they'd be allowed?

If so, you could try something like this too:
https://genderrevealco.com/products/wire-pull-gender-reveal-smoke-bombs

Buy a few and test out how long before ignition you'd have to pull the wire to start the smoke, and how visible the smoke is on the way up. If the fins on the rocket were angled slightly so that the rocket spun, and if the smoke from the rocket motor were white, you'd end up with a column of white smoke with a blue or pink smoke spiral around it. That would look really cool even if there wasn't an announcement associated with it.

Mushtang said:

From time to time I've thought about making a rocket that carried a "smoke bomb" in the nosecone, so that a ton of smoke poured out on the way up. I know there are rules against carrying fireworks but since these things don't produce flame or sparks, only smoke, I wonder if they'd be allowed?

If so, you could try something like this too:
https://genderrevealco.com/products/wire-pull-gender-reveal-smoke-bombs

Buy a few and test out how long before ignition you'd have to pull the wire to start the smoke, and how visible the smoke is on the way up. If the fins on the rocket were angled slightly so that the rocket spun, and if the smoke from the rocket motor were white, you'd end up with a column of white smoke with a blue or pink smoke spiral around it. That would look really cool even if there wasn't an announcement associated with it.

Click to expand...

Well those are interesting. $12 and no HAZ. Plus from the pic of the guy holding it in his fist, it doesn't look very large. I might buy a couple just to play with.

I have a few smoke grenades my brother gave me for skydiving but I didn't progress far enough to be able to use them. Would love to use them in a big rocket. The smoke for a full minute.

Something else that would be cool is colored smoke delays. That's where the smoke comes from after motor burnout, right? Couldn't be that hard to add something to them to color the smoke.

I got distracted by something shiny. Now I’m looking at this again.

It looks like a lot of these colored smoke generators you can buy are sourced from the same company, Enola Gaye. There are several YouTube videos with reviews of the product.

One of the safety features built in is the wire has to be pulled perpendicular to the cylinder for it to light. If you pull it up or down, it just pulls the fuse out. This kills the simple install idea of attaching the cylinder and pull wire to different parts of the harness so it pulls the wire at ejection. That set-up would pull the wire straight up.

I was thinking of epoxying a weld nut or something similar to the side of the cylinder, running the wire through the center to change the direction of pull.

I was hoping someone else had a better idea than that --^^. It seems prone to failure.

[video=youtube;aeZPsEUN78w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeZPsEUN78w[/video]

I think someone with access and permission to launch EX motors could likely construct something that uses an apogee event to ignite a custom coloured smoke canister.. This would be particularly cool, especially if combined with the RC steerable parasail that was floating around for a bit here before...