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| About
Hydroflite |
Who are
these Hydroflite guys anyway??
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| Safety |
Hydroflite
is one of the hobbies of Mark and Ronald Skidmore. Mark is a rocket
scientist working for a small defense contractor. Ronald is a 14 year
old high school student. I (Mark) started developing the Hydroflite
launcher in 1981 after graduating from college and starting work
designing rockets. I remembered playing with the red, plastic Park
Plastics water rockets as a child. As I was thinking of a way to
increase the magnitude of the water rocket launch, I started exploring
all kinds of pressure vessels. (Preliminary calculations showed that if
you pressurized the Trident C-4 first stage rocket motor to it's MEOP
[Maximum Expected Operating Pressure] with a 50% water fill, it would
fly over 1.5 miles high!) There are not many Trident C-4 first stage
rocket motor cases available so that experiment could not be conducted.
(Rats!) I needed something a bit more convenient and available.
After some more thought, (disregarding old water heaters and galvanized
culvert sections) I came upon the 2 liter soda pop bottle idea. The
rest is History. We started selling Hydroflite launchers on E-Bay so Ronald could earn some money. 14 is precisely the wrong age when it comes to money. You are old enough to want expensive toys (video games, skateboards, unicycles, Palm Pilots, brand name clothes, dirt bikes, etc.) but young enough that no one will (or can) hire you. (I earned money at that age delivering newspapers.) We formed this partnership and now split the profits 50/50. We do all the machining out in the garage and all the assembly and gluing on the kitchen table; much to Mom's dismay.    |
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