One of the kiddos is in 4-H, and one of the projects she joined this year was rocketry. They spent the last few monthly meetings building their tiny 12-inch cardboard rockets. Yesterday was launch day. We drove hours to some place in the Central Valley where it was legally permitted for the public to launch rockets. Apparently it’s a popular hobby.
Some of the rockets people brought were more than six feet tall, some equipped with devices that track their altitude and descent. One of the rockets reached an altitude of 6,200 feet. Most did not go that high.
It wasn’t lost on me that these things looked like missiles; albeit with plastic warheads. Probably not the place to be if you’ve fought in a war or have suffered through it and have PTSD.
Occasionally the parachutes would fail to deploy and the rockets would take a parabolic path straight into the ground. Or a rocket would explode midair and fall apart, scattering debris. Or the rocket would go off course and head toward where everyone was standing. The launch coordinator often yelled over the P.A. system for people to watch out.
They even had a “piñata rocket” loaded with candy so that when the parachutes deployed, it also dropped candy, and the kids would run around the debris field to gather it.
Surreal, considering the state of the world.
The science, the physics, the spectacle... it was fun. Tinged with a little sadness at the realization that the same science and physics are also used for war. Science is cool until it isn’t. Like splitting an atom.