Rocketry joe & CENJARS presents model rocket demo may 2026

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:02]Good morning from uh high school down in Lakewood. Forgot the name. I'll put it down below. Uh demo launch hand real quick.

[00:00:13]>> So they're all the space cadets, >> right?

[00:00:18]>> So gentlemen were nice enough to bring us.

[00:00:24]>> Is this a Mtype? Mtype and metallic.

[00:00:28]>> Metallic.

[00:00:30]Tampa Bay from South America.

[00:00:32]>> South America. This is a real meteorite um that they've collected from South America. You might be surprised of how it feels and try to pick it up. You guys all want to go ahead and give it a whirl. You can feel it.

[00:00:46]You're pretty strong.

[00:00:48]>> Give it a lift.

[00:00:50]>> Wait, wait, wait.

[00:00:56]>> Don't be afraid.

[00:00:58]It's a rock. It doesn't bite.

[00:01:00]>> Yeah, it's a rock >> a little bit.

[00:01:02]>> Bend with your knees.

[00:01:05]>> PT.

[00:01:07]>> Okay.

[00:01:08]>> I don't think I can.

[00:01:10]>> Anybody else want to go ahead?

[00:01:14]>> Just careful. Grip it. Well, >> wow. That is >> Jack's the man.

[00:01:22]>> Thank you, guys.

[00:01:24]>> You're pretty healthy. It's not crazy, but it's a little >> Don't drop it on your >> That's weird. Surprisingly heavy, right?

[00:01:31]>> We are a rocket club. We fly out of Wall Township down near the end of Route 18.

[00:01:39]Um name is Senars.

[00:01:43]He almost wiped out his toes.

[00:01:47]Uh but we were invited to talk to you about some rockets. Now I understand some of you flew some biking from Yeah.

[00:01:56]>> And they went like over 1,000 ft and we lost sight of them, right?

[00:02:01]>> We lost about 25 of them and we only recovered how many? What? Three, >> four.

[00:02:07]>> They've been finding them all over. I'll tell you guys a funny story.

[00:02:11]>> The objective that we have with rocketry is to retrieve the rockets so we can fly it again. Okay. So, just about everything we've got here um should be easily retrievable. There's a bunch of bigger rockets over there that would not launch in this field. The field is not big enough. We have rules um safety rules.

[00:02:36]Okay. So, any question? Questions?

[00:02:43]Okay. One of the first safety things we do is stand behind the person pushing the button.

[00:02:50]>> You got a question?

[00:02:51]>> So, with the fins, >> I I thought about doing something with when we were doing our rockets and putting fins on the top like this. Does that help it stay stable when it launches or >> It does the opposite.

[00:03:09]>> I thought I thought it I guess I was wrong about that. That's okay. It's a good question.

[00:03:14]>> Nice long rocket. Got a bunch of pins back here.

[00:03:18]>> This is what aids the stability of a rocket. When a rocket's going up, >> if it starts to turn sideways, the angle of attack of the wind on these fins, short version, >> you get pressure on this side of the fins, lack of pressure, right? Negative pressure over here. It kind of sucks the back of the rocket back up.

[00:03:42]it rotates around the center of gravity of the rocket.

[00:03:45]>> So any fins that you have above that is going to push the other way that you want it to go.

[00:03:52]>> Okay?

[00:03:52]>> And so it's very important for us to keep the center of gravity up above what's called the center of pressure.

[00:03:58]>> So why does this one happen?

[00:04:00]>> Decoration. Just looks cool, >> doesn't it?

[00:04:03]>> Tell me it looks cool.

[00:04:06]>> Good morning. Beautiful day. Hot. It is time for a high school demonstration from Sedars. Yeah, we've got a bunch of astronomy students and some other classes and we're out here going to do a rocketry uh demo. So, we've got a quite a bit uh setup already. Should be good.

[00:04:24]But boy, is it hot.

[00:04:25]>> Show you what we're doing. This is a little bit more power. So, there's a difference between the low power rockets and some of the high power rockets that you're looking at here. Number one, >> you can buy these at Hobby Lobby. Not all of them, but many of them, right? Or you can buy them from a catalog online.

[00:04:44]You can do that as well here, but you need to be licensed, right? So, you have to be licensed uh with National Association of Rocketry. It's certified level one, two, or three. And you took a look. We're going to fly some rockets on this motor here, which is a C motor.

[00:04:59]Now, if I had an A motor the same size, I have rockets that actually fly on something like this, which equals over 5,000 of these motors, right? And I've sent rockets up well over 10,000 ft. And let's see. So, you have rockets like this. What's one one of the big differences?

[00:05:23]A lot of the smaller rockets, you're going to use um cardboard airframes versus all fiberglass, which you see right here. And when this launches, we sometimes get these back much closer than people who actually launch an ESUS rocket. So what happens essentially is that this will launch this will probably go up about 4,800 ft this Saturday or Sunday. As it approaches Apogee, which is the top part of the flight, I have a computer on board which looks like a little chip called an altimeter. It's going to read the barometric pressure of the air and sends out a charge. And this rocket is going to totally separate, which I don't want to do right here. Actually, I can hold that.

[00:06:16]So >> there we go.

[00:06:18]>> So it's going to separate and this will be attached to the um to the main part of the rocket. So I am going to add a twoft chute and this is going to actually drop down on a very controlled descent very very quickly. And then the computer on board is going to send a charge up here that is going to open up.

[00:06:42]Thank you this part.

[00:06:45]and a main shoot probably about 10 or 15 feet. I want you just to see the weight.

[00:06:54]>> That's to keep that center of gravity up, that weight up so >> you guys attach like GoPros to these when you're launching.

[00:07:04]>> You can pretty come on up and check it out. So there's also a big cost difference if you want to know. So if you want to buy rocket motors like this in the neighborhood of each maybe five, seven bucks a piece, something like that. If you want to buy a motor to go in here, today's $900.

[00:07:27]>> Um I've launched or we tried to launch anyway a 20ft rocket that was 14 in wide. The motor cost I don't know $5,000.

[00:07:38]Well, it went and then we had a little situation with one of the motors going up. It arrived safely back. So, and there's multiple there's uh many rockets out there. If you come to one of the big big launches, you can see them with four or five of these motors in them. So, anyway, I don't want to take up any more of your time. Want to show you the basics. Particular motors are reloadable. You get a metal casing. We put the fuel rings into it.

[00:08:05]Most of these other rocket motors over there are expendable. Once you once they burn, you throw them out.

[00:08:12]One, four, three, two, one.

[00:08:22]>> Four, three, two, one.

[00:08:32]>> 3.

[00:08:41]Catch it.

[00:08:45]>> 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 is black tower.

[00:09:36]Four 3 2 1 >> We have bigger rockets. It's over in the white van over there if you want to see those.

[00:10:13]>> We always tell them to stay away from there.

[00:10:19]>> Yeah, let's go check them.

[00:10:20]>> So, what was the problem? What was the continuity problem there?

[00:10:24]>> That type of igniter is actually uh two pieces of copper next to each other with an insulator in between.

[00:10:34]So, that was a good demo. We have the regular Quinstar on a D12 and we have my upscale Quinstar on a G80. Took a little while. It was a older type igniter, so was being difficult, but nice flight.