Scrapheap What Happened ? Alright, so what happened ? Why did the rocket crash ? Well, as was seen on the TV show, the wadding (cabbage), was packed too tightly. Far too tightly. As a backup, the two halves of the rocket should have split in two, pulling the parachute out into the airstream so that it could inflate properly. The problem here, was that I had not made it clear enough that we needed plenty of line connecting the two halves of the rocket, rather than a short length of line. This was a big mistake on my part - I screwed up. What this meant was that the ejection charge fired on time, but the cabbage was well and truly jammed in, and didn't push the parachute out of the rocket. The rocket then tipped over as it was supposed to do, the two halves separated a short distance, but because the length of line between them was so short, instead of the parachute being pulled out, the two halves slammed back together, so the rocket continued downwards ....in a dive. The Rocket The rocket was christened the rather cool name of "Space Cadet" by Kali. The rocket itself consisted of two plastic water filter tubes, an aluminium tube, 4 alumnium fins which were pop rivetted onto the plastic tubes, and a drainpipe payload section carrying an IAX-96 altimeter/accelerometer. The motor was a commercially available Aerotech I-195 Blackjack solid reloadable motor, with an average of 195 newtons (19.5 kilograms) of thrust for 3 seconds, and a total impulse of 600 Newton seconds.