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Hydroflite
Development Mishap
While still early in the development of the Hydroflite launch system, I was looking into ways to achieve spin stabilization using the thrust of the water rocket. I had a plug in the bottle throat with angled holes drilled through it. The theory was that the water exiting with a tangential thrust vector would cause the bottle to spin. The hold and release mechanism was not yet developed so the beautiful, reluctant, lab assistant was required for launching the bottle. (See the History page for more about the lab assistant.) She was holding the bottle down and I was manning the foot pump. We reached launch pressure and I told her to let go. She did. For some reason, the bottle did not lift off. I thought: "How strange." Then the bottle slowly started to lean. It leaned towards me! It was pointing right at me. Before I could react (since I was fascinated by the leaning) the bottle disappeared. Just suddenly it was gone and I heard a loud boom. My eye caught sight of the bottle flying away from me. It was not spinning but it was tumbling through the air at a pretty good velocity. I then thought: "That is really weird. How could it be going that direction when it was pointing right at me?" The bottle landed four houses away. As I was thinking of how strange that flight was, my lips suddenly felt strange. They started to really hurt. I realized that I had been hit in the face with that bottle. It happened so fast, I didn't even feel it (until later). My lip was cut and bleeding. That peculiar flight path included a ricochet shot off my face!! PLEASE DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! |
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