Inaugural Launch of the Saturn V

For Connor's 4th Birthday, his Papa Kirk bought him an Estes brand Saturn V model rocket kit that was as big as he was.  We've been building the dang thing for almost two years.  It's not entirely our fault that it took so long - we've talked to experts at one rocketry convention and our local model rocket shop, and it's just a badly designed kit.  In fact, in order to finally finish it, Kevin had to go to the hardware store and buy some wood and redesign an entire element of the rocket and then construct it from scratch.  These were the barriers to our quick completion of the rocket.

That, and well, Connor was only four when he started working on it.  How many four year olds can put together a tricky defective model rocket?

So it was with great fanfare and joy in our family that our, I mean Connor's, Saturn V was finally done!  We were so excited that we decided to go out and launch it the very next morning!

This is our launch pad, with the Big Baby set up on it.

There is a rocket shop in the back of my car!

We started out with our smallest rocket, just to test the wind.  It was really windy that morning and we weren't sure if the rockets were going to blow way off course.



The rocket is so small that you can barely see it as a black dot as it was coming back down in that video, but Connor was able to recover it!

He has a little toy dog in his pocket.  See?

Then we launched the Big Baby.  It went so high and so far that it landed across the park, across the parking lot at the park, and about two feet from someone's back fence.  We got lucky there.  I'm glad it didn't land in someone's yard, or on their roof.

And then we launched the Saturn V!

The first launch went so well that we decided to do it again!