And The Rockets' Red Glare

orpheus writes: "After the cops come and confiscate -er- 'your kids' illegal fireworks (yeah, that's the ticket), consider popping over to Space.Com for a special retrospective of clips and pictures of real fireworks in the 4th of July special section, "Triumphs and Tragedies Behind Launch 'Fireworks' featuring videos of when rockets go bad, and when rockets go right. It'll make you feel better about your own backyard suborbital ventures, as you brace yourself to rebuild your neighbor's doghouse." Thankfully, they don't have the Challenger. And keep in mind that most (all?) of those detonations were intentional, if a launch deviates from the flight-path it is destroyed so that it doesn't land on Tampa or Disneyworld.

Comments

Re:Whatever happened to beer?

[anatoli]

I protest against being moderated offtopic! This is about fireworks, and I just blew up his argument! Justice! I demand justice! Oh, whatever.
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Re:Blew up the netherlands

[grammar nazi]

This /. story takes me back to the following memory...

I was 10 years old and lived next to a rifle range. One year, the police brought all of the fireworks that they had confiscated out to the field at the rifle range. Using a backhoe, they dug a huge hole in the field and proceeded to fill it with the bounty. This was after they had filled their automobile trunks with and even given me some fireworks. One officer started pouring can after can of gasoline into the hole. 5 cans in all.

Finally the time came and one officer threw a flare into the pile. Immediately there was a huge explosion and all of the fireworks flew into the air with a ton of dirt. What happened next was cool! The fireworks were lighting, but they were going off in the air and on the ground all over the whole field. The police were running for cover, but they were being bombarded by dirt, exploding fireworks, and soon-to-be exploding fireworks. Some even landed in my yard which is at least 100 yds away. I'll never forget watching the cops run for cover while sparks, flashes, and bangs were going off around them.

What's the moral of this story? Cops are stupid! Just kidding, but those cops were stupid.