March/April Issue - NIRA

The newsletter of the Northern Illinois Rocketry AssociationPage SevenThe launch took place at Higgs Farm, near Price, Md.,home field for the Maryland-Delaware Rocketry Association(MDRA). The MDRA has a history of generatingheadlines along with serious thrust: Eves broke recordsset here five years ago by the Liberty Project, a 24-ft.-tallrocket that weighed 1368 pounds. But as a testament tothe camaraderie in the hobby, Neil McGilvray, one of LibertyProject’s team leaders, packed the parachutes for Eves’Saturn V. “When something like this comes along,”McGilvray says, “there’s no competition.”Organizers anticipated a crowd of 1,000 for the historicday, but they may have gotten twice that. Enthusiastsarrived from nearby states like Pennsylvania—but alsofrom places like Texas and California. One local churchgroup carpooled out to the field, as did members of theNew Hampshire Wing of the Civil Air Patrol. In fact, thelaunch, which had been scheduled for noon, was delayedbecause the crowd created a traffic jam that kept Eves fromthe launch pad.Saturday’s showing was all the more impressive becauselarger rockets have more potential points of failure.Something goes wrong with NASA’s launches roughly 10percent of the time, and they’re supposed to be the verybest in the business. In the buildup to Eves’ launch, meanwhile,amateur enthusiasts had all but pronounced theworld records a foregone conclusion. “You try to test everythingyou can think of,” Eves said before the flight,“but this is amateur rocketry. Who knows what might happen?”As MDRA members like to say, “We have coollaunches, and we have really cool launches. The cool onesare when everything goes according to plan.”Two years ago, Eves says, he began thinking back tohis childhood—to the days teachers would roll a TV setinto the classroom for the students to watch Apollolaunches. He tracked down schematics for the 36-storytallrocket on the Internet and in old NASA drawings. Thenthe man who spends his days as an auto-body repair specialistbuilt a skeleton from seven-ply aircraft-grade plywood.He built the tubular skin from Luan plywood—nearly 300 square feet of it, according to Rockets magazine—andthen coated it with fiberglass. He told Rocketsit took more than six hours, and 14 gallons of resin, toapply all the fiberglass cloth. All told, the project cost about$25,000—including nearly $13,000 for the fuel alone,which burned up in less than 10 seconds Saturday.The rest of his rocket will have a greater shelf life.NASA has already contacted Eves about displaying it atthe U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., beneathan original Saturn V. There was talk of relaunchingit and setting more records—but after such a successfulflight, Eves probably won’t risk it. “It could be launchedagain,” he told the Akron Beacon Journal, “but it’s goingto be retired and put on display so people can enjoy it.”Photographs by Robert CoburnPublished on: April 27,2009