Big Bird: A copyright lawyer's nightmare

[boatgeek]

Okay - where did you get the squid shirt?

The important question of the day. I got the shirt at the Portland Saturday Market a few years ago to add to my collection of cephalopod T-shirts. I took a quick look through their vendors, and I think it was probably Tree Town Batiks (https://www.etsy.com/shop/TreeTownBatiks/items?section_id=5729258). It looks like they've gone a little more fancy in the last couple of years, but you might be able to get them to re-create an old shirt if it was them.

 

[BABAR]

Probability of a crash on the first flight is directly proportional to the time finishing the rocket.

Cool project, sorry about the unfortunate flight report.

 

[mikec]

Why did it catch fire? Did it just ignite vegetation or was it on fire at impact?

 

[boatgeek]

Probability of a crash on the first flight is directly proportional to the time finishing the rocket.

Cool project, sorry about the unfortunate flight report.

It's like Murphy's Law of tracking. The more trackers, the closer it lands to the pad.

Why did it catch fire? Did it just ignite vegetation or was it on fire at impact?

As far as I know, it was not on fire at impact. However, we didn't arrive at it's final resting place until after the fire was started but still small, maybe 3-5 minutes after crash. I think the most likely causes of the fire were either a hot motor casing sitting on something flammable (less likely) or the main ejection charge starting vegetation smoldering. The side booster ejection charges should have blown before landing, but the center core would have gone after landing. Lending credence to the second theory is that the upper section of the center core was completely undamaged, so it was far enough from the fire to be safe. The motor casings themselves were fine as well.

One of the things this launch weekend taught me was a much healthier respect for fire at the launch site. I had a notion to do a second launch with a sparky center core and smoky side boosters. That would have been a disaster with this flight profile, since the motor would have been spreading sparks a quarter mile downrange from 200 feet up.

 

[kidrobo]

Kinda late to the show, but I wanted to share the (top quality) video I got of the launch. It's terrible.

I hope you try again. That would have been an awesome flight.