The Picture Window Near Miss

Let's skip forward a few years. You would think by now I would have gained a little experience and wisdom in the pyrotechnic arts. At this point I was perhaps a little over-confident that the days of my mishaps were long gone. This turned out to be true in this instance only because of blind luck or divine intervention, I'm not sure which.

After hearing of my love for the field of "energetic chemistry", Emily's sister-in-law, Val, invited me to conduct a workshop at her home in Eagle, Idaho for her son, who shared my interest in science and rockets. I was eager to convert a young and impressionable mind to the field and, of course, I couldn't turn down an opportunity to play with explosives and such. Accordingly, I prepared for a few weeks prior to our next visit to Idaho and brought a large box of chemicals and supplies for the workshop.

Val and her husband Brian lived in a very upscale, multi-million-dollar home on a large lot at the outskirts of Eagle. I remember being quite impressed with the expansive shop where we started building a few fireworks items. We made a few simple things like fountains and roman candles and then went outside on the lawn to light them off. The event was slated to conclude with a static test of a small rocket motor. This was a motor that used the same kind of solid rocket motor fuel as the space shuttle booster engines. It was about 12 inches long and used a custom machined solid graphite rocket nozzle. I was quite proud of the accomplishment of designing and building this motor, which I has successfully test fired on several previous occasions. This time, however, I planned to use a new static test stand that had never been used before.

We set up the rocket motor in the test stand and inserted the electrically controlled engine ignitor. Brian and Val's young son would be given the privilege of doing the count-down and pushing the ignition button. A successful test-firing would have resulted in a loud roaring noise and a lot of fire and smoke coming from the nozzle of the motor. All this was supposed to happen while the motor was safely contained in the test stand. Well, my young protégé eagerly did his job and pushed the button after counting down from five. The rocket motor roared to life, just as expected. Then it somehow managed to break loose from the test stand and began to fly uncontrollably in the air. My heart sank as the motor headed right towards the largest picture window of the house at about 100 miles an hour. I was all but certain that I was going to be responsible for thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to Val's beautiful home. This is when the miracle happened.

It appeared as if the motor hit an invisible force field, just like the ones that protect the spaceships in the Star Wars movies. The motor abruptly flipped around, right in mid-air and started heading out toward the field beyond the lawn. I heaved a huge sigh of relief when the motor finally ran out of fuel and landed safely in the field about 40 yards away from the house. Once again, I was incredibly lucky that no one was hurt and that no damage was done. However, the near miss did some serious damage to my reputation as a rocket scientist. I seriously considered whether I should retire from this hazardous hobby, but only for about 2 seconds.