Friday morning, 23 hours to launch time. Steve Eves is getting nervous, but it's hard to tell. His eyes are hidden behind dark glasses, and his smile still comes easily, but his family and friends keep walking over to check on him where he's sitting on the back bumper of the van he drove from Ohio to the Eastern Shore yesterday.
A few yards away, a group of men cluster under a temporary tent, watching the work and offering advice. Eves just had to back away for a bit. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and anyway, Tom and Bob know the wiring, they should be able to find wherever the wires are crossed. If not, Eves says, they'll just start from scratch and rewire the whole thing overnight. Nobody wants to do that, but it's pretty clear nobody would hesitate if it needs to be done. It takes a special kind of dedication to create the world's largest amateur-built rocket in your garage, and everyone has come a long way to see it fly.
Stretched out underneath the tent, the rocket is 36 feet long from the nosecone, where the astronauts signed it, to the bottom of the booster, where nine engines wait to be ignited. It is one-tenth the size of the Saturn V rocket, the largest, most powerful rocket NASA ever launched, and it recreates the larger rocket in exacting detail. The fiberglassed plywood skin has been removed from the middle section, revealing the aluminum-reinforced oak frames and the electrical panels, where Bob Utley, president of the Maryland Delaware Rocketry Association (MDRA), tests the circuitry, and Tom Erb--Eves' friend who made the journey from Ohio with him--puts out another cigarette and reaches in to pull out more wires.
The problem is this: The stages of the rocket need to separate at the top of the flight. The way it does this, sort of a nod to Eves' background as an auto-body guy, is by using seat-belt tensioners to rotate a large aluminum disc, which unlocks the sections. Then an air bag deploys to force the sections apart and, in theory, everything floats back to Earth on parachutes.
It's a good system, but the problem lies in the wiring. Some changes were made this morning, and when the system was powered up for a test, one of the tensioners activated and the air bag blew. Eves has enough spares, but barely. They can't afford another mistake like that one.
Eves saw his first model rocket launch in a fourth grade science class. After that he was hooked, and as he got older, the model rockets he built just kept getting bigger. Everyone starts out with the Estes hobby kits, and their engines labeled A, B, C, and D in order of power, not everyone sticks with it long enough to find out that the series keeps going until you get to custom engines like the "P" and eight "N" motors that will provide the thrust to launch this one. Eves did.
In 2007, Eves ran into Neil McGilvray of the MDRA at the NYPower rocketry convention. He was carrying around a three-ring binder full of construction shots of the Saturn V project he was building in his garage. It didn't look like much to the uneducated eye, but Neil saw more. He told Eves that if the thing got finished, he could launch the 36-foot, 1,600 pound rocket in Maryland.
Twenty hours to launch time, and everyone huddles under the tent for an announcement. They aren't rewiring everything, but they're going to simplify the electronics. They have, McGilvray says, neglected the most basic principle of rocketry: "Keep it simple, stupid." The changes are made, the circuitry checked, and nothing unexpected happens. At around seven o'clock, as it gets dark, the rocket is loaded by crane onto the launch tower.
It probably goes without saying that among the model rocket community there is a certain admiration for NASA. Over the course of this project, the feeling has proved mutual. Steve and his Saturn V were invited to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., to stand next to the real Saturn V, and the nose cone of the model was signed by some of the astronauts. Tim Gagnon, an artist who designs mission patches, contacted Steve a few months ago and offered to make one for the project. It features the rocket, surrounded by 12 stars, one for each astronaut who walked on the moon. At the top it reads "Steve Eves 1:10 Scale Saturn V" and at the bottom "The 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11."
The patches are packed into the nosecone of the rocket now, along with the parachute, and a teddy bear named Major Patches, who will be the flight's sole passenger. In addition to the GPS unit, altimeters, and electronics, the middle section carries a duct-tape package with the word "Dad" written on the outside. Steve's father passed away in September. The first time they stood the rocket upright was one of the last days his father was able to go and see it, and the package contains, as Steve puts it, "some memorabilia--his old fishing license, silly stuff like that, that was real important to him."
A smaller package, near where the men were working on the circuits, just reads "Bob Was Here."
Saturday morning dawns on a gathering crowd. An article on the web site Planet Rocketry has ricocheted around the internet, and Steve's backyard project is taking hold in the imagination of just about everyone who ever glued fins on a cardboard tube and sent it into the air. The Discovery Channel is filming and Popular Mechanics is rumored to be represented. The spectators are allowed down to the launch site for a look, then herded back to a safe distance.
The flight was approved last week by the Federal Aviation Administration, which gives clearance for such things, and the 15 mph wind from yesterday has died enough that the American flag next to the launch tower just hangs on its pole. McGilvray says that rockets, when launched, tend to point into the wind a bit, like a weathervane. That's good, because once the parachute is deployed, the sections should drift back toward the launch tower. The farm is big, but there are roads around, and as the number of cars parked on the edge of the farm grows, nobody wants a 1,000 pound section of rocket coming down anywhere it shouldn't be.
Three hours to launch time. McGilvray makes a speech. He thanks the sponsors and everyone who helped, and he tells the story about Eves and his three ring binder, and the trip to Huntsville. Steve takes the microphone as a radio controlled plane circles the rocket, broadcasting video from above.
"I didn't plan on all this," he begins. "I'm not a showboater. I do better when I'm hiding out in the back corner of my garage." He talks instead about the astronauts.
"The courage that it took for those guys to climb on top of that rocket is just amazing. This thing looks like a little Estes rocket sitting on the ground next to the real one. I can't imagine what it would've been like to sit on that waiting for someone to push the button. I mean, I'm nervous about just pushing the button. Can you imagine?"
He thanks everyone, then asks for a moment of silence for the astronauts who lost their lives in pursuit of space travel.
Eves breaks the silence with an Alan Shepard quote: "Let's light this candle."
Two hours to launch. The recovery teams meet, and go over the procedures for fire suppression and dousing the parachutes. "Do not get in the way of that rocket," Steve tells them. "It's not worth getting hurt over." There is a chance, given the light wind, that the rocket could land standing up. If that's the case, the recovery team needs to stand clear in case the parachutes pull it over.
One hour to launch. The launch system has been tested: nine simultaneous electrical cracks from the ignitors and a puff of smoke from the wires stuck in the ground mean it's working. Climbing a ladder leaned against the launch tower, Eves and Tom Erb load the GPS and altimeters through a panel on the side.
The system is powered up. Everyone moves back-this is where things went wrong yesterday. If the air bag were to deploy again, the rocket could separate on the launch pad, sending the upper sections crashing down. No mention is made of what could happen to Eves and Erb clinging to the top of the ladder. A faint beeping comes from the altimeter in the rocket. Nothing blows up. McGilvray tosses a handful of grass into the air to check the wind. Down from the ladder, Erb's part is done. "I'm getting nervous now," he says.
Thirty minutes to launch. The sun is beating down and Eves reaches into a nearby cooler for a drink. He grabs a water, then leans against a van parked behind the shelter. "Now's when you start running all the scenarios through your mind," he says.
A sounding rocket is sent up to test the high-altitude winds: a Nike smoke, pronounced astronaut-style without the "e" in "Nike." It leaves the launch pad with a quick fffffftt sound and disappears overhead for a moment then drifts back, landing about halfway to the spectators by the road.
It's time, and Steve stands in front of the control panel. Neil has given another warning to the crowd: stay on your feet, and don't get near the rocket as it comes down. The expected altitude," he tells them, "is between three and 4,000 feet."
Everyone is silent now, except for Neil on the microphone: "If Steve's ready, I'm ready . . . and we're going in 10 . . .
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Ignit--"
And everything is drowned out by the wall of sound coming from the rocket.
As the sound recedes and the rocket climbs, there is a moment of stunned silence as all eyes follow it up. Eves breaks it. His outward calm shatters. "Oh my God! We did it! We did it!" He's bellowing now. Everyone is. As the rocket nears its apogee, they fall silent again, watching for the parachutes. They deploy, slightly tangled, but working. 1,600 pounds of rocket float down in three sections.
The Saturn doesn't go as far as the test rocket. It goes much farther--drifting down over the parked cars, past the spectators, and across the road. It lands in a neighbor's farm and the word comes back from the recovery crew: it's standing straight up.
The rocketeers pile into vehicles, Eves jumps behind the wheel of his van. Neil negotiates the traffic of the parking area. Everyone along the way is shouting their congratulations. There are hundreds of people in the spectator area. The lower section of the rocket is standing in the middle of the field across the street, the parachutes draped around its sides. The upper sections are together, maybe 100 yards away, and a rocketeer leans his head against the second stage, counting the beeps of the onboard altimeter. It flew higher than anyone expected--4,441 feet. Eves and McGilvray stand next to the nose cone, as the crowd continues to pour out to the crash site. "We did it," Eves says. McGilvray answers, "Yes we did, brother."
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