So, I’ve been wrestling with the timeline in Star Trek (2009). I now realize it’s hopeless, because the production company gave up any grasp of the size of interstellar space in the name of crisp storytelling.
Examples? Oh, bother. If I must. Spoilers hence:
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Saturday afternoon before another snow flurry came around, I went out to attempt to fly the two-stage Estes Mongoose. Part of the mission was to fly. Part of the mission was to see if I was capable of just prepping a rocket, grabbing a launcher, and running down to the middle school “range” to make a flight. Weather conditions were just about as ideal as one gets in December: full high overcast, no wind, not very humid, about 34 degrees F.
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Pondering an attempt to fly the two-stager Thursday. The forecast is for calm all day, which is nice, but not above freezing until early afternoon, which is less nice.
Also Thursday is going to be nasty-chockful-of-Christmas-Eve-Errands-That-I-Swore-I-Wouldn’t-Put-Myself-Through-Ever-Again-After-Last-Year. I never learn.
To do: Stocking stuffers. Holiday meal food, plus regular grocery shopping. Tidying, dishes. Etc.
Happy Holidays to all y’all. 
It’s been another busy and stressful week here, so I’m very sad that I failed to notice that in the middle of it actor Gene Barry passed away. A handsome and talented man, Barry had many successes on stage and screen, and an uncanny number of hit television series. Of course, as a sci-fi fan, it’s his lead role in 1953′s The War of the Worlds that I’ll remember best. Push the button, Frank … Dr. Forrester has left the building.
So I broke out a ruler and the unassembled kit for my Sieron 3 cluster-motor payloader. Then I built the model … in RockSim. (Yes, I know I spoiled that punchline in the subject. Big deal.)
Eventually this file may get into the Essence Model Rocket Reviews site. But my main motive was to be able to create virtual fins. I seem to have lost the fins from the package. (I have no doubt they’ll reappear after I cut new ones.) But I know what shape they are from the package, and I know how big they need to be from RockSim. Ha ha! Science!
The more time I spend poking around the rocketry forums and sites, the more things I remember. Like …
… I built an Estes Honest John in 1980 or so. Came out beautifully. I remember fouling up the template for the rivet line around the body, and discovering that a perforated strip from pin-feed printer paper was a perfect substitute. Don’t know what ever became of that model. (It was the confidence after this one that led me to attempt the build on the Star Trek USS Enterprise.)
… I had an Estes Goblin once. Don’t know what became of it, either. But I gave it a nice Halloween black-and-orange paint job.
… the rocket I lost in the sage near Fort Churchill in 1986 or so was an Estes Scout.
Probably the greatest obstruction to my pursuing this hobby on my own was that I never owned a pad or launcher. I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to buy one — I had money from paper routes and such, and I lived to read the Estes catalog every year. I think I was more interested in plastic models at the time I had the money, and then after that roleplaying games devoured my spare income. Also, a friend and I were involved in making a controller with LED countdown from plans in Popular Electronics … so I held off. (It did eventually get finished, and launched the Scout mentioned above.)