NASA Yanks Air Pressurized Paper Rocket Launcher Offline
Keith’s note: A note titled “NASA Reccomends Discontinuation of Student Rocket Activity” went out to NASA’s education mailing lists this afternoon with some urgency. No other detail has been provided by NASA.
“Recently, an air pressurized paper rocket launcher being used by an educator failed. This launcher is described in NASA’s Rockets Educator Guide, publications EG-2011-11-223-KSC, pp. 86-90 and EG-2008-05-060-KSC, pp. 86-90. NASA completed an engineering investigation into the failure and determined that the launcher, or design equivalents, should not be used. NASA has removed the launcher design from its website and its education curriculum. Individuals and organizations should immediately discontinue use of the launcher published in the referenced NASA publications. The point of contact for additional information is James Stofan, Deputy Associate Administrator for Education Integration at [email protected]. We request that your organization assist NASA in disseminating this information as widely as possible throughout the education community.”
If there is some inherent danger then this is a prudent thing to do. This is the document that NASA has taken offline. It took me 10 seconds to find it. They have managed to scrub it off of NASA’s website but similar technology is easily available online via a simple Google search:
– Air Rockets, NASA
– Air Pressure Rocket Launcher
– How-To Tuesday: Compressed air rocket, Make Magazine
I think the concern is that the PVC tubing can fail and cause injury. I got one of the kits from MakerShed and they specify that the pressure chamber be completely wrapped in multiple layers of duct tape to contain any pieces should it fail. Also, you want everyone to be using eye protection when using one of these. I doubt our school principal would allow the high pressure kind of launcher to be used knowing that this kind of failure could happen.
I don’t think this applies to the stomp rockets which are more or less safe unless you get hit in the eye by a paper rocket.
Also, at our last low power model rocket flight there were at least a couple motors that failed with a bang, a bit disturbing. Fortunately the club we fly with maintains a safe launch area, but it did give me second thoughts about safety.
Re: James Lundblad’s post — The stomp rockets should not be a problem since the instructions tell you the PVC parts do not have to be cemented together. The stomp rocket instructions also specify that students should wear eye protection. We created a safety code specifically for the stomp rockets we use at the NASTAR Center.
And another fun childhood activity bites the dust. Hard to get kids interested in science when they can’t experience any.
This kit avoids using PVC pipe altogether: http://www.airrocketworks.com/