Day One

Kathy, Mike and I are have to make three different rockets, but the only fuel we’ve got is water. Ellen and Iain have to make parachutes that can bring our rockets and their payload – a raw egg – safely back to Earth.

Spend a happy day fiddling around with various bits and pieces trying to design something that might work for a steam rocket. A slow start to day one with some nice pieces to camera with us all up on the hill by the disused electricity pylons. An end of series feeling …

Manage to find a threaded tube and adapters so that we can make up a sealed system. Also play around with various end sealing flanges. One of these I try to drill on the lathe so that there is a small hole in it for the steam to come out. This was hard work as it was a toughened bolt and very hard to cut (ruined three of the cheap drills!). I took the bolt that was about five centimetres long and sawed off head so that I had a piece of threaded bar about three centimetres long. This was put into the lathe and then centre drill out.

By the end of the day we have a basic rocket made out of a steel tube about 30 centimetres long with a steel screw top cap and adapters on the bottom (the engine) end drilled with a one to one and half millimetre hole. Added fins made out of the thick tin.