Boeing + Discovery Cube Bottle Rocket Launch

A day of science, laughs, and zooming fly-highers is ahead, in Huntington Beach.

MORE COOL THAN COOL: If you want to grow up to build things, intricate things, the kind of machines and buildings and flying devices and span-big structures that require a lot of learning and imagination and know-how and drive, it can make for a pretty special day to visit a place where all of that goes down on the regular. Boeing in Huntington Beach is one such place, and while a whole caboodle of students and future engineers and scientists will get to visit Boeing on Saturday, May 9, it won't be a simple look-around-and-go kind of deal. Nope, the visitors will get to plan and build and start over and build again and then wheee! They'll launch bottle rockets, right then and there. If you remember back to being a kid, off-site happenings and field trips didn't include bottle rockets all that often, if ever, so the annual springtime launch is special, for sure. Make that special and highly science-minded: The Discovery Cube in Santa Ana is a partner with Boeing in the big-brained merrymaking, a day-out that draws not only students and their families but enthusiasts that like seeing fast plans involving flight, a little ingenuity, and gumption come together in but a couple of hours.

SATURDAY, MAY 9... is the date, and the 22nd Annual Rocket Launch'll rev its proverbial engines from 9 o'clock in the morning through 2 in the afternoon. Will there be food trucks around, since it is lunchtime? You bet: You can get your sustenance on and enjoy science at the same time. "Attendees will be able to design, build, and launch their own rockets created from two-liter plastic soda bottles" at the free, family-nice happenings. Engineers will be standing by to answer questions and lend advice, and retired NASA astronaut Dr. Yvonne Cagle, M.D. will make an appearance as well. And if you're wondering if the adults can help build the bottle rockets, they can: It's an all-ages kind of thing. As for the day's winner? Because there is a competition, you should know, going in. The victor will be the person who builds the rocket that sustains the longest "hang time." That means a lot of looking up and watching the sky among everyone on the ground, builders and spectators alike. And sky-watching always makes for a pretty wondrous thing to do on a nice spring Saturday. That science and innovation are at the heart of it make it even better.

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