Like Red Ryder BB Guns, Model Rockets are among those toys most coveted by children and most feared by parents. If shooting your eye is a concern, how about being blown up? The reality of model rockets is a bit of a let down. You get the cool little fuel pellets, put them inside a nicely painted cardboard and plastic rocket, run a little but of wire and flip a switch. Zoom goes the rocket in a nice little cloud of smoke. Then you have trudge around looking for the thing once it parachutes back down to earth.
As with all models, rocket or otherwise, the most fun is hanging around the store and thinking about which one you want to buy next. There are model rockets with little chambers in the top-which say do not put hamsters inside as it will frighten them. You Think? There are also little camera outfits that go into the ends of rockets and take photos as it floats back down to earth.
A friend of mine had parents that wouldn’t let him have model rockets when he was a child, so he went out and bought them when he was an adult. I went with him one time as he found a bare spot of cement in the park and set up his little rocket. Model rockets are interesting items, as you can’t help but think here is a toy that would have blown the mind of Leonardo Da Vinci and might have impressed Thomas Edison. Though of course, Edison was a hard one to impress, as even Tesla couldn’t do it. And if you aren’t impress by Telsa, well, I guess a toy rocket wouldn’t stand a chance.
Like a lot of toys, the real world versions of rockets are not much fun at all. Sure the Nazi genius used them to get us to the Moon, but that was after they used them to turn London into a ghost town. I was in Roswell, New Mexico a few years back and visited one of the little museums they have there. There was a display of rockets and some of the early tests on using rockets for serious business were done in the deserts. These were larger rockets than the model rockets my friend and I launched all those years ago, but they were not all that much bigger.
It’s amazing that we have come so far and that we have left so much behind. There was a story not too long ago about how NASA is trying to buy up all the old junk they sold from the Glory Days of the Moon Missions. Seems NASA has no idea how the American Nazis sent those rockets to the moon. Funny that.
Maybe they should get some model rockets and start all over again. It only took about fifty years the last time. . .
