The Snow Hare

The Thrifty Rocketeer blog continues...

We had the first big snowfall of the season just yesterday.  That's nothing new, but it comes on the heels of something from earlier in the week that make me think.  


I bought an Estes kit, the Generic E2X, which is a basic white single body tube rocket with a white plastic fin can and white blown plastic nosecone.  In fact, when you complete the entire thing, it is solid white, without a spec of color on the raw rocket.


(Note: this is before stickers or decals are added for spice and flash.)

The only amount of color is the orange and white estes plastic chute which is tucked inside until after launch.  It's a good thing that it has some color to it too.

Someone on-line was just talking about how they perform winter launches, and how they launched on a field of undisturbed white snow.  They couldn't find their rocket to recover, as the very next day, another layer of snow had fallen.  However, there was an anomalous bump in the even snow, and fortunately, they exposed their rocket when they trudged over to examine the lump under the snow.


It got me to remembering what we learned in elementary school that the arctic rabbit has a coat of white fur, in part, to keep it warm in the frigid temperatures, but also to camoflague it from predators in the white snow.


It occurs to me that the more we paint our rockets white, the less likely we are to launch and recover them in the winters.


That's not to say that lots of rocketeers enjoy winter launches at this time of year.  However, I suspect they are generally high power rocket enthusiasts, and the physical size of the rocket aids them in spotting and recovering their instrument.

What do you think?  Which is better?  A jet white rocket, or one with gaudy or at least contrasting colors?

This has been the Thrifty Rocketeer wondering aloud.

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