NC Rocketry

This early-January launch was inserted in the schedule to provide an opportunity for several NASA Student Launch Initiative (SLI) teams to gain some experience with their sub-scale models and with practical rocketry in general.? Quite a few other Tripoli members showed up to enjoy the fantastic weather (on Saturday) and we ended up with good attendance (for a January, that is).? The weather was the big story, as it so often is in the middle of winter, and the short version is that, yes, we did have some weather!? Saturday was just fantastic, calm winds, clear blue skies, and temperatures in the 40s warming up to the low 50s.? It had rained all week in Bayboro, so the mud was everywhere, making vehicular traffic a bit chancy anywhere but the pavement.? Sunday was a wholly different situation:? Cold, very windy, especially above about 1000 feet above the ground, and rain all day long that varied from a clammy mist to steady rain.

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Saturday was a great day for rocketry but the attendance, as at most Holiday season launches, was very light.? Temperatures started in the upper 40s, and warmed slowly until the clouds finally dispersed enough for the sun to shine through, and things quickly warmed up to the 60s.? The clouds were fascinating, almost as if the heavens had decided to demonstrate every single kind of cloud in the meteorology textbooks, all in one day.? Then, when dusk came, all of the clouds went from white, to orange, to red, and then to grey.

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