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Robo Festa Water Rocket Session

Water rocket sessions were held on the first day, October 6 (Sat.) and the last day, October 14 (Sun.) of the Sagamihara Robo Festa. With collaboration from Yokohama, Sagamihara, Atsugi and Fujisawa chapters of the Young Astronauts Club-Japan (YAC), the sessions were conducted by ISAS together with volunteers and city workers of Sagamihara City.

Although the procedure and content of the sessions were the same as those at the ISAS Open House, participants could launch the water rockets to their hearts’ content, as we were able to use the Sagamihara Stadium this time. However, as it is troublesome to fetch the rockets flown too far, we set the water amount, air pressure and vertical launch angle at a fixed level. It was interesting to find that there were still differences in the flight distance, perhaps due to differences in the levels of care during assembly. Since the girls made the rockets more carefully, it was not surprising to see that the girls’ rockets flew further than the boys’, and at every trial, it was a girl's water rocket that flew the furthest. At the end of the last day, the children of Yokohama chapter demonstrated a launch of “Balloon Water Rocket” (see picture) showing one of versatile variations of water rockets. (As the balloon water rockets are made with pet bottles with bat balloons attached to the top, they descend slowly keeping the bottle horizontally and thus they are safe.)

These sessions were so popular that the prepared numbered of tickets ran out in no time. However, these 2 days made us wish to see more women engaged in space transportation systems in the future.

January 18, 2002