Deliberate Rocket Triggered Lightning Strikes...

I remember watching a program where scientists were using rockets to trigger lightning strikes. Anybody here know more about that? I remember that they were using puffs of air to trip the electrical ignition of the rockets rather than having wires leading back to some guys hiding inside a faraday cage during the electrical storms they were hoping would strike the rockets.

[EDIT] Turned out that the program was a 1995 episode of PBS's NOVA. See link below. [/EDIT]

There was research done by a group in Florida that launched rockets with spools of wire on the aft end. They would measure the electrical charge with a field mill, the launch when the potential was high enough and of the right polarity. Google for "rocket triggered lightning florida" and look at the scholarly articles.

There are 2 University operated Lightning research centers in the US that use rockets to trigger lightning strikes in the US: one is in Colorado and the other is in Florida. Here's a good story and video from the one in Florida. https://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0411-lightning_fact_or_fiction.htm

A word of caution to the youngsters here. This is not something that any hobbyist should never try. The dielectric breakdown of air is ~20 KILOVOLTS per inch, so a lightning bolt a mile long represents a potential difference of ~1 billion volts! If you use any hobby rocket launcher system to try this you will die because the electricity will travel from the launcher to the controller and then through you. Both research facilities were built by expert researchers and cost a lot of money to construct and maintain. All use non-conducting launchers, and personnel are in Faraday cage bunkers. Try it with anything less and we'll post your obit here.

Bob

[video=youtube;iGlrobvb-ao]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGlrobvb-ao[/video]

Was poking around on this subject again, and found an old episode of PBS's NOVA series (ca. 1995) that clearly shows most one of the rockets. I wondered if/how they recovered the rockets, or if they were vaporized in the launch. Looks like they come in ballistic, and are built to take it (the field they use looks to have a loose sandy soil). My rough eyeball measurements make the rocket out to be about 2" in diameter, with 4 (opaque) fins that fit inside an 8" pipe. The wire spool looks to be 4" in diameter, and maybe 3.5" long. The yellow nosecone appears to be translucent, and has 3 wire arcs that protrude from it and keep the rocket centered in the tube. The rocket overall looks to be primer gray, and does have markings.



Later in the same episode, another experimenter is seen in the episode... We get better images of the rockets, but they look like a standard design, and could be for just about any other naked rocket seen on a launch field.



[video=youtube;mNp9o5Gsoy8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNp9o5Gsoy8[/video]

Newer videos of the Florida team I've seen, such as a BMW advertisement from 2017, shows that their design has changed. The fins to now are a translucent orange or red color, perhaps made of fiberglass, and the overall shape has changed.





[video=youtube;7dALAe58Fhw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dALAe58Fhw[/video]

I'd really love to build a couple of these as an homage to the science, but within NAR/TRIPOLI rules. (READ: NOT for actual lightning experimentation) I still have all of my parts that I managed to escape infancy with (I lost a part in infancy that I really would have rather kept), and I'm not in the mood to lose any more, or have them damaged in any way.

Remember boys and girls... Leave Lightning to the experts. Seek cover if you hear thunder.

As best I can remember, they don't care where the rockets land. I don't even remember them having any recovery stuff. They do (did) their research out in the boonies, away from everyone. After all, they're calling down lightning!

sooner.boomer said:

As best I can remember, they don't care where the rockets land. I don't even remember them having any recovery stuff. They do (did) their research out in the boonies, away from everyone. After all, they're calling down lightning!

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I figured that out when I saw the guys pulling the rocket out of the ground (around the 15 minute mark) in the 1995 video. Those have to be pretty durable to handle that kind of abuse because it looks like they're meant to be reused.



I've also noticed in the screen grabs from the BMW ad that the orange fins have something that suspiciously looks like paint on them as I can see sags and runs in the "paint". However, whatever the fins are made from it is translucent. They also look to be bolted on instead of glued on. I also noticed what looks like the white igniter plug from Estes in the motor.

In the 2002 Movie "Sweet Home Alabama" they make glass sculptures with rockets, thunderstorm and lightning. Never wanted to try.

I wrote a letter to the main contact for he research down in Florida years ago looking for info on the rockets as they would be cool 1:1 scale model entries. Never got a response.

kj

r66astro said:

In the 2002 Movie "Sweet Home Alabama" they make glass sculptures with rockets, thunderstorm and lightning. Never wanted to try.

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I thought he used metal rods driven into the beach to attract the lightning. It was a fair/pretty good movie IMO.

When I was at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago 2 years ago, they had one of these rockets there. IIRC it was metal, but other than that, looked like one of ours.

I remember posting about these last year. The light spot appears to be a hole in the airframe at the back. Translucence lends the idea of fiberglass.

Scale is hard to judge, but they could be 29-38mm minimum diameter.

K'Tesh said:

Later in the same episode, another experimenter is seen in the episode... We get better images of the rockets, but they look like a standard design, and could be for just about any other naked rocket seen on a launch field.

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Those are unpainted AeroTech Mustang kits.

Initiator001 said:

Those are unpainted AeroTech Mustang kits.

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Cool! Thanks! I thought that they might be an offering from AeroTech, but I wasn't sure. Way back then, I wasn't active in the hobby, and I don't know who was producing kits other than Estes and AeroTech.

Several full size rockets, like sat launchers, and even a Saturn V were launched thru clouds or electrical storms.

The exhaust trail is ionized and provides a path to ground, and lightning strikes, which happened. Took some rockets out.

The Saturn just had the electric junk in the CM shut down, they knew which breaker to toggle to reset things.

It did not have computer control, just discrete electronics, so survived. And the engines had their own controls.

These days all would go bonkers. I read an expert saying the new composite airliners with the flimsy embedded ground wires will not take a strike. The fly by wire stuff will conk out. Oh yeah, and don't sit by the engines! :kill:

Somewhere I have (or at least had) an issue of Popular Mechanics or Mechanix Illustrated with an article about a group which was launching model rockets into thunderstorms to study them and tornadoes. The rockets ejected chaff which could be tracked by radar. Of course, this was before Doppler radar became common (and before HPR).

There has been at least one accident caused by a lightning strike resulting in a loss of the vehicle.

I've also seen that two rockets were accidentally launched when lightning struck and tripped the launch circuit. Apparently, they weren't quite ready to go into space that day, but nature thought otherwise.

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

If you can find it, check out the August '97 issue of Scientific American. Article on artificially induced lightning strikes; rockets, lasers, kites...

I remember watching NOVA when they covered this. IIRC, they used a pneumatic process to launch them rather than our normal launch controllers. This was to keep from being electrically attached to the launch pad when the lightning struck. Does anyone have any more info on that pneumatic process?

When we owned TFR we supplied chutes the test. If remember they had a thin wire attached to the bottom of the rocket. launch into the storm clouds lightning hit the wire and their measurement's were taken.

We had a local guy, Arizona, in the 90's working with a university group trying to use rockets to draw lightening.
I don't know if they ever got it to work but I did see a meter they built to measure charge in the air. One end grounded other on 5 meter pole. If I remember correctly even on a clear day the voltage was very high, but amperage near zero.
I think the students graduated before killing themselves.

M

MClark said:

We had a local guy, Arizona, in the 90's working with a university group trying to use rockets to draw lightening.
I don't know if they ever got it to work but I did see a meter they built to measure charge in the air. One end grounded other on 5 meter pole. If I remember correctly even on a clear day the voltage was very high, but amperage near zero.
I think the students graduated before killing themselves.

M

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The usual way of measuring atmospheric charges is with something called a field mill. It has a "chopper" mechanism inside (something like a rotary shutter) so that the detector alternately sees no charge (blocked) and the "sky" charge (open). This is one way to measure the DC offset of signals.

NASA has a whole array of these at KSC and other facilities when launching (or other activities) would place people or equipment in danger of a lightening strike.
https://lightning.nsstc.nasa.gov/data/data_fieldmill.html
Some of the higher-end golf courses and sports stadia have similar warning systems to give notice of danger. You don't want to wait until there are already lightening strikes before you head for cover!

"Lightning," not "lightening." I noticed an engraved sign in the room at the top of the Washington monument which described the installation of "lightening detectors" in the tower. I wondered if that was really a problem.

jadebox said:

"Lightning," not "lightening." I noticed an engraved sign in the room at the top of the Washington monument which described the installation of "lightening detectors" in the tower. I wondered if that was really a problem.

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Yup- it’s an early warning system that lets us know if aliens are stealing our monuments with tractor beams from their UFOs

jadebox said:

"Lightning," not "lightening." I noticed an engraved sign in the room at the top of the Washington monument which described the installation of "lightening detectors" in the tower. I wondered if that was really a problem.

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You should see some of the texts I mangle before hitting the send keight.

sooner.boomer said:

You should see some of the texts I mangle before hitting the send keight.

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You should see how many I delete before sending them...... (my conscience gets the better of me, along with what few manners my momma instilled/beat into me)

rharshberger said:

You should see how many I delete before sending them...... (my conscience gets the better of me, along with what few manners my momma instilled/beat into me)

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yup-yup-yup-yup

So many don't get sent. Others get heavily edited. Someone once said "never post anything on the internet (or email) that you wouldn't want your grandmother to read". Seems like a lotta people didn't have my grandmother...

Update: I'm in touch with the scientists and maker of the rockets involved in the triggered lightning program. I don't have much to share from them, nor do I know how much I can share from them...

However, if you're in the Chicago area, apparently at least one of their rockets is located at the Museum of Science and Industry. Now, I just need someone to go there and get me photos of their rocket(s).

Not a hobby: https://www.theprotectionsource.com/Prevectron/ftest/starkfl/Rocket_/rocket_.html

As someone else said, this can kill.

That rocket is designed to trigger lightning, I'm not looking to replicate the experiments. I like the look of them, and I'm trying to create a STEM/STEAM project around rockets in meteorology.

Here's the image from that site:


Here's a couple of shots of the ones I'm trying to sim currently: