Castle Point Rocketry took its first official road trip. Destination: South Jersey.

The team packed up some supplies and drove to our proposed test site in southern New Jersey. Our goal was to survey the land, set up our test apparatus, and make sure our testing plan is viable. It only took us 27 hours, round-trip!

By far, the most difficult part of the journey was getting out of Hoboken. After the initial burden of getting through NYC metro traffic, though, the going was easy. Will, Nathan, Monica, Rodrigo, Dakota, and Tom made the 2.5-hour trek to our testing site and spent the night. Then, a full day in the sun lay ahead of us!

(Quick recap: The duckbill earth anchors keep everything on the ground so that we can measure thrust while the rocket engine fires. The gantry hoist pulls the truss upright.) While Will and Rodrigo focused on the logistics of securing our duckbill earth anchors into the ground, Tom and Dakota refinished the gantry hoist. The entire apparatus (test stand, gantry hoist, and trusses) was then laid our for placement and inspection. Luckily, we passed our own muster.

We were displeased when the evening’s forecasted rain came three hours early. That’s three untapped hours of perfectly good productivity! We securely wrapped all permanent features in tarps, then loaded up the truck before calling it a day.

Despite the early departure, we are happy with the day’s events. Among other things, we verified the land will suit our full stack testing and confirmed that our duckbill anchors need no doctoring for added support. And, just like that, the road trip was over. We skedaddled back to our Hoboken HQ to unpack and prepare for another full week of rocket science.