Shooting for the Stars

After a conversation cropped up at work about shooting homemade rockets, I decided it would be fun if a bunch of us got together and had our own launch day.  To this end I sent out the following email to everyone in my section: 


Greetings, Earthlings!

You are hereby invited to participate in an informal rocket club, whose name is TBD, but for now we will  just call it the Recreational Orbit-seeking Club using Kits assembled In Texas, or ROCK IT!  I know there are some of you who would argue that this really spells ROSCUKAIT; I invite you to come up with a better name and we will vote on it.  There are no entry fee or dues associated with club membership, which consists of 2 levels:

Level 1 (Rocketeer): Build, paint, and name your own rocket.  Shoot it into space (or at least into the lower troposphere).  Bonus points awarded for originality of name, paint job, or other external modification.  Extra bonus points for unique payloads.  Don't worry if you know nothing about building a rocket - I don't either, but I hear there are kits you can buy that are fairly cheap and easy to assemble.

Level 2 (Spectaculator): You're more than a spectator, you're spectacular!  One part fan club, one part heckler, it doesn't matter, so long as you show up to watch the rocketeers' amazing successes and possibly more amazing failures.  Can a horned toad really launch on a rocket?  You don't want to settle for second hand stories around the water cooler (or under powered microwave), you want to see for yourself!

If you're interested in joining this exclusive club (only people with a working pancreas can participate) let me know what level you would like to be, and you will get to help pick the first build and launch dates!

If you are not interested, no negative replies required - I realize some of you have active social lives/are not particularly enamored with the idea of shooting things into the sky.  I don't understand it, but I accept it.


The amazing thing isn't how many people are interested in building a rocket (nearly everyone, as it turns out), but how many responses I got with suggested acronyms for the club's name.  Apparently the only thing more fun than blasting a rocket into the sky is coming up with a group of words that acronymize (yes, I said it) into a witty name.  Who knew?